E219: Matthias Kleven

Richard Hill [00:00:38]:
Welcome to the eCom@one podcast again, I'm Richard Hill and today we're talking about something that could completely change how online shopping works. Genuinely. My guest is Matthias Kleven, head of Northern European partnerships at Shopify. Matthias Esperance spent years working at the intersection of commerce, technology and partnerships. And in this episode we're diving into one of the biggest shifts eCommerce has seen in over a decade. We're talking about agentic commerce and Shopify's involvement with the Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP as we like to refer to it, and what it means for how customers discover, evaluate and buy products through AI driven experiences. If you imagine a time where you and your customers go to an LLM, let's take Gemini and searches for a particular product and you would then go to the website. You don't need to do that anymore.

Richard Hill [00:01:32]:
You basically can buy from the LLM. Well, that time is right now and that's what this episode is all about. Possibly one of the most thought provoking reality checks of where eCommerce is, not where it's going. Let's get into it. Hi Mattias and welcome to the show.

Matthias Kleven [00:01:49]:
Hi, thanks for having me. It's great, great to be here.

Richard Hill [00:01:52]:
No problem at all. Well, I'm very excited to get into things. Obviously a very, very topical topic right now that we're going to dive into. So I'm very excited to get stuck in. But before we do that, I think it'd be great for you to introduce yourself and how you got into the world of E commerce and all things. Shopify.

Matthias Kleven [00:02:10]:
Yeah. So, yeah, my name is Matthias Kleven. I'm currently the head of partnerships for Northern Europe at Shopify. How I got into eCommerce, it's. I actually haven't been asked that question in a long time, so I'll. I'll try and tell the shortened version. I started working in technology and technology sales when I was back in San Francisco in 2013. And specifically during that time I had about a five year stint in media.

Matthias Kleven [00:02:38]:
So when I was there I was selling programmatic ads and working with corporate, quite a lot of merchants who inherently were on Shopify. So that's how it first kind of got onto my radar over time and then got into SAS sales. And then when I moved to London actually from San Francisco is the second time I, I had lived here. That's when I started with Shopify. So I think it was from working with merchants selling media that I kind of got aware of it and then landed the role and was one of the kind of early salespeople in the UK and then now it's seven years later and you know, E commerce and commerce has been kind of everything that I live and breathe professionally. But I just love this space. I mean obviously it evolves so much like what we're going to talk about today, I don't think any of us saw coming even a few years ago. And then also like I always say this as a consumer, like we're all consumers so we're all in commerce day in and day out.

Matthias Kleven [00:03:34]:
And I think we all know and love and can think of amazing experiences that we've had with some brands and then sometimes not so great ones, but it's something that everyone can relate to.

Richard Hill [00:03:45]:
Yeah, great. Well, so obviously on a day to day basis you're working with, you know, a team there at Shopify that are working with and you are directly and have been directly with, you know, hundreds if not thousands of different merchants. Seen a lot of things develop over the years and obviously here we are sitting in 2026 with some, I would say, I think probably one of the biggest shifts I've seen and I'm not. That's not just a headline. I think that is literally, you know, when you see what's happening, you know, with, with AI and shopping with AI and agentic AI, I think it is, it is literally one of the biggest opportunities or it could be, you know, in the, you know, obviously some early stuff which we'll be talking about, but the ability to do some of the things that are literally, you know, by the time we air this podcast, our life in, in around the world and over the, you know, over the coming weeks. So very, very exciting times and very exciting topic we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about. I think primarily I'd love to talk about Universal Commerce Protocol, the or I think we'll refer to it as UCP because it is a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

Matthias Kleven [00:04:52]:
I, I agree. Universal Commerce Protocol is a mouthful, but so we'll refer to it as ucp. And one thing that we love in the, in the commerce space is acronyms. So, so let's, let's add another one.

Richard Hill [00:05:03]:
Yeah, that's another one. Another one to the list. Another one we'll have to put in our ecom dictionary of acronyms. So ucp, I think, you know, a lot of listeners will be hearing this for the first time.

Matthias Kleven [00:05:16]:
Ucp.

Richard Hill [00:05:16]:
Never heard of that. Obviously, you know, those that are sort of deep in the trenches, you know, on the, in the agency space and in the SaaS space, no doubt, you know, will be absolutely all over UCP as we know. But for those that are maybe listening for the first time, you know, right to back to the basics sort of thing, you know, for people that are hearing about it for the first time, you know, what is ucp?

