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Jul 20, 2026 • 6 min read

Is Your Adobe Commerce (Magento) Store Visible to AI Shopping Agents? A 2026 GEO/AEO Audit

Meghna VinodMeghna Vinod
Is Your Adobe Commerce (Magento) Store Visible to AI Shopping Agents? A 2026 GEO/AEO Audit

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Is Your Adobe Commerce (Magento) Store Visible to AI Shopping Agents? A 2026 GEO/AEO AuditAdobe

Is Your Adobe Commerce (Magento) Store Visible to AI Shopping Agents? A 2026 GEO/AEO Audit

Is Your Adobe Commerce (Magento) Store Visible to AI Shopping Agents? A 2026 GEO/AEO Audit Let's start with something you can do in the next ten seconds. Open ChatGPT and ask it to recommend a product in your category, at whatever price point your customers usually shop. Go on, actually try it. If your Adobe Commerce or Magento store didn't come up, don't worry, you're in good company. Plenty of merchants with fast, well-built, SEO-solid stores are getting the same result. It's not because their SEO is broken. It's because SEO was built to answer a completely different question than the one AI shopping agents are now asking. For years, the rule was simple: rank well on Google, get found, get the sale. That rule still applies. But there's a second, newer layer sitting on top of it now, one that decides whether an AI assistant even considers recommending you in the first place. And right now, across 170,000-plus stores running on Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source, most of them are failing it without knowing it. The reason is straightforward once you see it: most Adobe Commerce stores were built for Google discovery, not AI discovery. AI does not browse a results page and click. It reads, decides, and recommends, often without the shopper ever landing on your site. This guide is a practical GEO/AEO audit for Adobe Commerce and Magento merchants, covering what AI shopping agents actually look for, the new agentic commerce protocols shaping 2026, and what to fix first. Why SEO Alone No Longer Guarantees Visibility SEO and Adobe Commerce SEO best practices (site speed, schema, backlinks, keyword-optimized content) still matter. They are the foundation. But Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) are a distinct, additional layer, because AI systems do not rank pages the way Google's classic algorithm does. They synthesize an answer from whatever data they can reliably read, verify, and trust, then present one recommendation or a short list, not ten blue links. That distinction matters more than it sounds. A store can rank on page one of Google and still be functionally invisible to ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews, because those systems are evaluating a completely different set of signals: whether your product data is structured cleanly, whether your content answers a decision rather than a keyword, and whether AI crawlers can even access your pages in the first place. The Agentic Commerce Protocol Landscape: ACP, UCP, and MCP Beyond being found, there is a second and newer question: can an AI agent actually buy from your store on a shopper's behalf? This is called agentic commerce, and in 2026 it runs on a small set of competing open standards. Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), built by OpenAI and Stripe, powers ChatGPT's Instant Checkout. It defines a structured product feed, a five-endpoint checkout API, and a delegated payment token so an agent can complete a purchase without ever holding raw card details. Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), announced by Google, is built to connect merchant catalogs to Google Search's AI Mode and Gemini. Model Context Protocol (MCP), created by Anthropic, is the standard Adobe adopted for its own Adobe Commerce MCP server, letting AI agents query catalog, pricing, inventory, and checkout data directly. None of these has "won" yet, and the ground will keep shifting through 2026. For most Adobe Commerce and Magento merchants today, the practical takeaway is not to bet everything on one protocol. It is to get the underlying product data and feeds clean enough that your store can plug into whichever standard ends up mattering most for your customer base. The 5-Layer GEO/AEO Audit for Adobe Commerce Stores Across dozens of independent Adobe Commerce and Magento audits, the same pattern shows up again and again: most stores fail on at least three of these five layers. 1. Product data structure. Inconsistent attributes, messy variant naming, and incomplete schema markup mean an AI system simply cannot parse your catalog reliably, even if a human shopper could. 2. Content layer. Pages built around keywords rather than decisions (no "best for X," no comparisons, no clear use-case framing) get skipped, because AI systems are trying to answer a question, not match a search term. 3. Trust signals. Weak cross-platform credibility, inconsistent reviews, and low domain authority get filtered out. AI systems weigh trust signals heavily before citing or recommending a source. 