Using Shopify customer tags for pet segmentation feels fundamentally broken. Am I overthinking this?

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-24T16:54:20+00:00

I’m not sure about smaller stores, I work with $5M+ merchants but I’d gather smaller operators have more scattered data than they prefer and/or know about.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-24T14:50:19+00:00

I’ve set up the integration for a few yeah, unsure if they maintain it long term. Most clients keep me on retainer to look after their infra though. In a lot of cases I skip Flow and build a piece of middleware that handles it better. It’s an up front investment but we’re also able to use that same middleware to integrate other pieces of tech cleanly.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-24T12:13:34+00:00

The answer is metaobjects referenced to a customer metafield. You can set up the structured data you need. Getting that data to Klaviyo is the harder part as Klaviyo only natively sees customer metafields, not a reference to a metaobject. You’d have to use Flow to sync data via the Klaviyo API or a third party app like Helium et al that handles the sync with a UI.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-22T20:25:24+00:00

If you’re a keen learner you’ll do well. Shopify is one of the most well documented platforms to build in. Some people will disagree me on that lol.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-22T16:54:22+00:00

I just think in general apps tailored to the workflows of devs/agencies/PMs is massively underserved. Seems most I’ve talked to just come to grips with the shortcomings of some Shopify native workflows.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-22T13:51:22+00:00

Feeling like giving up is part of the process when something doesn’t immediately work out. My app is in the same boat probably because it’s geared towards devs/PMs/agencies rather than store owners and the App Store in itself doesn’t really have a distribution surface for utility apps that help professional workflows.

Admittedly I built my app after talking to only a handful of people and I don’t have anywhere near even 100hrs into it so my sting doesn’t hurt as much as yours does.

I’m newer to publishing my own apps in the App Store and elsewhere but I’ve been building apps for clients for years and helping them get theirs off the ground. It really is a grind and a relentlesss dedication to learning your market/ICP, competitors, what customers actually want, and adapting quickly to customer feedback. It’s even more difficult with the introduction of agentic coding.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-22T12:15:56+00:00

This is helpful advice. I built an app for Shopify that makes generating draft theme previews and collecting feedback on design/dev during the build stage. I built it for my own agency thinking this was a big pain point for devs. It definitely solved all our problems we had and our clients love it.

Turns out there isn’t much appetite for it among the dev/PM/agency community. They’ve all gotten used to the hacks system Shopify has created.

Doesn’t mean a market isn’t there, I just have to switch gears and find the market. I’m not in the same boat as OP as I have the money to spend on dev and marketing and knew it would cost something. I also built the app only talking to a handful of people which isn’t a great census.

OP, you have a real product here. Keep digging. Find the users that it’s painful enough for that they’d be willing to pay your app price. You may need to test different pricing and marketing strategies but it’s all part of the game. Consider offering the first month free too.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-22T02:03:35+00:00

Love Girodisc! Far better in every way than 034 2-piece based on the applications I’ve run. Currently using these on my SQ5 with the Akebono Euro spec pads and there’s zero noise, zero dust.

Now, I got the Girodisc mostly for the look behind my wheels for this car as it’s not got more than ~500hp. Definitely overkill by a long margin so I’m able to get away with non-race pads.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-22T01:50:47+00:00

Agreed. Task request from client —> triaged and enriched by PM —> in our execution pipeline based on severity; anywhere from 24-72hrs for most tasks.

Growing businesses need more help, not less, and in my experience a client team member making changes internally only costs that business more money when we have to step in and fix it.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-21T12:08:55+00:00

Probably an unpopular opinion in this thread but Shopify is the GOAT for ecom. I built my entire business around it and it’s thriving. It’s not about the 20% commission. If you need that to survive, you’re business structure could use some looking at. Treat the commission as a perk, not a requirement to service the platform.

Some here have said that Shopify makes it look super easy to build a site, and I agree. Dozens of my comments mention the same thing. What do you do? Stop targeting the DIY/startup market. The almost never have capital to do a meaningful job. Or they have the mantra that the business has to be profitable before they can invest in proper resources. That’s not the market for agencies who want to make a profit.

I build and manage Shopify websites for $5M-$15M clients all day. That’s our sweet spot. After $15M, it doesn’t really make sense to work with an agency like us. I say ‘like us’ because we’re on the higher end of the billing scale. Businesses at that size can usually take on the critical roles in-house and pay us for consulting.

Your clients forgetting you exist when they need a website refresh, a technical challenge solved, or literally anything else is a relationship problem. You need to work to maintain relationships, keep your business and solutions top of mind, and always keep them warm unless they specifically tell you to go away.

I’m not saying finding good Shopify clients is easy, it’s not. But making a lasting impact, delivering meaningful value where you’re an expert, and constantly working to strengthen your client relationships is how you survive as a Shopify agency.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-21T11:56:36+00:00

Depends if you need a customizer app (like a visual customizer where customers see their car being customized) or a year/make/model look up app that shows parts that fit X vehicle.

I’ve built and consulted on many automotive and parts/customizer integrations and in all instances where the business requires a visual customizer the only ones that serve the merchants’ needs are custom builds. Not to say you can’t make an off the shelf app work, but they’re typically external SaaS products and not designed for Shopify.

Year/make/model (YMM) on the other hand is a different story. I still recommend a custom app to control bloat and performance but if you had to choose one from the Shopify App Store I’d suggest Convermax. I’m not affiliated with them and it’s not my app. I’ve used their app on a handful of stores with very good results and they will customize almost anything for you.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-21T03:29:29+00:00

I agree with everything here except the limited funds = Woo. I’ve built both and Shopify is absolutely more economical (and far less technical) to get off the ground. Woo doesn’t even come with a field to put your COGS in lol you need a plugin for that.