Matthias Kleven [00:05:37]:
Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I think if you are in the commerce space, if you have been on LinkedIn, it'd be hard to not hear about it. But yeah, I can definitely like boil it down, what it really is. So UCP Universal Commerce Protocol, it's an open framework for how agentic platforms will interact with, with commerce platforms. And it was something that has been co developed with Google and 20 other retailers. And if we really boil it down, what this means that in practice is it allows a agents and agentic platforms to take into all the considerations that commerce platforms have. And specifically what I mean by that is the checkout experience and being able to build a cart to bring logic into that cart, like shipping details like subscriptions, like discounts all the way through to payments as well. And up to this date that has not been the case.

Matthias Kleven [00:06:40]:
And this again this is an open framework, so this is not something that is limited to just Shopify, but any commerce platform or commerce business technically can, can put into practice or deliver to start using today.

Richard Hill [00:06:53]:
Yeah, it's wild, isn't it? So you, you guys were one of 20 that have obviously been working with Google specifically to build this sort of as they're calling it, Universal Commerce Protocol. This sort of new platform. New I guess a lot of people are sort of usually talking sort of in terms of sort of using different APIs to connect different things. But what we've got here I believe is sort of this key, key, I guess is this word universal, this universal language, this universal tech that's been developed with you know, key platforms to make, you know, the tech work together seamlessly. So you know, why, why do you think why why do you think it's sort of, you know, good timing for this sort of tech right now? Is it? You know, it's obviously a lot happening in terms of AI search. You know, we, we do a lot of episodes, we've done a lot of episodes on search and we've got an event in a few days, you know, on. And there's a very, very much focused on AI. But why do you think it's a really good time for this now?

Matthias Kleven [00:07:54]:
Yeah, so I think it's interesting like AI obviously in, in when I think of Shopify standards for a second. So we announced Sidekick, which is our agentic, basically our agentic offering within the Shopify admin. And that allows merchants to use an agent to help start to deliver faster outcomes for the business. So that was summer of 23 and if we think about a, you know, AI in 2030, it was just starting to bubble. And if we go forward now three years, like it has evolved extensively. So during that period what we're seeing, and I'll talk about this kind of from like maybe a qualitative and a quantitative standpoint. So from the qualitative standpoint what we're seeing is there is a shift from, from kind of keyword searching in the way that we're trying to find products to conversations. So it used to be hey, I need black running shoes or I need running shoes maybe for marathon.

Matthias Kleven [00:08:52]:
Now the com. Now we're moving to conversations of people are going into these agents and saying I'm running my first half marathon soon, how should I train and what sort of kit or gear might I need? And then these agents are going and they're curating baskets and potentially, you know, different lists of items that these consumers might look at. And from a quantitative standpoint there's an amazing stat. So, and this is just from chatgpt alone. So not thinking about Perplexity or Google Gemini or AI mode or anything else. But roughly about 2% of their queries every single day have some sort of commerce related search in them. Broken down, that's about 50 million queries happening a day around something around commerce. So these conversations are happening and at scale and this is how people are starting to search and it's how they're finding products.

Matthias Kleven [00:09:44]:
And so I think with that, you know, discovery has been really big. But how do we continue to bring that? Because naturally, at this moment, a lot of times you see the products, you read about them, but then you have to be redirected and then continue the process. And I think naturally, as Consumers we're looking, how do we bring that into it? So I think it's because of where we've naturally got to now that people are really starting to use it for discovery. Discovery. But it's important to bring the rest of the embedded experience to agents and allow merchants to capitalize on that. But also doing so in a way that they don't want to maintain and have to build out for all these different agents. They just want to use it as a channel. I would say.

Richard Hill [00:10:23]:
Yeah, I mean if we step back and just think, you know, I'm just thinking about the, the guys that are listening now just to sort of suck up that, that, that, that sentence or two. So, you know, up until almost today, of course, you know, 2% of transactions or 2% of queries, sorry, you know, I've got that intent, you know, that commercial intent to look for and solve a problem that it will end up with a search, final search, a final discussion with your ChatGPT or whichever flavor you prefer, you know, to take you to, then click go through and you end up on a site. But what we're saying now, you don't go to the website. In theory.

