Episode Summary
In this solo episode of the 7-Figures and Beyond ecommerce podcast, host Greg Shuey issues an urgent wake-up call to D2C brand owners using Shopify: AI-powered shopping is here, and most brands are unprepared. Greg breaks down OpenAI’s upcoming integration with Shopify product feeds and what that means for e-commerce discovery and conversions. Soon, consumers will shop by describing exactly what they need in natural language via ChatGPT and if your product feed isn’t connected, detailed, and optimized, your brand won’t be in the consideration set. Greg outlines the technical and content steps brands should take right now, including rewriting product titles and descriptions, uploading better imagery, implementing schema, and building contextual content like FAQs and comparison blogs. He draws a sharp contrast between traditional shopping journeys and the streamlined, conversational commerce experiences powered by LLMs. Ultimately, the episode is both a strategic guide and a call to action to get ahead before this shift upends digital commerce as we know it.
Key Takeaways
- ChatGPT + Shopify Integration Will Be a Game-Changer: Consumers will soon be able to search and buy products directly inside ChatGPT using natural language, skipping traditional product pages, Google, and even your website.
- Most Brands Aren’t Ready.. Or Even Aware: Many Shopify merchants still don’t know this is coming. Failing to prepare could mean total invisibility in AI-powered shopping experiences.
- Product Feed Optimization Is Critical: You must rethink titles, descriptions, images, schema, and reviews through the lens of conversational prompts, not just keywords.
- Content Still Matters Because It Supports the Feed: Product pages, FAQs, and blog content help LLMs understand your brand and give them the “why” behind your products. That context improves recommendation likelihood.
- This Isn’t the End of Google Shopping, But It’s a Shift: AI shopping won’t kill Google Ads overnight, but expect a rebalancing where feed quality and on-site content will play a much greater role in conversions.
Questions To Ask Yourself
- Is my current Shopify product feed optimized for natural language search and AI discovery, or just for Google Shopping?
- What kinds of prompts might a customer use to find my product in ChatGPT or Perplexity?
- Do my product pages have the descriptive titles, benefits, specs, and FAQs needed to train LLMs?
- Am I creating content that helps associate my brand with my competitors in a positive way for LLMs to understand?
- What steps can I take this week to future-proof my brand for this AI commerce shift?
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
ChatGPT Product Feed Submission: https://openai.com/chatgpt/search-product-discovery/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:02.039)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Seven Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast. I am your host, Greg Shuey. I created this podcast to help D2C business owners and marketers who are stuck and who are actively trying to find a way to grow their businesses. Today, we’re gonna spend some time really diving in and talking about Shopify product feeds and their upcoming integrations with ChatGPT.
I specifically call out Shopify because this won’t really apply to any other e-commerce marketing platform yet. It is only applicable to Shopify. This coming update is going to fundamentally change how people discover and buy products online. And I believe that most brands are not ready for it. They’re not ready for it at all. A lot of them don’t even know. To give you an example, I had seven discovery calls with
prospects last week. When I brought this up, none of them knew that this was happening. So I’m hoping that this is going to really be a wake up call for anyone who’s listening to this. So today I want to unpack what we know so far, why it matters to DTC brands like yours, and what you can do today to begin to prepare. Because getting ahead of this curve could mean the difference between really owning your niche and having first movers advantage.
or being invisible inside the next generation of AI powered shopping. So let’s dive in. So why is this a game changer for brands like yours? Let’s start by really getting into the basics. So OpenAI who owns ChatGPT, they announced several months ago that they are working with Shopify to bring product feeds directly into ChatGPT and their results.
types in a prompt, you’ll be able to serve up your products to those individuals. So getting a little bit deeper, like what does this mean for you? So it means that a shopper could ask ChatGPT, find me a 40 quart hard-sided cooler with wheels that keeps ice frozen for at least five days and has tie-down latches for my truck.