4. Crawlability and feeds. Heavy JavaScript rendering, missing or outdated sitemaps, and no API-first access mean AI crawlers cannot retrieve your data at all, regardless of how good the content is underneath. 5. Security and maintenance. Unpatched systems and unstable data layers are a trust risk for both human shoppers and the AI systems that might otherwise recommend you. The technical version of this audit gets specific fast. AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and Google-Extended need explicit allowances in robots.txt. A growing standard called llms.txt gives AI systems a clean content map of your site. Product pages need complete JSON-LD schema (name, price, offers.availability), not partial markup. And stores that want to appear in ChatGPT Shopping need a properly formatted AI product feed, separate from a standard Google Shopping feed. "Most merchants think GEO is a content problem. It's actually a data problem wearing a content costume. Fix the product data and the feeds first, and the content work becomes ten times easier." — Mahaveer Devabalan, Co-founder & Head of eCommerce Solutions, Codilar The Adobe Commerce MCP Server and Adobe Brand Visibility Adobe itself has moved on this. At Adobe Summit in 2026, Adobe introduced its own Adobe Commerce MCP server, built on Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, letting AI agents query catalog, cart, pricing, inventory, and checkout data directly from an Adobe Commerce instance. The honest caveat: the fully agentic capabilities require an Adobe Experience Platform license, which puts this squarely in enterprise territory rather than a free, out-of-the-box feature. More recently, Adobe announced Adobe Brand Visibility, a joint solution combining Semrush's AI-visibility intelligence with Adobe's content optimization tools. It draws on a large database of real-world AI search prompts to show brands how often they are mentioned across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity, alongside competitive share-of-voice data. Adobe has reported that AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites grew well over 1,000% between late 2024 and mid-2026, which gives a sense of how quickly this channel has moved from experimental to material. Where AI Overviews Fit Into This Picture AI Overviews and similar AI-generated answer boxes sit slightly upstream of full agentic checkout, but they run on the same underlying signals. If your product schema, FAQPage markup, and content structure are not clean enough for an AI Overview to cite you, they almost certainly are not clean enough for a shopping agent to recommend you either. Treating AI Overview visibility and full agentic-commerce readiness as two separate projects usually means duplicating work that could be done once, at the data and feed layer. Your Agent-Readiness Checklist Allow AI crawlers explicitly in robots.txt (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended) Publish an llms.txt file at your store root so AI systems get a clean content map Complete your product schema, including price, currency, and live offers.availability on every product page Build a structured, AI-readable product feed, separate from your standard shopping feed Add FAQPage schema to key pages to improve answer-box and citation eligibility Rewrite cornerstone content around decisions, not keywords: comparisons, "best for X" framing, real use cases Fix crawlability issues, particularly heavy client-side rendering that blocks AI bots from reading rendered content Keep the platform patched and stable, since security posture is itself a trust signal AI systems weigh Merchants who get ahead of this are rarely doing full redesigns. It is quieter, more structural work: cleaning and standardizing the catalog, rebuilding content around decisions, fixing structured data so it is actually meaningful, and treating the Adobe Commerce backend as a data engine rather than just a storefront. Getting Your Adobe Commerce Store Agent-Ready This is fundamentally a backend and data-architecture problem before it is a content problem, which is where Codilar's Adobe Commerce experts have always focused their work: catalog structure, performance, and platform stability at scale. This same GEO shift is already showing up across other verticals, including how food and beverage brands are building structured product data for AI-driven discovery, a pattern Codilar has covered in detail elsewhere. It's consistent across every category: clean, structured product data is what AI systems need to recommend you, whether the one asking is a human shopper or a machine. Is your Adobe Commerce store actually AI-readable, or just human-readable? Those are no longer the same question, and the gap between them is already costing visibility for stores that assume good SEO is enough. Want a clear