Leaders on Shopify with John Readman

Five years ago, headless was the hottest thing in ecommerce. Then it went out of fashion. Now it's coming back. So should your brand be doing it?

Tom Mucklow-Norell is the co-founder of Superco, a London-based Shopify Platinum Partner working with brands like Represent and Funkin' Cocktails. His view is simple: for most brands, native Shopify is now so good that headless just isn't a smart use of time or money. But there are exceptions, like the famous chef whose recipe content drives such huge organic traffic that headless was the only sensible choice.

Tom also explains why big brands are finally leaving Adobe for Shopify, the one part of a migration you can't easily walk back, and how Superco built a B2B trade hub for bartenders on Funkin' Cocktails' first move to Shopify. Plus, why he ignores any tech partner that leads with commission, and why AI agents won't replace the joy of shopping.

In this episode:

• Headless vs native Shopify: when it's worth it, and when it's a waste of money
• Why headless is suddenly back in fashion
• Why big brands are finally leaving Adobe for Shopify
• The migration risk that can set a brand back years
• Building a B2B trade hub for bartenders with Funkin' Cocktails
• Why leading with commission is the fastest way to lose an agency's attention
• Will we ever let AI do our shopping for us?
• The brands Tom admires most, from Dash Water to Hoka

Reach out and connect:

• John Readman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnreadman/
• ASK BOSCO®: https://askbosco.io
• ASK BOSCO® shopify app: ASK BOSCO Marketing Analytics - ROAS, attribution, marketing analytics & marketing dashboards | Shop…
• Tom Mucklow-Norell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommucklow/?isSelfProfile=false
• SuperCo: Superco - Shopify Platinum Partner agency

Revenue is up. Margins are down. And you're working harder than ever to stand still.

After 18 years in ecommerce and eight Shopify stores selling trade tools, workwear and building materials, Reid, founder of Trade Counter Direct, knows exactly what it feels like to be a "busy fool". In this episode, he shares why chasing revenue can quietly cost you money, why Google will never tell you to spend less, and what he's learned about protecting margin in a market with around 7,000 to 8,000 competitor price changes every week.

He also opens up about the trademark dispute that wiped his business off Google for nearly two months, and how it forced a 175,000-product move from Magento to Shopify, done in-house in just three to four weeks.

In this episode:

• Why more revenue doesn't always mean more profit, and the ad spend advice you won't hear from Google
• How a "be a penny cheaper" pricing strategy leads to a race to the bottom
• Testing price increases 1% at a time until the sales data tells you to stop
• Surviving two months off Google and a 175,000-product migration
• What AI shopping agents that buy at a set price could mean for how retailers price
  
  Find out more:
• ASK BOSCO® - https://askbosco.io
• ASK BOSCO Shopify app - https://apps.shopify.com/ask-bosco
• Pricemaster - Profit-First Ecommerce Pricing Automation Software
• Connect with Reid - https://www.linkedin.com/in/reid-archer-72952b23/

What if adding insurance to your Shopify checkout could increase conversion, reduce returns and create a whole new revenue stream?

John Readman is joined by Jamie Hamer, serial entrepreneur and founder of Loxa, to look at the surprisingly powerful psychology behind product insurance at checkout.

Loxa is an insurtech business helping high-value Shopify merchants offer insurance on everything from furniture and tools to bikes, glasses and catering equipment. Jamie explains how the model works, why simply offering insurance can increase conversion even when customers don't buy it, and why insured products see around a third fewer returns.

They cover:

• Why Loxa built for Shopify first, with some integrations live in as little as three hours
• Why some products work brilliantly for checkout insurance, while phones and boilers don't
• How Loxa gets a 93% claims acceptance rate, while using vouchers to bring customers back to the original merchant
• Why the opportunity doesn't end at checkout, with post-purchase cover and a subscription "wallet" on the horizon
• And one big question for the future of agentic commerce: will AI shopping agents buy insurance for us?

If you sell high-ticket products on Shopify, this is a side of the customer journey you probably haven't thought about enough.

Find out more at loxacover.com, connect with Jamie Hamer on LinkedIn, and check out his podcast, Retail is Detail.

Find out more:

• ASK BOSCO® - https://askbosco.io
• Loxa - https://loxacover.com
• ASK BOSCO® Shopify app - https://apps.shopify.com/ask-bosco

Live shopping is working, but you don't need TikTok to do it. More Shopify brands are now streaming live sales directly from their own stores, keeping the customer, the data and the checkout for themselves.

Sharon Lee Thony runs SLTC, a Shopify-first agency working mostly with fast-growing beauty, health and wellness brands.  She joins John to share what's actually driving results right now: how live shopping on Shopify works in practice, why Meta's returns have quietly slipped for a lot of brands, and why Reddit ads are converting far better than their tiny ad spend suggests they should.

Sharon also has one of the more unusual founder stories around. She started SLTC in 2018, sold it to Fiverr in 2020, spent five years as an employee inside her own business, then bought it back at the start of this year. She explains why she did it, and what she's changed now she's back in the founder seat.

Listener offer: free live shopping consultation

Sharon and the SLTC team are offering Shopify brands a free live shopping consultation. They'll:

• Review your product catalogue and recommend the products or collection best suited to live shopping
• Plan your event from start to finish, including promoting it beforehand, support on the day (on camera or coaching on key messages), and email and SMS follow-up to convert your audience afterwards

Book your free consultation: Contact Us - Let's Work Together | SLTC

Find out more:

• ASK BOSCO®: https://askbosco.io
• SLTC: https://sltconsulting.co
• SLTC Live Shopping, Complimentary Consultation: https://sltconsulting.co/live-shopping-consultation
• Live Me Up App: https://apps.shopify.com/livemeup?mref=bxiedeep
• Okendo App: https://www.okendo.io/campaigns/partners?affiliate_id=sltconsulting.co

Clients for Live Shopping examples:

• Miik: http://miik.ca/
• Brooklyn Made: https://brooklynmadestore.com/

700 apps launched on Shopify in a single week this year.