Greg Shuey (02:26.574)
Pretty specific, right? This is how people are using the LLMs like ChatGPT. Far different than what we’re used to from an SEO perspective and a Google perspective where people just go in and they type in 40 quart hard cooler. Very different. If your product feed is connected to ChatGPT and if it’s optimized properly, it gives you a much higher chance that your cooler, your brand name,
The description of the cooler, a curated image, and a link to visit your website to buy could be served up for that particular prompt or query. And that is really the beauty of this. It goes way beyond traditional product search. It’s hyper-focused, it’s hyper-specific, it’s hyper-personalized, it’s conversational, and it is AI-powered. But here’s the kicker.
Another thing that was announced several months ago, we’re assuming that when chat GPT launches this or shortly thereafter, you will be able to buy right in the platform. This means your customer won’t even need to leave chat GPT to make a purchase. Your product feed and your Shopify will be able to be directly integrated into chat GPT.
people will be able to click and order and pay right in platform. And it’s going to be tied right back into Shopify to process the order, send a fulfillment, et cetera. The code’s already built. Like we’ve seen it, it’s live, it’s already built. We’re just waiting for that integration to happen. Right there, that’s the game changer, honestly. No load times, no drop-offs.
no abandoned carts because someone got distracted while switching between their nine million tabs that they have open. None of this nonsense. So my huge key takeaway is that you need to be preparing for this right now. We can’t sit on this anymore. It could launch tomorrow. It could launch in three months. It could launch next year, but we think it’s coming soon. And if you’re not on top of this and you’re not
Greg Shuey (04:47.69)
Optimized and ready to go. You’re not just risking visibility. You’re risking potentially missing out on the entire sales conversations with customers who will never ever even see your website. They will never visit your website. And to me, that’s seriously insane. Like I, I couldn’t even fathom that when, when this was all announced, it’s going to be absolutely wild.
So let’s talk a little bit about how the customer journey is going to change. So I think you’ve already gotten a little bit of a sneak peek about how the journey is going to change, but let’s dig in just a little bit deeper. So as a consumer, the new shopping experience isn’t going to be about browsing dozens of product pages anymore. I mean, I think back to, you know, when I was shopping for some new shirts, you know, I had probably 15 tabs open of the different products.
I had, you know, product reviews open that I was reading. was on YouTube looking for, product reviews, explainer videos. None of that is really going to happen anymore. Right. It’s about a customer who’s saying exactly what they want and then letting AI become the product researcher and the product shopper for you.
So instead of going to Google and typing something like men’s white shirt, consumers will start shopping by describing their exact problem. Like I am tall, I have long arms, I have a long torso. I need something that is going to be bigger, but it’s going to fit well. It’s not going to fit like a big square garbage bag, right? It’s not just about going to Google and typing those keywords anymore. So if your product feed has the right data, like materials,
specs, sizing, benefits, the LLMs will be able to match that intent to your product precisely. No more guessing, no more relying on perfect ad targeting, no more hoping your product shows in either an ad carousel or an organic shopping product carousel. Instead, your product becomes the AI’s best answer. So let’s flip that around.
Greg Shuey (07:10.126)
What happens if you decide that you don’t want to mess around with this? That you’re like, yeah, you know, it’s, too early to say what the impact’s going to be. There’s no proof. You know, what’s going to happen? Well, it might not hurt you that much, or you might disappear. It may, it may kill you. Who knows? What I do know is that if you are not going to go down this road, uh, when we can start submitting those product feeds to, uh, the LLMs.
You’re going to be leaving it up to them to decide how your product is described and served up to the end user. And that could be disastrous, honestly. It’s never a good thing. I would, I would rather err on the side of caution and feed it too much information so that we can kind of control the narrative. then letting them decide how they are going to serve that up. If your product feeds missing, if it’s messy.
or if it’s not connected at all, it’ll fall back on your product page content, which I’m praying that by now everyone has just amazing product page content. And you know, if so, that may be okay, but it might not be okay as well. And I don’t think it’s really a secret that we’ve all seen that PDPs have vague copy, outdated specs and missing context.