Matthias Kleven [00:11:02]:
In theory, yeah. This will all, this will be all happening through the agent. Yeah. So you know, you would go through and it carries the logic. So you find the product and the experience could be that. Then okay, well you add that cart to your basket. Maybe it could be that the merchant wants to say, okay, well we want to do some cross sells. That could be a possibility.

Matthias Kleven [00:11:24]:
And then you get to check out and you know, and then the logic carries through as we think of any checkout experience. You know, you might have to enter shipping information to get the billing information or you need to enter other details. And this is what can happen directly within these different agents. And so from a continuity it's huge.

Richard Hill [00:11:43]:
So seriously, chopping the friction that going from one platform to another. Yep. But, but basically you're just saying you're just staying in that one interface and you're able to buy without moving. So in terms of like potentially conversion rates and conversion rate shift, that's so exciting, isn't it? Literally going from what, what is known in the industry as a traditional conversion rate. We know where our conversion rate is going to go because we've got, we're just chopping out that friction. It's going to be ridiculous, isn't it? Now you might be looking for an SEO boost, a down to earth digital PR campaign to share your story, or maybe just some straightforward technical Help to amp up your performance. Now that's where Ecom now comes in. A partner that's all about making things easier for your online store.

Richard Hill [00:12:31]:
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Matthias Kleven [00:12:54]:
Yeah, huge. And I think that's the thing is like we, we you ideally want to capitalize merchants on every potential opportunity you can. And when there's redirects happening, which it can be the case that it's needed sometimes, but you don't know you, you could lose then potentially that interest and that could impact the conversion rate. So the more consistent it's, it's very similar to you know, like a payment redirect. It's not ideal. People kind of want to have that consistent flow.

Richard Hill [00:13:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think you'll probably have a few people listening, you know, in terms of like the technology side, you know, obviously that, that, that, that picture is incredible. It just literally is it, you know, we talk about on the podcast a lot what keeps you up at night as a business owner and as a founder. And this is the thing at the moment in terms of like opportunity and you know, and it sort of reminds me of. It's very different technology but it sort of reminds me when you know, for example, like Google Shopping was frugal like 20 years ago and it was free and then it flipped overnight to a paid service and the industry was like. And the opportunity that produced, you know, created obviously initially some people see it as maybe an issue, oh this tech. How are we going to figure all this out? As a pro, there's a, you know, all this technology but obviously in reality it's, you know, if you're set up correctly with Shopify, it's going to be part, it's part of already, isn't it? I think literally rolling out as we speak.

Richard Hill [00:14:20]:
You know, part of out of the box sort of integration. You know, how, how sort of set up is it at the moment? Would you say? Is it ready? It's literally ready to, ready to go in certain parts of the country or in certain parts of the world.

Matthias Kleven [00:14:32]:
So yeah, so, so ucp. I think there's kind of like there was three pretty big announcements that we, that kind of came out at NRF in New York when We kind of announced all this a couple, almost a couple weeks ago now, which is wild to say. Not sure where January has gone. The universal commerce protocol, like that framework, the ability for any merchant to build and to bring that experience to agents that is globally available. Now the other thing that we. There's two other big things that we announced as well. And one of them was Agentix storefronts. And this is for Shopify merchants.

Matthias Kleven [00:15:06]:
And I'll delve in in a second on that. And then the, the other is the Shopify catalog, which is really big. And this is actually opening up the Shopify catalog to non Shopify merchants. So maybe to go into the direct agentic storefronts first because you're kind of mentioning like what's already integrated. What does this mean? So for Shopify merchants? And this is right now just available in the U.S. so it's for merchants in the U.S. who are selling to U.S. customers.

Matthias Kleven [00:15:32]:
But by the end of this month, what they will be able to do is they'll chat. GBT rolled out at the end of last year. Being able to do this now with Google, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot Shopify merchants, they are Agentic ready. And what I mean by that is they go into their Shopify admin and they will be able to toggle and manage these different agents as channels and they can choose and with that, choose which products they want to have on these, are they wanting to be on them or not? So they have complete control over this. So with that, it's, you know, inherently there and that's how we're kind of thinking about it is these agents are a channel. And anytime there's new channels of commerce, Shopify historically has been a pretty big front leader in that if I think of like social stuff, Shopify was at the forefront, but that's there. And then the other side is the, the catalog. So for the first time ever, we are opening up the Shopify catalog to non Shopify merchants.

