5 things about Sidekick

Welcome, entrepreneurs! This is Shop Pulse, your Bat-Signal illuminating the e-commerce skyline. Let’s start by shining a light on one of the biggest updates since we started this newsletter - Sidekick

• 5 things you need to know about Sidekick 🦸🏻‍♂️

• Delayed publication for app reviews 🕰️

5 things about Sidekick 🦸🏻‍♂️

“A copilot for entrepreneurship is now possible.”

Tobi had said this earlier in May in his blog post announcing 20% layoffs among the other changes coming to Shopify.

With Sidekick, Shopify is delivering on its promise.

So what can it do?

We’ve gone through the video frame by frame to try to find its capabilities:

1/ When you open Sidekick, some of the pre-defined actions are to:

• Create a discount

• Analyze store

• Edit theme

You can even ask it anything else you want…

2/ Ask it anything like understanding why you’re sales are dropping off since March. With the wealth of data that Shopify has from millions of stores and probably billions of orders, Sidekick’s insights are worth taking note of.

3/ You can create any kinds of discount you want, including putting all products on sale. Sidekick can even figure out you need to create a new collection for all products before you can put every product on sale.

4/ Let’s say you’ve created a new collection and want to add that to the homepage. Just ask Sidekick. It can make theme edits to do the task within moments!

Want to change the whole look of your store and sell something else entirely? Sidekick has you covered there too.

5/ Want to update your copy once you change the products you’re selling? Come on, Sidekick won’t even break a sweat.

We all knew this was coming, but I doubt anyone expected it to be out so soon. And to have so much promise out of the box - if the demo video in Tobi’s announcement is anything to go by.

There is no word about the launch date yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the crown jewel in the widely expected release of the next Shopify Edition.

Delayed publication for app reviews 🕰️

Just 3 weeks after a rare public announcement about deleting 15000 fake reviews, there are more changes coming about.

Starting 10th July, merchants will see a delay between submitting a review and seeing it published on the app store listing.

According to the changelog announcement, this is to ensure that review gets assessed and any fake reviews can be proactively detected and removed before they get published.

While there is no official word about how long the delay is, app developers have reported seeing up to a 24-hour lag time until the review gets published.

While this is a great step in reducing the impact of fake reviews on the app store, there seem to be a few downsides as well. The chief among these is the lack of any email / alerts about any reviews pending to be published.

If an app gets a negative review, it will be a while before the app developer gets notified about it when the review is published.

And since speed is critical when trying to resolve such reviews, app developers will likely have a lower chance of success while trying to contact the merchant to rectify the situation.

Pulse Check ⚡️

1. There’s one less standard to worry about if you’re applying for Built for Shopify. CLS is being temporarily removed though it’s expected to make a comeback later this year.

2. Merchants can now set order processing times up to 40 business days (8 weeks) via the shipping and delivery settings. Should be helpful for custom-made and/or imported products that are likely to have longer delivery times.

That's a wrap for this week! Join us over on Twitter to chat about all things e-commerce. It's like attending the coolest virtual shopping party – no long lines, pushy salespeople, or shopping cart collisions in sight (@theshoppulse)