You know, like, like I mentioned, there’s probably a number of these PDPs that are amazing, but I’ve also seen a lot of really crappy websites lately that don’t have very good PDPs and PLPs. and so, you know, when we’re, when we’re dealing with the LLMs, you know, not only does it not help a user, but if we’re dealing with LLMs, they solely rely on content to guide their responses. think I mentioned a couple episodes ago, like they’re using Google.
results. They’re using content from Reddit, they’re using content from forums, they’re using content from all over the place to be able to make sense and parse that information and kind of tell that story. And they’re using that to guide their responses. So if we’re not giving that to them, they’re just going to be guessing and they could be making things up. They could be misrepresenting your products or they could just be leaving it out all together. So
Greg Shuey (09:33.922)
Really in an AI power world, which is what we’re moving to, I feel like that’s extremely dangerous. Might I even say that’s full on gross negligence. I know that may be a little dramatic, but if you’re working on building a brand and you’re investing a significant amount of money into building that brand, I would say it’s borderline negligence to completely ignore this. And that’s really how I feel about this.
because the LLMs are trying to understand your product, well, plural, right, products at scale, if you don’t tell it what matters, it’ll guess. And sometimes that guess is wrong or worse, it will absolutely ignore you altogether, which is even worse, right? We’re not getting our brand into chat GPT. They’re not serving it up. We’re not in the consideration set and that’s really bad.
Greg Shuey (10:32.844)
So let’s talk about what you can do right now to get ready. So there’s a couple of things. We’re gonna specifically talk about the product feed first, and then we’re gonna get into some other things that you can be doing specifically on your website. So the first thing is rethinking your product feed data. Chances are pretty good that you’ve been optimizing it for traditional keywords so that you can show up in organic shopping.
About a year, year and a half ago, we started to see organic shopping become much more prevalent in the search engine results pages. As a result, SEOs as well as paid search marketers have spent more time really digging in and optimizing product feeds as well as adding supplemental feeds so that they can show up higher in those organic shopping and in the PMAX results, right? So let’s talk about how to optimize for the LLMs.
So very first, we want to start with your titles. Make them descriptive. Frontload the most important attributes. So if your product is the everyday pack, that tells the LLM absolutely nothing. So instead, you should try 28 liter water resistant hiking backpack with chest strap. Fits 15 inch laptops.
You see how that’s much more descriptive. You see how that adds additional product attributes that people might be searching for in the different LLMs. It’s different. Also, it’s optimized for organic shopping. So you don’t have to have one or the other, right? You don’t have to have optimizations for AI. You don’t have to have optimizations for Google. You’re hitting things all together at once. Second thing, optimize your descriptions.
Now this is important. You want to make sure that you’re using natural language. AI models prefer well-written, human-friendly copy. Make sure to include product specs, make sure to include benefits, and in some cases, you might even want to include use cases where applicable. So for example, this 100 % merino wool base layer is ideal for cold weather hiking.
Greg Shuey (12:59.0)
moisture wicking and temperature regulation. See, chances are you’re probably trying to get this to show up for merino wool base layer in Google, but by adding additional content and description in there, you’re also able to properly optimize for the AI models. Again, killing two birds with one stone. All right, third, upload great, or I might even say amazing imagery. A lot of product feeds
We are pulling flat lays that are on white backgrounds. We’re pulling very basic lifestyle imagery. So when you’re uploading your imagery, make sure that you are showcasing the product’s multiple angles. Show it at scale, show the product in use, and don’t ever, ever, ever rely on flat studio shots alone, right? If everyone else is doing that, you want to be the one that stands out.