picture of where your store stands? Get in touch with Codilar's Adobe Commerce team for a GEO/AEO readiness conversation before your competitors close the gap. Conclusion The stores getting cited by ChatGPT, recommended by Gemini, or transacted with directly through an AI agent are not necessarily the best-ranked stores. They are the best-understood by AI. For Adobe Commerce and Magento merchants, that shift rewards exactly the kind of structural discipline the platform has always demanded: clean data, stable architecture, and content built around real decisions rather than keywords. The merchants treating this as infrastructure work, not a marketing afterthought, are the ones who will still be visible when agentic commerce stops being early and starts being standard. FAQs 1. What is GEO and how is it different from traditional SEO? SEO ranks your pages in a search engine's link list. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is about being cited or recommended inside an AI-generated answer, whether that's ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews. Both rely on good fundamentals, but GEO adds requirements like structured data, llms.txt, and AI-readable product feeds that classic SEO never needed. 2. How do I know if my Adobe Commerce store is blocking AI bots? Check your robots.txt file for explicit rules covering GPTBot, ClaudeBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended. Many default Magento and Adobe Commerce configurations either block these bots or simply never mention them, which some AI crawlers treat as a signal to skip the site entirely. 3. What is the Adobe Commerce MCP server, and do I need an Adobe Experience Platform license to use it? The Adobe Commerce MCP server uses the Model Context Protocol to let AI agents query catalog, cart, pricing, and checkout data directly. Yes, the fully agentic capabilities currently require an Adobe Experience Platform license, which makes this an enterprise-tier feature rather than something available out of the box on every Adobe Commerce instance. 4. What's the practical difference between ACP, UCP, and MCP? ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) is built by OpenAI and Stripe and powers ChatGPT Instant Checkout. UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) is Google's standard for its AI Mode and Gemini. MCP (Model Context Protocol) was created by Anthropic and is the standard Adobe adopted for its own Commerce MCP server. None has become the single industry standard yet, so most merchants are best served by clean, portable product data rather than betting on one protocol exclusively. 5. What's the fastest first step to improve AI visibility for a Magento or Adobe Commerce store? Start with the data layer, not the content layer. Complete and consistent product schema, an accurate AI-readable product feed, and correct robots.txt rules for AI crawlers typically produce a bigger visibility improvement, faster, than rewriting existing content. Content built around decisions and comparisons matters too, but it performs far better once the underlying data is clean.

Meghna VinodMeghna Vinod
Jul 20, 2026 • 6 min read
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How are Manufacturing Companies Growing Revenue Through eCommerce in 2026? General

How are Manufacturing Companies Growing Revenue Through eCommerce in 2026?

How are Manufacturing Companies Growing Revenue Through eCommerce in 2026? In 2019, 13% of B2B sales were generated digitally, and by the end of 2026, that figure is projected to reach 80%. The shift did not happen because manufacturers were told to go online. It happened because buyers stopped waiting for a sales call and started placing orders on their own terms, through portals, search engines, and supplier websites, at any hour, from any location. Manufacturing companies that built a digital sales channel in the last 3 years did not simply open a website. They reduced the cost of serving existing accounts, started generating inbound inquiries from buyers who would never have reached a sales representative, and accessed markets that geography had previously made unreachable. The gap between manufacturers that moved early and those still evaluating the decision is measurable in revenue, account retention, and market share. In this guide, explore how eCommerce for manufacturing actually delivers commercially, what industrial buyers are doing online right now, and what the data shows about the returns manufacturers are seeing. Why are Manufacturing Companies Moving to eCommerce? The Revenue Shift That is Already Happening The global B2B eCommerce market is projected to reach $36 trillion in 2026, growing at a 14.5% CAGR. Advanced manufacturing drives the largest share of that volume. Manufacturer eCommerce is not about replacing existing sales relationships. It is about building a revenue channel that operates without the constraints of a sales team's time, geography, or