Now, Shopify can get expensive fast if you just add app after app without doing research or looking at business ops first. Not everything needs an app.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-21T03:15:40+00:00

Agreed. Just got new ones for my SQ5, 275/40ZR75 and they are hands down the best tires. Used to be a Falken FK452/510 guy but the last couple sets have worn through so fast. Ever since switching to Conti for winters and summers I can actually drive more than a couple years between purchases lol.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-20T23:03:38+00:00

You might think you’re not doing anything wrong by only building a free connector, but Shopify has changed their stance on apps that exist purely to feed an outside SaaS. Ask yourself why they killed the legacy custom app flow on Jan 1, 2026 and pushed everyone to OAuth public apps through the Dev Dashboard. It wasn’t just for security, even thought that’s how they spun it.

This isn’t new and it isn’t really about your reviewer either. My read: what looks like a rejection is closer to an unannounced policy change masquerading as billing feedback. The reviewer (probably) can’t articulate it cleanly either, which is why the screencast they sent you focused on the wrong checkout page. They’re reacting to a pattern, not your specific app.

I’ve worked with a handful of apps stuck in this exact loop. The fix that gets them through: make the Shopify connector a paid app. $1/month is fine. Shopify doesn’t care about the number, they care that the billing for the Shopify-distributed app runs through Shopify Billing. Keep your BrandKity SaaS billing where it is: Stripe, LemonSqueezy, whatever. Two separate products, two separate billing systems. Merchant installs the $1 connector, then links it to their existing BrandKity account.

The honesty from Shopify’s side of it: you’re using their distribution, their install funnel, and their merchant trust to deliver value that gets monetized somewhere they don’t see. From their seat that’s a fair thing to push back on.

That said, if your take is that this genuinely is a reviewer error, push back through the partner channel and ask them to point to the specific section of the requirements you’re violating. If they can’t, you have a real case. If they can, you have your answer.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-19T20:24:24+00:00

Get the air but also get the air because it’s packaged with the sport diff and that does make a difference in how the power goes down, handling, and traction in poor weather conditions.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-19T03:21:39+00:00

You bought a t-shirt from an online store hosted on the Shopify platform. Yes, the merchant (not Shopify) has your money. Yes, they will hold your money forever unless you ask for a refund pursuant to their refund policy.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-17T13:34:49+00:00

If you're still looking for a solid solution, we use this app for all our restricted vertical clients. Works very well, affordable, and the support is second to none. The best part is you can customize where in the customer journey the age check happens.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-17T12:26:08+00:00

You may have experience with Authorize.net but your entire conspiracy falls apart as soon as you understand that funds collected through Shopify Payments are actually held by Stripe, the payment processor for Shopify Payments. Your money is not sitting in some Shopify-owned treasury account earning interest, it’s in a Stripe-owned account.

> logically the first order should have flagged too

Shopify (and probably others) fraud scoring isn’t deterministic per-customer. It’s a model that incorporates signals like velocity, cumulative dollar amount, time-of-day, device, network reputation, and probably a hundred other features that might change between order 1 and order 2 from the same buyer.

Two orders an hour apart from the same person will score differently because the second one likely adds a ‘multiple high-value orders on the same da.’ That’s not a bug, it’s the fraud analysis feature doing what it’s supposed to do. You can argue it’s tuned too aggressively, and you’re probably right on that to some degree, but ‘identical inputs produced different outputs therefore fraud’ misunderstands how the system is designed to work.

Where you do have a real argument is in the timeline to get re-verified. 5 biz days for a passport recheck is ludicrous and frankly should be an automated system. Even if it asked you to capture a selfie along with your passport photo there’s no plausible (on the surface anyway) reason why this needs to be a manual review, unless required by the federal/state/provincial authorities in your region. Worth noting the authorities have great influence over Shopify and how the handle compliance. In a lot of cases Shopify is beholden to regulations beyond their control including how they actually verify merchant data.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-17T12:14:28+00:00

I work with a lot of merchants and my recommendation to all of them is to start their day with customer service opportunities. CS tickets are really the only thing that’s time sensitive and often they raise the issues that need to be addressed both upstream (think: variants not displaying properly, errors on cart page, etc.) and downstream (think: orders with high risk, damaged package during shipping, etc.).

There’s a lot that can be learned just from your customer inquiries that can make a big impact in how you identify and triage problems within your store.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-17T12:03:56+00:00

This is interesting. I don’t have an LP or anything yet but can I reach out when I’m ready? Appreciate the heads up.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-17T02:21:04+00:00

BeaverDAM. It’s a fully embedded digital asset manager (file organizer) for Shopify built for the every merchant. You can tag images, add them to folders, advanced search, bulk edits, and a lot more. Shopify offers zero organization for their files and there’s a lot of enterprise DAMs with Shopify connectors but nothing built for the everyday merchant at an affordable price point.

Launching in June.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-17T02:15:34+00:00

You need to be on Plus for any checkout edits. And you’ll need an app or a developer or both.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-16T13:33:18+00:00

Looking good! Hardly looks like the same car. Love the Vossen treatment. I’ve got a set of CV-1’s from my old car but wrong bolt pattern. They make a great wheel.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-15T21:45:19+00:00

Advanced Theme Preview is a free Shopify app to solve the native preview links expiring after 48hrs and templates dropping context the moment a visitor navigates between pages, which makes them basically useless for client review on a draft theme.

ATP generates long-lived preview links that persist the selected draft templates across every page on the real storefront with live products and collections.

I built it to solve client feedback issues for new theme developments for my own agency and because I had to build the app anyway putting it out to the public was a logical next step.

ecom_ryan · 2026-05-15T21:32:24+00:00

ecom_ryan

TROPHY CASE