So do some cool things with your product imagery, make sure that they’re properly optimized and those are uploaded and included in your product feed so that you can stand out, especially when you are served up in chat GPT’s results. All right, fourth, spend some time implementing schema on your website. So when the LLMs go and they actually look at your product page, which they will do,
They’re not just going to look at your product feed. They will visit your website. Make sure that you’re using structured data to help them understand key fields like price, availability, review score, brand name, and more. That’s gonna be critically important. It’s also important for Google as well to be able to pull in rich content into the search engine results pages. And so again, there you’re kind of killing two birds with one stone.
The last thing is you do not want to sleep on reviews. I know I harp on this a lot. Reviews are gold. Real customer language embedded on your product page helps reinforce context, intent, as well as provides use cases to the LLMs, but also to Google as well. So you should really be thinking about your product feed like a, like,
Greg Shuey (15:23.918)
prompt engineering for AI. Like what does that mean? What does that mean for the prompt that’s being asked in chat GPT? You’re going to want to make sure that you put yourself in your customer shoes. This is a big thing. I believe I talked about this a little bit last time, but take off your marketing hat, put on your shopper hat and think through what are they asking the LLMs?
What are they inputting into chat GPT? What are they inputting into perplexity? What are they inputting into cloud? What are they inputting into Google AI mode? Take that and use it to guide your optimizations. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not about being present or it’s not about just being present. It’s about being relevant and giving the AI the best chance to recommend your product over your competition. All right.
Once your feed’s dialed in, let’s talk about really owning the narratives. Like what does that mean? I think this is something that a lot of brands are still missing on. Even with a perfectly optimized product feed, you still need content on your website and off your website that supports your products. It supports your business. It supports your product feed.
I think this is like the fifth time today that I’ve said the LLMs need content to make sense of what you sell, why it’s important, et cetera. First, they’ll look at your product feed. After that, they will look at other helpful content on your product pages. And when I say helpful, and we’ve probably talked about that a lot as well, Google leans into helpful content as well. You want to be thinking FAQs, you want to be thinking customer reviews, that type of content. So that’s the first place they’re going to look.
The next place that they are going to look is they’re going to go over to your blog. They’re going to go over to your about us page and any other supporting content that will really help them understand your story and why your products matter to your ideal customers. I think those two things are incredibly important. Your story, you need to make sure you’re telling that story and then why your products matter to your ideal customers. That’s really the narrative that we want to tell.
Greg Shuey (17:46.574)
So let me walk through how we tackle this for our clients at Stride. So we do a couple of things. First, we leverage FAQs like crazy. I know I’ve talked about this before. We do this so much that we’ve actually built a really cool AI agent to help us surface those FAQs and then also help us craft the very best answer for those frequently asked questions. We then take that answer.
Our writers spend some time revising it where necessary, optimizing it to show up in AI overviews. People also ask as well as the LLMs. And then we let it rip. We try to get about five to 10 FAQs on every PLP, your category pages, every PDP, your product pages. And then we let it rip. So you can do this manually. You can do this by using a tool called also asked.
Or you can just go over to Google and you can start punching in search queries and then start looking at the people also ask results. It takes a lot longer to do it that way. If you use also ask and if you use Google to do that, the nice thing is that you can open up what those answers are traditionally and you can use that to start to guide your content creation. One thing to really remember is that when you’re optimizing your FAQs, you want to reinforce your product benefits.
and spend time working to overcome objections. Because a lot of times people don’t buy because of necessarily who your business is or your brand story. They are going to specifically looking at product benefits as well as they are going to be looking at how you’re overcoming those objections. Just like in sales in general, right? If you’re a B2B salesperson,
or have done B2B sales before, like you’re working to overcome objections in order to be able to close the sale. That’s where you use your FAQs to be able to do that. And it’s very powerful. The next thing that we do is that we write a lot of very high quality authoritative blog content. Some of this content is very thorough compare and contrast pieces that showcases our clients products to their competitors.
Greg Shuey (20:01.58)
Now these aren’t go go out and bash on your competitor pieces. That’s not tactful. That’s not nice. We don’t we don’t promote that whatsoever. I really hate it when brands do that, honestly, but they are very tactful pieces that showcase the differences, the benefits, the disadvantages of both options. Right. And this is not an attack your competitor. The nice thing is, is when you start to do this kind of compare and contrast, bringing competitors into your content.