working hours. This includes a self-service portal that handles reorders at 11 pm, a search-optimized product catalog captures a procurement manager researching in a new market, and a digital RFQ workflow that processes quote requests that previously sat in an inbox for days. The manufacturers seeing the strongest returns are those who treated the digital channel as a commercial investment rather than an IT project. B2B eCommerce Website: What Does It Actually Generate for a Manufacturing Business? The ROI question is the one most manufacturers ask before committing. In 2026, B2B eCommerce implementations deliver a 391% three-year return on investment with an average payback period of seven months, according to IDC's 2025 Business Value Study. Manufacturers who provide B2B buyers with easy-to-use digital interfaces see an average 30% increase in B2B sales, per McKinsey. The returns are not driven by technology alone, but come from four specific commercial outcomes a manufacturing eCommerce website generates that a sales-led operation structurally cannot. Outcomes Brief Lower cost of sale Self-service ordering removes the sales rep from routine reorders, providing the team with the flexibility to focus on higher-value account development. Every order a buyer places independently costs a fraction of what a rep-assisted order costs to process. 24/7 revenue generation A B2B buyer portal for manufacturers operates outside business hours. Reorders, RFQ submissions, and account inquiries are handled automatically, capturing revenue that a sales team's working hours would otherwise miss. Account-specific pricing at scale Contract rates, volume discounts, and customer-specific pricing are applied automatically when a buyer logs in. Manual quote processing is eliminated. Buyers see their negotiated price instantly, which removes the most common reason they call a sales rep instead of placing an order directly. New account acquisition A search-optimized manufacturing eCommerce website surfaces in the research phase of procurement. Buyers who would never have appeared in a sales team's network find the business organically, submit an RFQ, and become accounts without any outbound effort. The operational gains compound the commercial ones. 67% of B2B buyers expect net payment terms that match their accounting cycles and 83% prefer self-serve online ordering. When a manufacturing B2B website delivers both, buyers stop calling and start ordering, which reduces the administrative burden on operations teams as much as it reduces the cost burden on the sales team. Are Industrial Buyers Actually Purchasing Online? What Manufacturers Need to Know Most manufacturers who hesitate on eCommerce share the same belief: their buyers are different. They prefer calls. They value relationships. They would not order a high-value component through a website. It is a reasonable belief. It is also, increasingly, wrong. Today, a procurement manager evaluating two suppliers will check both websites before making contact. If one supplier has detailed product specifications, pricing indications, and stock availability online, and the other does not, the evaluation is often over before a sales call is made. 73% of B2B buyers say a supplier's website directly influences whether they choose to work with them. A supplier's website is now as much a credibility signal as a sales channel. An outdated or thin website signals operational risk to a professional buyer, even when the manufacturer's actual capabilities are strong. What buyers are specifically looking for: Accurate product specifications and technical data that they can evaluate without calling Pricing logic or range indications that confirm the supplier is in the right bracket Stock availability or lead time information that helps them plan procurement Clear contact or RFQ options for when they are ready to proceed The shift is not limited to routine reorders. High-value industrial purchases are increasingly completed digitally when the supplier's platform enables it. The assumption that complex sales cannot move online is being disproved by manufacturers who built the right digital infrastructure and found that buyers used it immediately. eCommerce for Manufacturers: Building a Revenue Channel That Compounds Over Time Most investments in a manufacturing business deliver a return once. A new machine increases output until it reaches capacity. A new hire covers more accounts until their pipeline is full. An eCommerce website works differently, and its value does not plateau. Three effects build on one another simultaneously, and the longer the platform runs, the stronger each becomes: SEO Authority Accumulates: Product pages, category content, and technical guides indexed by search engines accumulate ranking authority every month. A page ranking on page two in month six reaches page one by month twelve. Unlike paid advertising, which stops generating leads the moment the budget stops, organic