The Shopify Solutions Podcast

11/11/26  Episode Summary  Meta ads expert Chris Ertel joins Scott to break down how small Shopify brands can start advertising on Meta and grow from there. Chris has 14+ years in Meta ads and works with brands spending up to $1M+ every two weeks. He argues you can start with as little as $200/month. He shares how a 74-year-old German bedsheet company went from years of losing money on ads to reco...

10/28/26 Episode Summary Mark Gillilan, founder of Kyoto Botanicals, runs his CBD and functional mushroom brand entirely on his own. He and Scott discuss what he’s learned teaching himself Shopify code, and the apps that earn their place in his store. Topics include: Cleaning up leftover code from uninstalled apps Duplicating your theme and tracking changes in GitHub Using IndexNow and Bing to imp...

10/14/26 Episode Summary This week, Scott talks with Skip, founder of KAFX Body, a natural deodorant brand built around patented coffee-oil technology. What started as a dad trying to solve his triplet sons' body odor became a business overnight when one TikTok video hit a million views. Skip shares how he proved coffee oil works as a natural antimicrobial, why his customers care more about r...

9/30/26 Episode Summary JT from ReptiChip returns as the show's first-ever repeat guest. Two years ago, his reptile supply brand had grown revenue 5x; since then it's done it again, for roughly 25x growth in three and a half years. JT and Scott break down the three buckets behind that growth: Catalog expansion : curating and reselling other brands' products that meet his quality bar...

9/16/26 Episode Summary Answer Engine Optimization is how your products get recommended when a shopper asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini what to buy. Two of my clients are now getting about 7% of their sales from AI, so this is a real channel, even though it's still under 1% of retail traffic overall. In this episode I walk through the two halves of AEO work: on-site, which is the structured da...

9/2/26 Episode Summary Shoppers hit your 404 page when a URL is mistyped or when a product or collection has been deleted, so it matters for SEO and user experience. Shopify Analytics won't show you your 404s easily, but Google Search Console will — under Pages, look for "Not found (404)." Then create redirects in the Shopify admin under Content → Menus → URL Redirects. Shopify make...

8/19/26 Episode Summary Scott welcomes the founder of The Healing Hedge Witch for an in-depth discussion on implementing a successful subscription model on Shopify. This episode offers a practical, real-world look at how The Healing Hedge Witch uses recurring subscriptions to build a predictable revenue stream and foster a loyal customer base. They explore the specific strategies that have worked...

8/5/26 Episode Summary Two things about AI are true at the same time: it's genuinely powerful when wired into your systems, and getting it there is a lot harder than the demos suggest. In this episode Scott gives you both halves. He walks through Client OS, the tool JadePuma built and runs on client brands — a connector that sits between Shopify, Klaviyo, Notion, GitHub, and Google Drive, hol...

7/22/26 Episode Summary Shopify is rolling out a new Collection engine, and it's a big step forward for store owners. In this episode, Scott walks through what's changing: the old split between manual and smart collections is gone, replaced by collections built from a combination of sources. That means you can now mix automated rules, manual inclusions, exclusions, and pinned products in...

7/8/26 Episode Summary The episode explains that a store's background color drives a subconscious snap judgment about a brand within about 50 milliseconds — before a visitor reads a single word — and that in 2026, Shopify stores are increasingly moving away from the long-standing default of pure white backgrounds. Why white is losing its grip . Pure white is clean, fast-loading, readable, and...

6/24/26 Episode Summary The episode tackles how to apply your brand identity to checkout and customer account pages—two areas merchants often neglect and frequently assume they can't control. Scott's core argument is that the jarring hand-off from a polished storefront to a generic, default-looking checkout erodes trust at the highest-intent moment in the funnel, when a browser becomes a...

6/10/26 Episode Summary AI has crossed a threshold in e-commerce — it's no longer a competitive advantage, it's table stakes. In this episode, Scott covers the AI baseline every Shopify brand needs to stay competitive (from automated product descriptions and smart recommendations to structured data for AI search visibility), and then digs into the real differentiators: founder-led conten...