Most of them shouldn't exist. Some of them are brilliant. And almost nobody can tell the difference.

Martin Cox, CEO of Shopify App Co has spent fourteen years on Shopify. He built an agency, sold it, then walked away to start again from nothing. This year alone he's launched four apps, with a fifth landing next week. Every week he sits down with the independent founders behind the apps that actually work.

He knows what the junk looks like. He also knows why the best app you've never heard of will probably never get found.

In this conversation we get into:

• Why the app store has stopped being where merchants discover apps
• What Built for Shopify really tells you, and what it doesn't
• Whether Sidekick is the biggest opportunity or the biggest threat in the ecosystem
• Why agentic commerce is still 0.1% of sales, and why the 18x growth headlines are nonsense
  
  Find out more:
• Native app co: https://apps.nativeappco.com/
• ASK BOSCO Shopify app: https://apps.shopify.com/ask-bosco
  
  

Most Shopify stores hide search behind a tiny magnifying glass in the corner. Adam Pearce has the data on what that's costing you.

Adam Pearce co-founded Blend Commerce about a decade ago and has worked on around 450 stores. Blend does one thing: conversion optimisation, Shopify brands only. He's blunt about what he still sees on sites turning over two or three million a year.

Search that's desktop-only, or buried behind an icon nobody can hit with their thumb. Exposing the bar lifts conversion 30-50%, and customers who use search show 35-40% higher lifetime value. Social video sitting at the bottom of the page instead of second or third in the product gallery, where it moves average order value. Product pages that are still blocks and blocks of text when an accordion would take people straight to what they're actually searching for.

He also argues most e-commerce teams are watching the wrong number. He recently told a client their revenue per session was up 78% in three months. The first thing they asked about was conversion rate.

Inside this episode: the three apps he recommends to almost everyone, why Blend won't build headless, what a redesign should actually be about, and why brand obsession is the biggest barrier to getting results.

The three tools he recommends

1. Rebuy — upsells, cross-sells, personalisation, on-site search
2. Microsoft Clarity — free heat mapping and session recording.
3. Intelligems — A/B testing.
   

Ecom Collab Club: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/ecom-collab-club-37836312093

Blend Commerce: https://blendcommerce.com/

ASK BOSCO® Shopify app: https://apps.shopify.com/ask-bosco

Most brands scale the fun bit first. More ad spend, more traffic, more orders. Then the warehouse can't keep up, returns pile up, and the bit nobody planned for becomes the bit that breaks the business.

Tom Gatenby, CEO of Squashed Pixel has been building on Shopify for 17 years and were one of the first ten partners in the UK. Squashed Pixel now spends as much time on warehousing systems, ERP integrations and order management as it does on storefronts. He's watched a lot of brands find this out the hard way.

Useful if you're scaling or thinking about moving platform:

How to work out what a platform really costs you — 12 months minimum, three to five years for the truth, and count the apps and conversion fees, not just the monthly bill
Why WooCommerce being free usually isn't, once you add servers, SSL and downtime
What actually makes brands replatform: being hacked, checkout failing on Black Friday, not being able to ship an idea in under six weeks
Why 25 apps costs you more than 25 subscriptions
What expanding into the EU really involves before you press go

Most Shopify merchants have no idea what their tech stack is costing them.

Gareth Allen, Founder of Herd Agency, has been building on Shopify since the late 2000s, back when every enterprise brand insisted it was no good for SEO. Thirteen years on, with Herd now a Shopify Premier partner, he's seen what happens when merchants treat the app store like a sweet shop.

The cost isn't just the subscriptions. It's the speed hit from apps you uninstalled months ago that left their code behind. It's the external dev resource you need to keep it all hanging together. When Chilly's came to Herd, their stack was what Gareth calls a spaghetti junction - and the biggest win from the migration wasn't the redesign, it was how much came out.

Shopify may be easy to launch on, but scaling brands often hit the same wall: messy integrations, broken data, and tech stacks that can’t keep up.

In this episode, Jim Herbert, CEO of Patchworks, breaks down what really happens when a brand grows from $5 million to $20 million and beyond - and why the right infrastructure matters long before Black Friday exposes the cracks.

With 26 years in e-commerce and leadership experience spanning Sceneric, Hybris, BigCommerce Europe, and Patchworks, Jim explains why apps work well at the beginning, why they start to fail as complexity grows, and how enterprise brands build a foundation that can scale without creating integration debt.

What if one of the biggest untapped growth opportunities in ecommerce isn't better ads, better AI, or better conversion optimization, but simply making your website usable by more people?

Imogen from EnableAll joins the podcast to make the case that accessibility isn't a compliance exercise. It's a growth lever.

One luxury retail client discovered that 6% of its revenue was coming from customers using an accessibility toolbar, and those customers were converting at 6x the average ecommerce benchmark.

So why are so many brands still treating accessibility as a legal checkbox?

Imogen breaks down what's actually happening behind the scenes: how inaccessible code excludes customers, what EnableAll changes at the code level, and how tools like screen readers and AI sign language can fundamentally change the way people shop online.

Imogen and John also cover the global wave of accessibility legislation, why accessibility 'overlays' have developed such a bad reputation, and why fixing the underlying code matters. Plus which ecommerce verticals are leading the way, and why rushing into agentic commerce before fixing accessibility could actually make the internet less accessible, not more.