search traffic compounds continuously. Every new product page added to the catalog is a permanent, searchable asset that attracts buyers without recurring cost. Buyer Data Sharpens Decisions: Every transaction, abandoned cart, and search query on the platform generates data that a phone-and-email operation never captures. Over time, manufacturers use that data to improve product prioritisation, pricing strategy, inventory planning, and catalog structure. The platform becomes more commercially effective the more it is used, which means the return on investment improves without additional spend. Cost per Order Falls: As more buyers shift from calling to self-serving, the cost of processing each order drops. The sales team handles fewer routine reorders and focuses on higher-value account development. The efficiency gain grows as buyer adoption increases, meaning the same eCommerce investment generates more margin per order in year three than it did in year one. From Catalog to Checkout: Features Every Manufacturing eCommerce Website Should Have A manufacturing eCommerce website that does not match how industrial buyers actually purchase will not convert, regardless of how well it ranks or how much traffic it attracts. The features that make the difference are not cosmetic. They are the ones who remove friction from the procurement process at every step a buyer takes, from landing on the site to placing an order. Below are the significant features: Advanced Search and Filtering Industrial buyers searching thousands of SKUs need to find products by specification, material grade, tolerance, or certification. Faceted search and attribute-based filtering are the difference between a catalog buyers use and one they abandon. Product Configurator Let buyers with variable specification requirements build the exact product they need and receive accurate pricing before submitting. Removes the most common reason buyers call rather than order online. ERP Integration for Real-Time Data Live inventory levels, pricing, and lead times pulled directly from the ERP give buyers the information they need to plan procurement without calling. Eliminates orders placed against nonexistent stock. PIM for Technical Product Data Centralizes specifications, certifications, CAD files, and compliance documents so every product page carries the depth industrial buyers need to make a procurement decision independently. Mobile-Optimized Buyer Portal Procurement managers check stock, approve orders, and track shipments on mobile devices as often as on desktop devices. Mobile optimization is a baseline expectation for any buyer. Approval and Workflow Management Supports multi-step approval workflows for purchase orders requiring manager or finance sign-off, keeping the entire procurement process on the platform rather than in email chains. Each feature delivers its full value only when connected to the back-office systems that hold the real data. The integration layer between the eCommerce platform and ERP, PIM, and OMS is where most manufacturing eCommerce implementations either succeed or fall short. The Cost of Waiting: What Manufacturing Businesses Lose Every Quarter Without an eCommerce Channel The decision to delay eCommerce rarely feels like a decision at all. There is always a more pressing capital allocation or a quarter where the timing does not feel right. The delay feels neutral, but it is not. Every quarter, a manufacturing business operates without a digital sales channel, and four losses accumulate silently: Accounts lost to digitally mature competitors: A buyer who cannot find product specifications or pricing on a supplier's website finds a competitor who makes that information accessible. That loss never appears in a lost deal report because no conversation was ever started. SEO authority that cannot be recovered quickly: A competitor who launched two years ago has two years of indexed product pages and ranking history that cannot be replicated quickly. Starting later means paying more to reach the same buyers. Buyer data that is never captured: Every quarter without a digital channel is a quarter without data on what buyers search for, which products stall procurement, and which accounts are at risk. International markets that remain unreachable: A procurement manager in a market the sales team has never covered cannot find a manufacturer without a digital presence. The revenue opportunity exists but is structurally inaccessible. The question is not whether eCommerce will eventually be necessary. It is whether starting now leaves enough runway to build the advantages that make it commercially significant. Ready to build a manufacturing eCommerce website that generates revenue from day one? Codilar works with manufacturing companies on Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce (Magento) to build B2B eCommerce platforms structured for industrial buyers and built to scale. Start the conversation today.