Matthias Kleven [00:16:33]:
Again, this is right now on the US only, but it allows merchants not on Shopify, they can upload their product catalog to the Shopify catalog and then they can go and sell into these different agents. So that is a pretty huge shift in anything I've seen at Shopify since I've been here for seven years.

Richard Hill [00:16:51]:
So this is not paid ads, is it? This is a separate channel altogether. This is correct. Obviously that's. Some people may be confusing that you need a product feed in the merchant feed, you know, as in a Google merchant feed. This is your Product catalog in your Shopify store. Yeah. And then sort of toggling and saying, yes, include it in here or don't include it, this sort of thing. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:17:11]:
And then no doubt, as time evolves, you know, which maybe we'll come to towards the end, and there'll be other platforms added. You know, obviously UCP is specifically Google's tech, but they're obviously opening it up to obviously Gemini is the obvious one. AI mode is the, you know, their own. But then the ability to then use it, you know, cross network. Yeah, Very, very exciting, isn't it?

Matthias Kleven [00:17:35]:
It's being picked up as well by like, you know, this is how Microsoft Copilot's being powered by Shopify checkout pieces. So, yeah, I think, you know, the, the future of what UCP as a framework can offer is really big. And that's also why it's a big part of why it's. We're doing this as, you know, an open standard and not something that I think just Shopify is owning, because that's really important.

Richard Hill [00:17:58]:
So then it must come back to then in terms of obviously, okay, you've toggled, you've clicked it on. Yes, we want to show. But obviously you've then got to make sure, just like, you know, optimizing for SEO, optimizing feeds for paid ads, that your product catalog is optimized to show. So what would you say to the listeners on that? Because I think, you know, we talk about optimizing feeds for paid ads, you know, half of our episodes, you know, obviously we're an ads agency in the, in the background, performance agency. But you know, optimizing, you know, the SEO side really in reality, the, you know, the, the organic, the content, the descriptions and so forth and so forth. How critical is that going to be now?

Matthias Kleven [00:18:41]:
I mean, huge. I think, like you said, you've talked to maybe other partners and people on the podcast about kind of the discovery side and that is a huge piece of this. So I think what I would recommend, and this is where two things. One, I would work with partners who know this and who are kind of at the forefront. The term, I think that's being thrown around at the end of last year and this year was like geo generative engine optimization, if I boil it down, is you need to think about how your consumers are going to be talking to these agents and the sort of questions they may ask. And so with that they might say, hey, I want to look for a running shoe that's great for 10k kilometers. That's within this price range and can ship to me in under a week. If these agents don't have information like your shipping information, your return policy, your different payment providers that you call out, they will not be able to surface as much.

Matthias Kleven [00:19:36]:
So it's really about making sure your catalog, but also like your FAQs and all this stuff that would be considered within the buying cycle is readily accessible and really set up for these agents. So when you do that, it will help and, and shopify. You know, again our, our, we're set up to allow our merchants to do this, but you definitely need to consider, I think it's still, we're still all figuring it out. It's not all solved for, but at least the infrastructure is there for merchants to, to capitalize on that now.

Richard Hill [00:20:07]:
Yeah, I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head there. You know, if you're at the end of the day, whatever you're selling, you know, these queries as they have been for, you know, for several years now, they're expanding, you know, these, these sentence queries or these sentence, you know, grab my phone. Hey, Chat GPT. You know, this is, this is me probably this afternoon, I'm at the gym this afternoon. I've got, we've got a few things that we're working on. I'll sit or stand on the treadmill and you know, and I'll be back and forth with Chat GPT. You know, what do you do with this? How do we do this? What do you think to this? Obviously it's recalling that information from, you know, different sources, you know, and we're going back to that sort of geo SEO analogy. You know, ultimately if you've got the right content on your website.

