☀️ E-commerce Summer Updates

🛍️ AI Highlights from Shopify’s Summer Edition

🧱 Build with AI?

Shopify’s newest free theme, Horizon, was the center of Shopify’s newest updates. It promises full creative freedom and customizable sections built through prompts with no coding required. But does it live up to the hype?

58 Clicks Art Director took Horizon for a spin while building a landing page for a client. The result? An honest breakdown of what works, what glitches, and what’s still a work in progress.

👉 Read Anakarina’s full review of Horizon

🥷 Meet Shopify Sidekick

Sidekick is Shopify’s new built-in AI assistant, designed to help with everyday tasks right from your admin dashboard. You’ll find it in the top-right corner, wearing what looks like a PJ Masks character. It works well and feels genuinely helpful.

Unlike Horizon, which still needs some polishing, Sidekick is already proving useful. You can ask it to generate reports, create discount codes, or help with anything admin-related in your backend.

Here are just a few examples of prompts it can handle:

• View abandoned checkouts

• Compare AOV for the month vs. year

• Create a Discount 15% this month for first time customers

📬 What’s New in Klaviyo: Channel Affinity Is Here

Klaviyo just released a smart new feature called Channel Affinity, and it’s a big win for segmentation and sending strategy.

Here’s how it works: using predictive analytics, Klaviyo assigns a new profile property to each contact based on their preferred communication channel (email or SMS). You can then build smarter segments, like “SMS-preference” or “Email-first,” without any guesswork.

There’s no setup needed, but note that this feature is currently available only to accounts with both SMS enabled and enough historical data to support predictive modeling.

👇 More details on how Channel Affinity Works

This is also another reason why having email and SMS on the same platform (sorry, Attentive) is a no-brainer. It saves your team time, reduces the pain of having to log in and out, and unlocks real omnichannel capabilities.

Want to learn how to set it up? Reply to this email and we’ll send you a step by step video.

☀️ Instagram Shop Update: Meta Hits the Undo Button

Remember when Meta required brands to switch to native checkout on Instagram and Facebook? Well, guess what? They're backing out. 🫠

Meta is phasing out native checkout on Facebook and Instagram Shops. Transactions will no longer be completed within the apps. Instead, shoppers will continue discovering products on social, but checkout will take place on brand websites - shifting control of the experience, data, and design back to the brands themselves.

Meanwhile, TikTok is doubling down on native shopping and quickly positioning itself to own social commerce.

🧭 Apps on Our Radar

🧃 Skio – Subscription Management

We recently migrated a client from Recharge to Skio, and the process was seamless. The platform feels modern, intuitive, and designed with both brands and subscribers in mind. If you’re considering moving off Recharge 😬, Skio makes it surprisingly easy, and the support has been excellent.

📩 Zaymo – Interactive Shopping Inside Your Emails

We’re keeping a close eye on Zaymo after seeing a demo that blew us away. It allows you to embed interactive shopping experiences directly inside emails. It integrates with Klaviyo and looks particularly promising for subscription-based businesses .