Nikki KumariNikki Kumari
Jul 20, 2026 • 8 min read
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Amazon Singapore Marketplace Closure: What it Means for Retail BrandsShopify

Amazon Singapore Marketplace Closure: What it Means for Retail Brands

Amazon in Singapore: What the Marketplace Closure Means for Retail Brands Key Takeaways Amazon in Singapore no longer supports local marketplace selling after July 7, 2026. Amazon Singapore now operates as an international shopping destination for consumers. The Amazon Singapore marketplace closure highlights the risks of marketplace dependency. Building an owned eCommerce store gives brands greater control over growth and customer data. Shopify helps brands scale beyond marketplaces with a resilient omnichannel strategy. The Amazon marketplace Singapore closure is an opportunity to rethink digital commerce. Amazon in Singapore: What the Marketplace Closure Means for Retail Brands Amazon in Singapore shut down its local marketplace on July 7, 2026. Amazon Fresh, third-party seller listings, Fulfillment by Amazon, and Amazon Ads on Amazon.sg are all gone. For the thousands of Singapore brands and sellers who built their eCommerce presence on the platform, the closure came with 60 days' notice and no guarantee of what comes next. Amazon.sg is still live, allowing customers to shop and browse millions of international products from Amazon's US, Japan, and Germany stores and enjoy Prime benefits. However, the local commerce infrastructure that Singapore brands and sellers depended on no longer exists. The blog covers exactly what changed, what it means for brands that sold through Amazon Singapore, and what the most practical next steps look like for businesses now evaluating their options. What Changed for Amazon in Singapore? The Amazon marketplace closure was not abrupt. Amazon announced the wind-down on May 7, 2026, giving sellers a structured 60-day transition period. Here is exactly what changed and when: What closed on July 7, 2026: Amazon Fresh, including grocery partnerships with Little Farms and Watsons Amazon Retail Third-party seller marketplace Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) operations Amazon Ads on Amazon.sg What continues: Amazon.sg operates as an international storefront with products from Amazon US, Japan, and Germany Prime membership remains active at S$4.99 per month with free two-day delivery on eligible international orders Existing seller accounts remain accessible in Seller Central, though all listings are deactivated Payment settlements, SAFE-T claims, and A-to-z Guarantee obligations continue for 90 days post-closure Is there Amazon in Singapore after July 2026? Yes, but only as a cross-border shopping destination for consumers, not a selling platform for local brands. Is Amazon available in Singapore for local sellers? No, local brands can no longer list, advertise, or fulfill orders through Amazon.sg. Singapore brands wanting to continue selling on Amazon are directed to Amazon Global Selling, which opens access to marketplaces in the US, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East. Why Amazon in Singapore Exited the Local Marketplace Amazon did not leave Singapore quietly. It left after a decade of competing in one of the world's most contested eCommerce markets and finishing with an estimated 6% market share. Understanding why helps brands make smarter decisions about where they invest next. Southeast Asia is not a single market, but a collection of markets with different languages, payment preferences, logistics networks, and consumer behaviors. Winning here requires deep localization like Shopee and Lazada, not the adaptation of a global model. Shopee's annual GMV grew from $1.6 billion in 2017 to $127.4 billion during the same period Amazon operated in Singapore. TikTok Shop is now committing tens of billions to the region, investing in local infrastructure, creator commerce, and payment ecosystems built for Southeast Asian consumers. Amazon's strength has always been its global infrastructure. In Singapore, that global model met a market that rewards local depth over global scale. Operating fulfillment centers, local inventory, advertising systems, and grocery logistics in a market where cross-border commerce offered stronger returns simply did not make commercial sense. The closure does not reflect Singapore's eCommerce potential. It is a reflection of how competitive and localization-dependent that potential is. Amazon Singapore Marketplace Closure: What it Means for Brands For consumers, the closure of the Amazon Singapore marketplace changes very little. Shopping continues, Prime benefits continue, and international products arrive in days. For brands and sellers, the impact is fundamentally different. The following three commercial consequences define what this closure actually means: Customer Relationships Belonged to Amazon, Not the Brand Every buyer of a Singapore brand acquired through the Amazon marketplace was Amazon's customer, not the brand's. These brands had no access to email addresses, purchase history, or the ability to retarget, remarket, or build loyalty outside the platform. When the Amazon Singapore marketplace closed, those customer relationships closed with it. Brands have no way to reach those buyers directly unless they independently build their own customer database through other channels. Discovery Infrastructure That No Longer Exists Amazon's search algorithm, Sponsored Ads, product recommendations, and A+ content drove discoverability for Singapore sellers. Such an entire ecosystem is now unavailable for local brands. Businesses that invested time and budget into optimizing their Amazon presence, building reviews, and running ad campaigns on Amazon.sg start from zero on that platform. The rankings, the reviews, the ad history, none of it transfers. The Real Cost of Marketplace Dependency Amazon held just 6% market share in Singapore despite years of operation, while Shopee's annual GMV grew from $1.6 billion in 2017 to $127.4 billion over the same period. TikTok Shop is now spending tens of billions across Southeast Asia. The competitive reality in Singapore for Amazon was already difficult. However, it was different for brands that concentrated their