Pros & Cons of the Shop App

Shopify Discussion
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I have been running a shopify web-based store since 2016. In recent years, Shopify created the Shop App to supposedly benefit both merchants and customers but lately, in-spite of my store also being hosted on Shop, I have become more and confused by it and what the benefits really are - beyond those that Shopify enjoys.

So today, I had a chat with the Shopify Sidekick, asking it:

I find the Shop app to be of no benefit and so assume it exists primarily for shopify’s benefit. I suspect my customers are very confused by it too. They wont even be aware that my store is hosted by shopify so will have no idea why they should be shopping off-site in an app that could just be another Etsy for example.

Its response was a little long so I asked it to summarise, and this is what it said:

Based on the analysis I provided, the straightforward conclusion would be:

I don’t recommend using the Shop App for established brands or merchants who value direct customer relationships. The potential downsides—brand dilution, customer confusion, limited customization, and data asymmetry—outweigh the minimal benefits for most merchants, particularly since it primarily serves Shopify’s interests in building their own marketplace rather than strengthening your direct relationship with customers.

Now, I use ChatGPT and other AI chats quite a bit so I do understand that sometimes they can just replay what you expect to hear in a friendly encouraging manner, sometimes referred to as hallucinating a response rather than it being based on any fully researched internal or external opinion - but it still surprised me.

So, any of you Humans have similar views about the Shop App, or indeed had similar responses from Sidekick? I’ll take positive views too of course!

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Hi Chrayley,

It has been a few years now since I have worked with the Shop app team, but I can say that the biggest benefit for established brands would be allowing your customers who use the app to follow your store and be targeted via the retention marketing features of the app; like sending push notifications about sales/new products. https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/shop/marketing

For stores that already have an established brand, I would personally remove all shop branding to not direct customers to the app, but I would use the marketing features to, hopefully, convert or retain customers who are already using the app of their own accord.

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Thanks Forester but I still dont get why Shopify expect website customers to understand what Shop is - it’s not an app for my store, they dont know that my store is Shopify and even if they did, they dont know that the Shop app is Shopify as there’s no Shopify branding! So are they supposed to research this mysterious place they have been sent to before diving in or just blindly follow the lead? And why would they want notifications from an app they dont recognise? They get all the order updates and marketing they need from my store.

I say again that Shop exists for Shopify. We have very little control over how we are represented there, we are teased in Shopify Admin/Shop that we have 1000’s of followers but aren’t given access to who they are and how they behave. I’m dropping it for now as I still see no benefit to me, here in the UK at least - perhaps it’s different in the US.

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