Not only will that help the LLMs have the right context to tell your story the right way, but it also helps create an association with you and your competitor. So if the LLMs are consistently recommending your competition and they come across this piece that now your brand name is in close association with your competitor’s brand name, you are much more likely to be recommended and showing up.
in those same recommendations from chat GPT and the LLMs. You not only want to do this on your website, but you also want to try to do it on third party websites as well. so reaching out to bloggers to do compare and contrast pieces with you and two or three of your competitors is a great way to be able to do that. Again, this is the context that those LLMs need to tell your story the right way. So to put this
in a very short and succinct statement. Your product feed is the what and your supporting content is the why. And I think it’s very critical that you understand that and that you start tackling your content in such a way. Okay? So you’re probably saying to yourself, great, right? Is this change, you know, whenever it happens, if it’s going to even happen, is it going to kill performance max in Google shopping?
I did a recording a few episodes on like, is SEO dead? Well, no, not anytime soon anyway. And I feel it’s the same way with Google shopping performance max. Although chat GPT is growing in usage right now, it is not considered a Google killer. Google still owns a massive percent of the market share and with launching AI mode. And that now that that’s in full swing, it’s going to
Greg Shuey (22:27.502)
be interesting to see that data here in a few months and in a year from now to see what does that look like now? Will it chip away at Google’s influence over time? Maybe, probably, but we’ll have to see. Google’s AI mode’s pretty impressive so far. It’s still giving back some inaccurate information to me anyway, but it’s pretty impressive. so will people be more likely to use that than having to go have an additional third party tool like ChatGPT?
or an additional app on their phone, who knows? I think we just need to really understand that if and when consumers start shopping inside of ChatGPT or other AI platforms, that they may skip the traditional Google ad, they may skip the traditional Google search, they may not ever land on your website, they may never browse 12 tabs, they may never have that experience because it’s just seamless and it’s inside of platforms.
What this means for brands is that when this time comes, if we start to see a degradation of Google Ads, Performance, Macs, they may start to reallocate some of that spend and spending less on media and more on feed quality and more on content that trains the AIs to actually sell for them. It’s not really a replacement. I would more so call this a rebalancing.
so that was a lot, like as, as we start to wrap up and close up this episode, think the key takeaways that you should be making note of and start doing right away. the first is signing up for early access. So if you are on Shopify, make sure that you are in the loop when open AI opens up the product feed access for your brand. There is a link that you can go sign up on.
and they will notify you as soon as that is available. I will include that link on how to register in our show notes. That’s gonna be the first thing. It’s gonna take less than a minute to do that. I recommend going and doing that today. Next, you should start optimizing today. Clean up your titles, tighten your descriptions, revisit your images, add schema to your website. It doesn’t have to be perfect, especially this first draft. It just has to be
Greg Shuey (24:54.914)
better than it is now. And then last, start thinking through your content strategy. Like what content should you be publishing on your website? Start to think through how people ask the LLMs like chat GPT, asking them, you know, different questions, different prompts so that you can start to think through, okay, here’s how I need to build my content or here’s how I need to revise my content.
And then most important, recognize that this is going to be a massive shift that catapults us forward. It’s not just a trend. It’s not a gimmick. It’s not scary. This is going to be the new interface for e-commerce. I truly think that we are going to get to the point where we rely on AI models and LLMs to do shopping for us.
It’s just going to be so much easier than the way that we do it now. So embrace that, get excited about that and start working on that and building a plan to work on that today, over the coming weeks, over the coming months. I hope this episode was super helpful, super insightful, and that you were able to find two to three golden nuggets that you can take and start implementing today. Thank you so much for sharing a few minutes of your day with me, and I hope that you tune in again next time.
Thank you so much for joining.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