5/27/26 Episode Summary Episode 186 reviews the Breeze product/landing page (wearbreeze.co) — a men's polo brand that targeted you on Instagram. What they do well: Tiered bundle pricing shown as price-per-shirt ($59 → $29 → $23 each), heavy social proof (300K+ customers, 16,914 sold, curated reviews matching the target demo by age/height/weight), and treating the product page as a landing pag...

5/13/26 Episode Summary In Episode 185 of the Shopify Solutions Podcast, host Scott Austin of JadePuma explains why he's made the Enterprise theme by Clean Canvas his go-to starting point for client Shopify stores. His core argument is that themes are toolboxes, and rather than picking one based on a single feature, merchants should pick the theme with the deepest set of built-in tools — whic...

4/29/26 Episode Summary This episode explains how to build scalable, dynamic web pages without coding, duplicating templates, or using third-party apps. The Core Concept: While metafields add single data points to existing products, metaobjects are standalone data structures (e.g., an "Artist Profile" with a name, bio, and photo). By enabling Metaobject Pages, you design just one theme t...

4/15/26 Episode Summary As AI agents like ChatGPT and Perplexity become a growing sales channel, Shopify store owners need to think beyond traditional SEO. This episode explores the concept of Agentic Commerce — where AI acts as a conversational sales associate, guiding customers through research and even checkout — and why structuring your store data for AI is now essential. Host Scott Austin wal...

4/1/26 Episode Summary This episode explains what Shopify’s “agentic storefronts” are, why they matter, and what store owners should do to prepare. It frames a shift in e-commerce: shopping is moving from websites to AI conversations , where tools like ChatGPT recommend and surface products directly from Shopify catalogs. The traditional funnel (search → click → browse → buy) is changing into a si...

3/18/26 Episode Summary This episode features a conversation with Kate Latham of the brand Modern Hoopla about their experience using Shopify Collective , Shopify’s wholesale-style marketplace that connects brands and retailers. The discussion focuses on how Collective works in practice and the opportunities it creates for both sides of the partnership. Key points from the episode What Shopify Col...

3/4/26 Episode Summary In this episode, Matt Sucha discusses the psychology behind consumer decision-making and how e-commerce store owners can improve their product pages by focusing on customer objections. Key Takeaways: Focus on Removing Barriers: Instead of relying purely on motivation (like heavy discounts or extra benefits) to make a sale, merchants should prioritize uncovering and removing...

2/18/26 Episode Summary In this episode, host Scott Austin continues the conversation about ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance for Shopify merchants by talking with Amanda Porter from Interact One about how compliance is evaluated and improved in online stores. They discuss practical evaluation tools (like the Wave accessibility testing plugin), common accessibility issues in Shopify...

2/4/26 Episode Summary Scott selects several real Shopify stores by searching a specific long-tail query (“Valentine’s gift for wife of 30 years”) and examines how they appear in different search experiences (Google Search, Google Shopping, Google Gemini) and how well the stores are optimized for that query. He walks through multiple Shopify stores and product pages to evaluate how they communicat...

1/21/26 Episode Summary The host, Scott Austin, talks with Jordan Brannon from Coalition about ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance for online stores and why it has become a major concern for Shopify merchants. They discuss how ADA compliance is currently not clearly defined in law, leading to a surge in lawsuits from attorneys targeting e-commerce sites. Key points covered include: Wh...

1/7/26 Episode Summary In this episode, host Scott Austin appears as a guest on the Day in a Canoe Podcast, hosted by Nathan Mersereau. They discuss Scott’s personal and professional journey, including his early life growing up in Connecticut, his decade in the U.S. Coast Guard, 12 years at Microsoft, and how those experiences shaped his approach to leadership, problem-solving, and entrepreneurshi...

12/24/25 Episode Summary Guest & Topic Host Scott Austin brings on attorney Brenda Pagliaro to explain ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance as it applies to e-commerce websites, especially Shopify stores. Key Points ADA compliance requirements are complex and evolving, and many store owners are confused about what they must do to make their sites accessible.  Pagliaro outlines back...

12/10/25 Episode Summary 🎙️ What the episode is about The episode is actually the host — Scott Austin of JadePuma — being interviewed on another podcast, where he reflects on running a Shopify-focused agency, his career journey, and what it takes to build a sustainable ecommerce business. Scott describes how JadePuma serves mostly smaller or early-stage Shopify stores — founders and small teams, r...