Richard Hill [00:20:47]:
So going back to things as simple as, you know, the going to those products, do you really cover thoroughly those FAQ questions? Answer, do you really have some good guides on your website? Do you category, are your categories just a block of 16, 24, 48 products or do they really cover, you know, the, the different types of users sort of Questions, thoughts, what guides do you have? Fa, I mean FAQs, what content do you have? Because ultimately, you know, these AI different platforms have got to decide who to put put in there. And obviously if you've got the content content in the first place, but also, you know, you are mentioned on other authoritative sites. So mentions are really really, you know, used to be sort of mentions digital pr. But mentions of brands is really a signal that a lot of the agentic AIs are really, really, really pulling on so it's a very, I just think it's just such an exciting time for sort of conversions and the industry, but also a very exciting time for you know, really good SEO because ultimately if your site is, if your site is optimized, you know you're going to be, you're going to have a good head start. And obviously the way that your sort of page builders and so forth do it now, it makes it so easy or you know, a lot easier to build in those different areas on the, you know, on the, on the product pages, on the categories and so forth.

Matthias Kleven [00:22:12]:
Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Richard Hill [00:22:15]:
So I think, I think some, I think a couple of questions that I think will be sort of, will be on people's minds. So obviously we go to Gemini. You know, we're, we're doing off 10k. I haven't done a 10k yet. Have you done a 10k?

Matthias Kleven [00:22:29]:
Yeah, I, I, well normally I'm a pretty avid runner. I've been a bit off my game over the past few months because my little one, I'm still figuring out the schedule and where to fit it in. But yes, normally, love 10Ks. I've run one half marathon. I had to let everybody know that I was doing it at the time.

Richard Hill [00:22:45]:
Of course. Did you do a sponsorship everywhere?

Matthias Kleven [00:22:48]:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no I did. But yeah, so I do, I do like running. So actually in this case, like I wouldn't be asking as much but yes, if I was getting back into, yeah, many different activities, I'll probably ask things.

Richard Hill [00:23:01]:
So. No doubt. You know, as it stands, you know, you go, you would go to the website, you know, you go to your Shopify store. So just for a moment we'll, we'll ignore UCP for one minute. Assume the scenario as it was last week if you like. You know, we've searched, we've searched and we've found the, the great content on, on chat GBT that's led us to our store, you know and then we've gone to the store, we've purchased the product, had a great experience. But then obviously quite a lot of merchants are using different tech, you know, different external tech stacks, you know, three or four or five subscriptions for maybe their email and their, you know, post purchase experience. Now in their UCP world, you know, we have now bought without going to the store, you know what happens to any sort of existing tech, you know and that, that sort of maybe post purchase experience.

Richard Hill [00:23:49]:
Is there any change there much? Not, not really.

Matthias Kleven [00:23:52]:
And I think like now the conversation of like what will happen post purchase and how, how will customers maybe go back and use like Agentic for post purchase stuff? Like that's a whole other topic and that's interesting but I think maybe kind of what you're alluding to is like yeah, how does it, how does this relate to, does it replace current tech stack? How is it different from an API? Like you know, is some of that and I'd say like ultimately what would merchants should think of is, is UCP is you know now an agent facing standard layer that sits on top of the APIs integrations, the tech stack that merchants already use. So it's not a replacement for admins, storefront checkout, APIs et cetera. Think of it as a layer above APIs. So it's kind of like the handshake before the transaction actually happens because at the end of the day APIs are endpoints so they're point to point connections. UCP is like a universal adapter to it all.

Richard Hill [00:24:52]:
Yeah, got you. So it's connecting what exists already and that and that so that those connectors will just continue to develop. Because I think, I think there'll be as always, oh, how does this, how's this going to affect this? How's this going to affect this? But obviously ultimately you know we, we want to still make sure those sort of post purchase experiences are you know, are thorough, you know and that there are, you know, opportunity to, you know, that there's no issues with that post purchase experience. So obviously you mentioned there, you know, the US is happening so forth, you know, what's the sort of, what are we seeing in terms of sort of uk? Have you got any sort of insights into when things will be rolled out in the UK more so no hard.

Matthias Kleven [00:25:36]:
Timelines as of yet. I think we're obviously working with partners closely to understand and see how we can roll it out to, to the UK and more of emea. But tbc I think in general like with a lot of this AI stuff we, a lot of it's still unknown and we're signing the, seeing where it goes through. But no it's that we want to but and I think that's why we're, we're still proud to come and like speak about it and kind of know because this will be I think when we get there but it's pretty common practice too that I've seen that a lot of times stuff will usually kind of lead in, in America first for, for various reasons.