eCommerce strategy on a single marketplace, and the closure is a direct commercial disruption regardless of Amazon's market position. This is the core risk of building a business on a single marketplace. When that platform changes its policies, raises fees, or exits a market entirely, brands have no fallback. The Amazon Singapore marketplace closure is the clearest example of that risk playing out in Southeast Asia, and it is a reminder that no marketplace, regardless of its size or reputation, is a permanent sales channel. What Singapore Brands Should Do After the Amazon Singapore Marketplace Closure The Amazon Singapore marketplace closure does not mean the end of eCommerce for affected brands. It means the beginning of a more resilient commerce strategy. Here are the four priorities that matter most right now: Audit Existing Customer Data The first step is understanding what customer data the brand already owns independently of Amazon. Email lists, social media followers, past buyers reached through other channels, and CRM records are the foundation of what comes next. Whatever first-party data exists should be consolidated, cleaned, and activated immediately. Diversify Across Marketplaces The lesson from Amazon's exit is not to avoid marketplaces entirely. Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop all operate in Singapore with strong local infrastructure and deep consumer adoption. The lesson is to avoid relying exclusively on any single one. Build an Owned eCommerce Channel The most commercially significant step a Singapore brand can take following the closure of the Amazon Singapore marketplace. An owned storefront means the brand controls the customer relationship, data, experience, and revenue channel entirely. No platform can take that away. Shopify gives Singapore brands a fast, scalable path to an owned eCommerce presence that integrates natively with Shopee, TikTok Shop, and social commerce channels simultaneously, making it a complement to marketplace selling rather than a replacement. For brands evaluating their options, Codilar's shopify store development services cover everything from initial store build to full omnichannel integration. Prepare for Cross-border Commerce Amazon's decision to refocus Amazon.sg on international products rather than local sellers signals where it sees sustainable commerce economics in Singapore. For brands with products that have genuine cross-border appeal, the shift is an opportunity rather than a setback. Shopify's built-in multi-currency, multi-language, and international market tools make cross-border selling accessible from a single storefront, removing the operational complexity. Building Beyond the Amazon Singapore Marketplace: How Codilar Can Help For Singapore brands, evaluating their next commerce move requires building an owned eCommerce store, and the execution is where the work actually begins. Building on Shopify means more than launching a storefront. It means integrating with existing marketplace channels like Shopee and TikTok Shop, setting up local payment methods, configuring cross-border capabilities, and ensuring the store performs at the level Singapore consumers expect. For brands migrating from a marketplace-first model, getting that foundation right from the start determines whether the owned channel becomes a genuine revenue driver or an underperforming side project. Codilar, a Shopify Plus Partner, has helped brands across Southeast Asia to make the transition. From store architecture and design to marketplace connectivity and post-launch optimization, the focus is on building commerce infrastructure that the brand owns, controls, and grows on its own terms. The Amazon Singapore marketplace closure is a disruption. For brands that move decisively, it is also the clearest commercial opportunity the Singapore eCommerce market has seen in years. What’s Ahead for Singapore Brands? The Amazon Singapore marketplace closure is more than the end of a local selling platform. It is an opportunity for brands to rethink how they build and scale digital commerce. While Amazon in Singapore continues as an international shopping destination, businesses now have an opportunity to reduce marketplace dependency by investing in owned commerce and diversifying their sales channels. As a Shopify Plus Partner, Codilar Technologies helps brands make that transition with scalable commerce solutions designed for long-term growth. For Singapore retailers, the real opportunity isn't replacing one marketplace with another, but building a commerce strategy they own and control. Connect with us today. FAQs Q1. Is Amazon available in Singapore after July 2026? Yes, Amazon.sg continues operating as an international shopping destination where Singapore customers can purchase millions of products from Amazon's US, Japan, and Germany stores with Prime benefits and fast delivery. However, local brands and third-party sellers can no longer list or sell products through the platform. Q2. Is there Amazon in Singapore for local sellers? No, the Amazon Singapore marketplace for local sellers officially closed on July 7, 2026. Sellers who want to continue selling through Amazon are directed to Amazon Global Selling, which provides access to Amazon marketplaces across the US, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East. Q3. What happened to Amazon Fresh in Singapore? Amazon Fresh, including grocery partnerships with Little Farms and Watsons, discontinued operations on July 7, 2026. Grocery shopping through Amazon.sg is no longer available. Q4. What are the alternatives to Amazon in Singapore for brands? Singapore brands have strong marketplace alternatives, including Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop, while also investing in an owned eCommerce store using platforms like Shopify. Q5. Should Singapore brands build their own eCommerce store after the Amazon marketplace closure? The closure of the Amazon Singapore marketplace strongly justifies building your own eCommerce store. An owned storefront gives brands full control over customer data, pricing, branding, and the buying experience. It also removes the single-channel dependency that Amazon's closure had just made visible to every marketplace-first brand in Singapore.

