Shopify Winter Editions: The Renaissance Edition. The Best, The Worst... And What Got Missed.

If you enjoyed your weekend, I have bad news for you. You probably should have spent it reading the 150+ updates in the new Shopify Winter Editions '26.

They called this one "The Renaissance." It sounds fancy, but my job is to translate "fancy" into "profitable."

Let’s be honest: most platform updates are marketing fluff wrapped in a nice keynote video. But this time? We are seeing the actual infrastructure of commerce change. We are talking about AI agents buying products without a human involved, stress-testing your store with robot armies, and B2B features that finally treat wholesale buyers like adults.

I didn’t want to tackle this alone, so I brought in two heavy hitters for a roundtable on the latest Shopify1Percent episode: Gavin McKew, Managing Director at Shero Commerce, and Max Rolon, CTO at Domaine. These guys spend their days building massive Shopify Plus stores, so they know the difference between a shiny object and a game-changer.

We stripped away the noise to find the features that will actually impact your P&L. Here is the no-nonsense breakdown of what we loved, what we hated, and what was glaringly missing.

1. The "Agentic" Future: Selling to Robots

The headline feature was Agentic Storefronts. Shopify is going all-in on the idea that in the future (and honestly, right now), your customer might not be a human. It might be an AI agent like ChatGPT or Claude searching for products on behalf of a human.

What it means: You need to stop thinking just about "SEO for Google" and start thinking about "SEO for Robots." If an AI asks, "Where can I find a red leather wallet?" and your store’s data is messy, you are invisible.

Why it matters: The stats back this up. In 2025, AI overviews are already showing up for about 16% of all US desktop keywords. Even crazier? 34% of US customers say they are comfortable letting AI shop for them this year.

The Expert Take: Max noted that while we are seeing exponential growth in AI-driven discovery (300% to 500% increases for some brands), it is still a single-digit percentage of total traffic. But Gavin warned that if your data lives in third-party apps and not natively in Shopify, the AI can't see it.

Action Item: Audit your product data. If your size, color, and material data is trapped in a PDF or a photo, fix it. Get your data into Shopify's native fields so the robots can read it.

2. The Fan Favorite: The 2,048 Variant Limit

For over a decade, the "100 Variant Limit" was the punchline of every joke about Shopify. If you sold a t-shirt in 5 sizes and 25 colors, you hit a wall. You had to use hacky apps or split your products into "Red Shirt" and "Blue Shirt."

The Win: Shopify finally smashed the ceiling. You can now have over 2,000 variants per product.

The "Wait a Minute" Advice: Just because you can have 2,000 variants doesn’t mean you should. We discussed the "Apple Approach." Apple doesn't show you 50 MacBooks on one page. They let you pick one, and then guide you through small, easy decisions (Screen size > Memory > Hard Drive).

Don’t overwhelm your customer with a dropdown menu that looks like a phone book. Use this power to clean up your catalog, not to confuse your buyers.

3. Native A/B Testing (Rollouts)

This was Gavin’s favorite announcement, and honestly, it might be the most profitable one for you.

The Update: You can now run split tests (A/B tests) natively in the Shopify admin using a feature called Rollouts. No more expensive third-party testing apps that slow down your site speed.

Why it matters: Most of you are guessing. You change your homepage hero image because you "feel like it." But feelings don't pay rent. Data shows that companies using AI-powered testing seeing a 23% lift in conversions.

The Strategy: Gavin pointed out that testing is useless if you don't have traffic. If you are a smaller store, focus on your offer and product first. But for mid-sized brands, this is a superpower.

1% Win Tip: Run a "Subtraction Test." Duplicate your product page, delete the one section you think is annoying (like that clunky Instagram feed), and run a 50/50 split test. I bet you 1% that the cleaner version converts better.

4. B2B Finally Grows Up

If you sell wholesale, you know Shopify used to be… painful. You had to use workarounds for everything. The new B2B updates are boring, unsexy, and absolutely critical.

The Big Three:

• Store Credit: You can finally issue credit to a company account instead of just refunding a card.

• ACH Payments: Stop losing 3% on credit card fees for a $50,000 wholesale order.

• Dynamic Payment Terms: Automate the risk. Give your best customers "Net 60" terms and force the new guys to pay upfront.

Why it matters: The B2B ecommerce market is projected to hit $32.1 trillion in 2025. Yes, trillion. And 83% of B2B buyers prefer to self-serve rather than talk to a sales rep. If you are forcing people to email you a PDF purchase order, you are losing money.

5. Shopify SimGym: Robots Breaking Your Site

This one caused a bit of a debate. SimGym is a new tool where Shopify unleashes AI bots to browse your store, click buttons, and try to break things before your real customers do.

The Verdict: Max thinks it’s great for "smoke testing" (finding broken buttons). Gavin was a bit more skeptical about using it for UX testing. Can a robot really tell you if your brand voice is persuasive? Probably not.

But here is the reality: Mobile cart abandonment rates are hovering around 85%. If a robot gets stuck in your checkout, a human definitely will. Use this tool to find the friction points you are too blind to see.

What Was Missing?

We couldn’t let Shopify off the hook completely. What was the glaring omission?

A True Customer Data Platform (CDP). We are still managing customers like it is 2014. We want a unified view of the customer—what they bought, what they looked at, and how much they are worth—without needing five different apps to stitch it together.

Max mentioned that while Sidekick (Shopify’s AI assistant) is getting smarter at analyzing data, we are still waiting for that "Single Source of Truth" for customer profiles. Maybe in the Summer Editions?

Your 1% Takeaway

We covered a lot, but you can’t do everything at once. Pick one win from this list.

If you are B2B, turn on ACH payments today. If you are D2C, go enable the AI syndication settings so you show up in ChatGPT. If you are a design nerd, start a Rollout test.

Small improvements compound. That is how you win.

Did you like this breakdown? Subscribe to the Shopify1Percent podcast for more no-nonsense advice on growing your store.