Richard Hill [00:26:09]:
Yeah.

Matthias Kleven [00:26:10]:
And then the UK usually follows pretty shortly, shortly after. I just don't have hard ones or timelines.

Richard Hill [00:26:15]:
Yeah, no, I knew, I thought that might be the answer, but I thought you might have had, you might have had the email this morning or whatever. So. But I think by the time, by the time, whoever's listening right now is probably live in reality because this is how these things work, isn't it? You know, it's. It's crazy. Like you said right at the beginning, you know, like three years ago, we're like, oh, this. Is this a. This AI thing? You know, I remember coming back from a. A conference and, and somebody mentioned this word, G gbt and I was like, oh, that sounds just crazy, you know, And I came back to the office and all the guys are like, oh, no, it's the end.

Richard Hill [00:26:48]:
It's the, it's the beginning of the end sort of thing.

Matthias Kleven [00:26:50]:
You know, robots are taking over.

Richard Hill [00:26:53]:
They're like, no, there wasn't genuinely, you know, then, then soon after that, I was like, right, I'm going to get you all on account. Let's see how we can, you know, how we can do X, Y, you know, improve things and so forth. And then what we did about a year ago to sort of embrace all these, you know, all the sort of technologies is we ran something we refer to as the AI games in that. In our agency. So we gave everybody three months, split them into teams, four different teams, so across performance. So performance for us is more on the ad side, SEO, operations and sales and marketing. So sort of two external departments, two internal, really, and gave everybody sort of X amount of time, you know, over those three months to spend time on different platforms, you know, and, and. But they ultimately then present to the whole company there what they built, you know, and gave them, gave them access to one of our sort of, or two of our tech guys to help them build something, whether that be in Nan or whatever it may be.

Richard Hill [00:27:52]:
And we spent the day. Well, they spent the day presenting their findings and then that was sort of a massive shift in our business where everyone's like, oh my gosh, this is just like incredible what we can do for clients, what we can do for the agency just by embracing, adapting things, you know. So I think this specifically, I think, you know, is going to be one of those things that people are like, oh, blimey, you can. Or maybe, you know, they're going to get their phone. Oh, you can now buy from the, from the chat. Oh, oh, I'm not sure about that. What do you think? You know, what do you think this adoption piece, you Know, literally you're gonna go on your phone today, literally, maybe, you know, if you're in the right part of the world and you're gonna go, and you're gonna go click, click, click. Oh, oh, oh, it's done.

Matthias Kleven [00:28:40]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:28:41]:
So getting that, the mindset shift, what do you think people are going to think about that sort of initial? You know, I guess we're going to see it on every news channel literally within days as well. To make it more.

Matthias Kleven [00:28:52]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:28:52]:
You know, as it becomes more mainstream.

Matthias Kleven [00:28:55]:
Yeah, it's a, it's a good question. I think, like, anything, I guess maybe if we think about, like, maybe. And this is me extrapolating for a second, I remember when in London, back in 2008, like, you know, everything used to be the Oyster card and. Yeah, it was just when Barclays was starting to announce that you could use their cards to tap onto the tube and ironic thing and I was like, what? No, like you use an Oyster card and. Yeah, and then actually I left the UK shortly after that. But then I came back like three years later and it's like everything was contactless. People are like, why would you buy an Oyster? Why do you need an Oyster card?

Richard Hill [00:29:36]:
Yeah.

Matthias Kleven [00:29:36]:
So I use that as an analogy because I do think, like, you know, there will be early adopters, like, everything. I think there will be people like, you know, if you or me could, could go through it. If you're in the States, you'd probably just try to go through the experience because you want to see what it's like. But apparently people will kind of come across it and it will pick up because, you know, all of a sudden these agents remember, this is also, it's trying to do it programmatically. So people, I think are going to be used to, okay, I've seen the product, I do this. But if it prompts saying, hey, yes, I see these things, would you like me to build a basket for you? That's going to change. All of a sudden you're like, yeah, because that's the other thing is like all these agents, they prompt you as to a follow up. So I think it will.

Matthias Kleven [00:30:18]:
Once everything's kind of rolled out, I think adoption will happen pretty quickly. But at the same time, it is still a channel. There will be people who still go, no, I want to go to the store. You know what? No, it's like people say, yeah, I can buy online. I just, I want to feel it, I want to see it in retail. It's, you know, so I think it will, it will get Picked up. I think my view is it will be adopted pretty darn well. But there will always be people who are like, it's not for me.

