Shopify Key Takeaways from Platinum Partner Call w/Zettler Digital; Focus on Meta, Enterprise, Agentic Commerce, Campaigns, & Macro

Research evidence excerpt

Shopify Key Takeaways from Platinum Partner Call w/Zettler Digital; Focus on Meta, Enterprise, Agentic Commerce, Campaigns, & Macro

latforms maintains lower commercial intent vs.

traditional search channels, w/skew toward information gathering & discovery, similar

to the emergence of social commerce. However, Zettler believes AI traffic is driving

incremental volume & brand/merchant discovery to its clients through surfacing product

feeds within AI platforms, bolstered by SHOP’s Catalog which includes data across 1B+

products. Zettler believes that the broader e-commerce and retail industry needs to

continue enhancing AI products across the stack to shift from AI serving as a traffic

channel toward driving agentic transactions/conversions down the funnel.

• Solid Sidekick Adoption & Back-End Capabilities, w/Opportunity to Improve

Front-End & Design Components. Sidekick adoption remains strong, w/Sidekick

Weekly Active Shops growing +4x Y/Y in 1Q, 12k+ custom apps created using Sidekick

in 1Q, & ~50% of all SHOP flows build with Sidekick during the quarter. Zettler noted

broadly positive feedback across Sidekick’s ability to analyze data, automate back-end

workflows, & understand performance, with opportunity to improve capabilities across

front-end & developer design, storefront customization, & connectivity to storefront

managers.

• Solid Spending Trends Despite Macro Concerns. There remains concern around a

softer consumer, particularly across the low-end consumer and the K-shaped economy,

given softer consumer sentiment, elevated fuel rates, & recent Retail earnings. However,

Zettler cited strong underlying demand trends across its managed merchants, with

less Y/Y impact from macro uncertainty vs. 2Q25 when merchants faced tariff

headwinds.