Running a successful online business is only getting harder, which is why our growing, global merchant base turns to the Shopify ecosystem for help. These merchants need Shopify to be the simplest, safest, and most personalized commerce ecosystem in the world. And that’s why we’re making significant improvements to how merchants discover, select, and make use of apps and themes this year. As more and more merchants join Shopify to grow and scale, so too does the need for innovative solutions from developers that can power their success. In fact, the average merchant uses 6 apps to manage their business. This demand creates new opportunities for our developers to succeed and shape the future of commerce. This natural alignment between merchant and developer success is a cornerstone of our platform strategy—we can’t do this without you. We’re going to be experimenting with new approaches so we can learn how best to help merchants and make our ecosystem safe, simple, and personalized. In this post, we’ll share a bit more about our plans and how you can get involved. Simple: Making it easy for merchants to get help When merchants sign up for Shopify, they need to learn about the set of apps and themes that will get them to their first sale. We want to make it as easy as possible to get to these solutions, so we’re focused on major UX improvements that will take as much burden off merchants. We’ll help merchants understand what apps are and get them everything they need to set up their store, build product catalogs, run marketing initiatives, and make operations and support more efficient. A few areas we’re working on: Intuitive navigation: We’re learning how merchants browse apps and themes and testing different approaches, including focusing more on merchant goals than app taxonomy. Clearer categories: We’ll provide educational context on what different categories are used for, so that developers can explain their apps more clearly. App and theme cards: We’re experimenting with highlighting different details about apps and themes depending on what context they’re in, from the homepage to search results. Safe: Increasing trust between merchants and developers Merchants expect apps and themes to be functional and effective, to work reliably and quickly, and to keep their customers’ data private and secure. Most of our partners share these goals and work hard to earn and keep merchant trust. But we’ll also be tightening controls on the small minority of fraudulent actors, which helps merchants while also levelling the playing field for trustworthy developers. We’ll provide clearer guidelines for how to meet these new standards, plus make it easier to test app quality and get approval for new apps. We’re also focused on: Performance and reliability: Apps and themes should be fast, responsive, reliable, and optimized for mobile. We’re updating APIs and have added new checks to help you, including removing apps that don’t install properly and notifying developers to fix issues. Privacy and security: Merchants want to know developers are treating data with care, adhering to platform policies, and meeting relevant laws and regulation. Developers can reinforce trust by using the API responsibly and keeping apps up-to-date. Trust: We want to make it easier for merchants to find useful reviews, getting quick signals on an app or theme’s quality. We also want to share insights back to developers about how their products are being used and evaluated. Fake reviews erode trust, and we continue to strengthen tools that flag potentially fraudulent reviews. Personalized: Getting merchants to the right solution for them Merchants have a lot on their plate, so we want to guide them to the most relevant apps and themes for them, as quickly as possible. We’ve made improvements to the Shopify App Store around discovery and personalization, but we’re only getting started. We’re also focused on: Personalized recommendations: We’re showing merchants re...