Matthias Kleven [00:30:49]:
I'm going to go to these other ways.

Richard Hill [00:30:50]:
Yeah, yeah. I think from a merchant standpoint, when they see the conversion rate, it's got to be so much better. It just has to be so for merchants.

Matthias Kleven [00:31:00]:
So.

Richard Hill [00:31:01]:
And then I think that shift then is going to be, you know, in terms of, you know, it sounds like I've set this question up, but just for age, for people that are doing great se. Gay, great SEO, you know, they're going to be, it's going to be ridiculous because ultimately you want to, you know, rank ranks the wrong word, but you want to be visible in, in, you know, in the, in the different LLMs. So if you are, if you are very visible in LLMs, therefore your products are going to show in LLMs. And with 1, 2 clicks, you've got to purchase as a merchant from an LLM. So in terms of investing in that LLM visibility, you know, where do you, where are you seen? You know, somebody types in. If you, if you went to chat GPT now and said, you know, talk to me about my store, you know, if you were looking for running shoes for my 10k, would you recommend me? And if it says no, you know, then, well, why wouldn't you recommend me? Well, it's because you don't cover this, you don't cover that, you don't cover this. You haven't got a guide on this. And these three firms have got a, you know, a community talking about this, this and this.

Richard Hill [00:32:05]:
They've got 20 guys to do with this. They actually have their own marathon or their own 10k that they, that they sponsor or they. And so, ah, okay, you know, and they're mentioned here, here, here and here. It gives you a bit of insight as a merchant.

Matthias Kleven [00:32:18]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:32:18]:
You know, just by discussing with those LLMs, if you like, you know, what they're looking for, give you some insights into what you need to look at because it is only literally a few months away where, you know, you, I think most merchants, most merchants that are proactive and obviously looking at their marketing stack, you know, on a, on a consistent basis, they're going to be going to events. Yeah, you can't really go to an event without talking about the geo or whatever it is. But yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever sort of you want to call it. But ultimately it's damn good. SEO is a short version. I think there is some cave There are a lot of people screaming at me now. It's not the same and it, there is things obviously you need to, to do but ultimately is doing good work. So yeah, very, very, very exciting times for, for old school SEOs and SEO, SEO agencies and content and link building and digital PR and sort of mentions and things like that.

Richard Hill [00:33:11]:
So where do you, I mean where do you, you maybe got some insights from, from the top. But you know, where, where do you see this going? You know we've got, you know it's literally just launched but say Even you know, six 12 months from now, have you got any insights, you know, or anything maybe specifically that Shopify have got, got planned?

Matthias Kleven [00:33:29]:
Yeah. So I think like as we mentioned at the top of the conversation, like this is a platform shift. This is, we are living through something that is like next to like the.com boom and like the Internet is drastically changing. So I think agentic commerce, it's, it's a new world order. Future Internet commerce will happen through some sort of agents or AI enhanced services in some way because every day people are turning to AI to discover things. Like we have been talking back and forth, they want to browse, they want to buy. And I think you know, agent commerce in 2025 is kind of we set a vision at Shopify to build for the foundation and in 26 with like the launch of UCP and agentic storefronts, a catalog, like we're accelerating that vision. So we're really what it will look like in the future is I think, you know, whether people want to be through the various purchasing experiences, whether it's like embedded checkout in apps, whether it's web based commerce flows, whether it's agentic partners using UCP to get the flexibility on any shopping experience, it'll be there on top of this.

Matthias Kleven [00:34:37]:
I think, you know, this framework, it doesn't just have to be for commerce, it can be for various online transactions. So I think that to me is where we could potentially see this going is like outside of just commerce. How can this evolve into anything that be purchased across various verticals? Because conversations can happen about any sort of products or trips or movies, like you name it and it could come there. So I think adoption is going to tell a lot of it. But I think that's probably the biggest thing that I think I see in Maybe the next six to 12 months is how what are the unique experiences that people first build and put into these agents but then how does it evolve into other verticals as well?

Richard Hill [00:35:19]:
Yeah, very exciting. I think what we're gonna have to do, you know what I'm gonna say. You're gonna have to come back on 12 months.

