Shero Commerce CEO and Co-founder Beth Shero is joined by Director of Shopify Practice Gavin McKew to break down the three biggest shifts brands need to plan around in 2026, anchored in Shopify's Winter Editions release.
The first and largest shift is agentic commerce. Gavin explains how the MCP protocol, launched in January and built in partnership with Google, is laying the infrastructure for products to be discovered and purchased through AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. The key action for brands is straightforward but easy to overlook: clean, structured, conversational product data wins here, not keyword-heavy copy.
The second shift covers how AI is accelerating testing cycles, with Shopify's new native AI simulation tool Sim Gym allowing brands to model user behavior before running live AB tests. The third shift is B2B, where Shopify continues adding native features and Gavin argues that the agentic opportunity for B2B, including agent-to-agent negotiation of pricing and terms, could ultimately be bigger than for DTC.