Breaking Better : Update to Shopify App Recommendations

We recently released a major update called App Recommendations, that changes the way we match apps with merchants. The main goal of this update is to create the most value out of each merchant and app introduction.

We’re continuing to roll this out, as it aims to help our app community in increasing its conversion and app user retention rates.

What this means to Shopify App Developers

All existing and future apps placement within our App Store ranking, categories, search and various other surfacing mechanisms will likely change. No two merchants will see the same rankings as we will be exposing each merchant to a custom list best tailored to their needs.

How does it work?

• First we find all shops that look like XYZ (by analyzing geographical location, sale band, and many other variables listed below).
• Then from all these shops that look like XYZ (excluding XYZ itself), we analyze the apps that are very popular and useful in the group.
• These apps are then recommended to XYZ.

The above matching is conducted by a complex data model that looks at a wide variety of variables relevant to the shop, apps, market/Shopify data. Some of the themes considered in this process include:

• Shop geography, industry and business type
• Shop performance data
• App performance data
• Shop life cycle and plan information
• Shop actions and timeline
• Existing apps and channel installations data
• Shop social profiles

For more information about App Recommendations and the thoughts and data behind this initiative, see the following talks for our 2017 Unite Developer Conference:

Insights on Shopify Merchants:

Opportunities for Your Next App:

We look forward to helping better assist in matching apps and merchants together, for joint success.