Matthias Kleven [00:35:26]:
Yeah, I got. Who knows what it will be like.

Richard Hill [00:35:29]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean it is like I, I could just see like from an agency standpoint, you know, just like, you know, the whole sort of agentic shopping department, you know, sort of literally, you know, we have in our agency, you know, specific people that are building, you know, AI tools, you know, we've got and some, and some consultants to work with us, you know, permanently on that side, you know, and they're building tools for our, predominantly our SEO department and some of our internal tools, a little bit of paid ads as well. But just to really, you know, this is obviously just a massive, I see it 100 as this is ridiculous as you put it, almost like a once in a lifetime opportunity or you know, this massive shift that, you know, I'm really excited. Very much want to get the agency behind known for ultimately, you know, and I think it's just really going to help merchants get better conversion rates from a, you know, admittedly at the moment, you know, we've gone from. If we sat here three months ago, you know, it's maybe like a half a percent of search is, you know, is it LLMs now you're probably getting, you know, 2, 3%. But then when you really start looking at the data, it's not really about that percentage of search is the percentage of intent and conversion really. Because yeah, you've got a lot more intent and a lot more reality of, you know, higher conversion rates when people really, really find what they want with whatever agencic, you know, tool you're looking, looking with. So the conversion rates are so much higher.

Richard Hill [00:36:51]:
So I think the acceleration of the conversion and the, the revenue that it's going to generate for merchants is just going to be, you know, when we sit here at a year and talk about it, merchants are going, oh yeah, I get about 15 from you know, from LLMs and, and from via use, the UCP and the tech around sort of buying directly from LLMs. I think the shift and the speed is going to be. Yeah, I like, like it. You know, if you said to two years ago to any merchant, are you using ChatGPT to create any content? No, no. What's that? You know it's literally like. And everyone's using, you know and it's now ingrained in all the tools sort of thing. So I think the speed and shift have changed now in, in but yeah it'll be interesting with this, this initial adoption I think when we come to do our first purchase or our customers do. Yeah, very exciting.

Richard Hill [00:37:36]:
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I feel like we could cover a lot more ground but I think we've teased the. Teased enough out there with. To the audience. I think there's a, a lot more coming obviously we can talk about in the, in the coming months. So thank you for coming on the show. For those that want to find out sort of more about what you do at Shopify and Shopify is what's the best way to do that.

Matthias Kleven [00:37:59]:
If anyone has questions they can reach out to myself. But then I think I would just go to our site like everything is well indexed. I. We are. We are well set up for. For. For obviously AI and everything. But I would go there as a starting point and then also just like search you can have the questions within your different agentic platforms.

Matthias Kleven [00:38:21]:
One thing to always notice, sometimes it can be a little out of date depending on where it's pulling from. So sometimes we're the source. But yeah, you can come and speak to us.

Richard Hill [00:38:31]:
Yeah, I think if you want the sort of. The latest sort of overview and some of the more technical specs on UCP shopify.com forward/ucp. It's got a really good. Sort of explains it very, very well. Well, I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book to recommend to our listeners?

Matthias Kleven [00:38:50]:
Yeah, I think for me this might have been referenced on. I'm not sure if it's been referenced before, but I am a big fan of Simon Sinek. Find your why, know your why to me I read that book initially when I became a lead and I. It's a. It's a really simple concept I think but it's so true. It's like why are you doing this? Because if you, if you don't have that then the how and the what just really it don't matter. And I think that's in both life but really in business. And that book to me broke down so much like why some businesses have been so successful and others not.

Matthias Kleven [00:39:29]:
And I think when I think about in the. The contract of like Shopify our why is so clear on wanting to make commerce better for everyone. The how right now is very much I think with AI but and it evolves like your why will be there. So it's an older one. I think it's. Maybe it's a reference but I could not recommend enough and he's got a couple different iterations for how it could be used for individuals but also businesses.

Richard Hill [00:39:53]:
Brilliant. We'll link that up in the show notes and yeah, great, great, great reference. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and no doubt we will see each other soon.

Matthias Kleven [00:40:02]:
Definitely. Thanks so much.

Richard Hill [00:40:04]:
Thank you. If you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or Follow button. Wherever you are listening to this podcast, you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day and I'll see you on the next one.