Shopify Entrepreneur Weekly

Hi there,

This is one of the biggest weeks of the year for entrepreneurs and your favorite brands. Some of you are in full “keep the site alive” mode, others are already thinking about Christmas, New Year, and January cash flow.

Our goal this week:

• Give you only the updates that matter right now

• Share one or two tweaks you can still ship during BFCM

• Help you start thinking about the rest of the holiday season (without burning out)

Let’s dive in 👇

Shopify news roundup

Shopify adds “Chat with a human” back to Support
Shopify quietly reversed its “AI-first” support experiment and has now added a clear “Chat with a human” button in the Help Center that puts you directly in queue for an advisor. On a typical day, they say most chats are answered within ~5 minutes.
Learn more →

Instant Checkout goes live on select Shopify brands inside ChatGPT
OpenAI’s Instant Checkout (announced earlier with Etsy + Shopify) is now live on select Shopify stores like Glossier, SPANX, and SKIMS. It’s an early signal of where discovery and checkout are headed. It’s not available to all merchants yet, but it’s a strong reason to keep your product data structured, your reviews solid, and your offer clear — because AI will increasingly “shop” on behalf of your customers.

Cloudflare outage reminds everyone: your stack can (and will) break
A Cloudflare configuration issue recently caused intermittent outages across multiple services, including Shopify, Dropbox, X, ChatGPT, and Canva. No attack, just a bad config file that got too big.

If something looks weird in analytics (short traffic drop or spike), it might not be your ads or your site — it could be your infrastructure.

Shopify’s Black Friday Live Globe is now… a pinball game 🎮
Shopify just launched this year’s BFCM Live Globe, and it’s fully playable. As the earliest time zones hit Black Friday, the globe is live — inside a retro-style pinball machine. Every flash, multiplier, and surprise effect is triggered by real merchant sales happening around the world.
Play it ➞

3 last-minute tweaks you can still ship today

If you only have a couple of hours between support tickets and order packing, focus on things that:

• Don’t require full dev cycles

• Reduce friction for today’s visitors

• Keep paying off for the rest of the holiday season

1. Put your main offer everywhere (without redesigning everything)
Add your primary offer (BFCM discount / bundle / free shipping threshold) in:

• Announcement bar

• Hero section on homepage

• Top of your best-performing collection page

If people have to hunt for the deal, you’ve already lost a chunk of them.

2. Add a “Holiday Help” micro-FAQ where it matters
Instead of a full redesign, add a tiny FAQ block or link near Add to Cart / Checkout with:

• Shipping cut-off dates

• Return/extension policy

• Where to track orders

This reduces pre-purchase anxiety and support tickets at the same time.

3. Strip one thing that slows your site down
Don’t try to fix everything — target the worst offender:

• Disable one heavy app you don’t need this weekend (e.g. a non-critical widget)

• Replace autoplay hero video with a static image

• Remove slow third-party scripts from the homepage

Shaving even ~0.5–1 second off load time on mobile can pay off fast with BFCM traffic.

If you’re staring at your theme thinking “What’s the main conversion bottleneck I should fix first?” — that’s exactly the kind of question our team at Shopexperts.com helps merchants answer (and implement).

App Spotlight: Kim – AI Helpdesk & Live Chat

We don’t often recommend apps in this newsletter, but this one is a good fit for smaller brands trying to keep up with support during BFCM and the holidays.

Kim: AI Helpdesk & Live Chat
An AI-assisted helpdesk and chat tool that pulls email, chat, Messenger, and Instagram messages into one inbox — with AI drafting replies to speed up your responses.

Why it might be worth a look right now:

• Centralizes support while your inbox is on fire

• Lets AI draft answers so humans can approve and move faster

• Designed to be simple enough for lean teams

You can learn more and install it from the Shopify App Store:
Check out Kim: AI Helpdesk & Live Chat →

New premium themes

Flaunt by Vowel Web — $270 USD
A modern, trend-led theme with clean layouts, smooth scroll effects, and built-in conversion tools like predictive search, smart filters, and quick view.

Mix by Creative Commerce — $380 USD
A powerful, feature-rich theme built for high-volume stores. Includes upsells, countdown timers, an instant cart drawer, mega menus, and 24/7 fast-response support.

Photo of the week

GM just launched their OnStar store on Shopify. It’s a neat reminder that even the biggest players in the world are still “just stores” trying to communicate clearly, earn trust, and sell useful things — just like you.

Need expert help?

💬 Submit your project → shopexperts.com

That’s it for this Black Friday edition.
This weekend, every order is a tiny vote of confidence in the people who make and ship real things.

—

with 🤍 shopexperts team