Nikki KumariNikki Kumari
Jul 15, 2026 • 7 min read
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Shopify Checkout Extensibility 2026: The August 26 Deadline Every Non-Plus Merchant Is IgnoringShopify

Shopify Checkout Extensibility 2026: The August 26 Deadline Every Non-Plus Merchant Is Ignoring

On August 26, 2026, Shopify auto-upgrades every store on the Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans. Every tracking pixel, Google Ads tag, Meta pixel, and GTM container in the Additional Scripts field of your Shopify checkout page stops firing that day. Orders keep coming in, but ad platforms go blind. Most merchants will not notice until their ROAS collapses and the team spends days chasing a problem that was never in the campaigns. This is not a Shopify Plus story. Plus stores had their deadline in August 2025. The August 26, 2026 deadline applies to every non-Plus Shopify store, regardless of size or revenue. If your store runs tracking pixels, post-purchase scripts, or any custom code on your Thank You or Order Status pages, this is your deadline to act. With 49 days remaining, the window for a planned migration is narrowing fast. This guide covers everything non-Plus merchants need to know, understand, and take action before that date. What Is Shopify Checkout Extensibility and Why Does It Matter in 2026? Shopify Checkout Extensibility replaces how checkout customization works across the entire platform. It retires checkout.liquid, Additional Scripts, and Shopify Scripts, the three legacy methods merchants used to inject custom code into the Shopify checkout page, and replaces them with four structured, sandboxed tools. The new system isolates custom code from Shopify's core checkout environment, making it more secure, faster, and immune to breaking on platform updates. The following are the four tools replacing the legacy system. Each legacy customization method maps directly to a replacement tool. Understanding that mapping is what makes the migration manageable rather than overwhelming for non-technical merchant teams. Checkout UI Extensions (Replaces checkout.liquid visual customizations) React-based components that add custom elements, including fields, banners, upsell offers, and trust badges, to specific checkout regions without directly editing any template file. Shopify Pixels and Web Pixels (Replaces Additional Scripts and app script tags) Sandboxed tracking scripts managed in Settings → Customer Events. Google Ads, Meta pixel, TikTok, Pinterest, and affiliate tracking all move here from the deprecated Additional Scripts field. Shopify Functions (Replaces Shopify Scripts) Server-side business logic running in a WebAssembly sandbox. Custom discounts, shipping rules, and payment method controls move here from Ruby-based Shopify Scripts. Checkout Editor (Replaces Script-based post-purchase page customizations) Visual drag-and-drop in Shopify admin for managing app blocks and layout on the Thank You and Order Status pages, requiring no code for standard customizations. What is Changing on August 26, 2026: The Non-Plus Shopify Checkout Deadline Explained Shopify Checkout Extensibility has been rolling out in stages since 2023. Plus, stores met their deadlines in 2024 and 2025. August 26, 2026, is the stage that applies to every Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plan store, and it is the one that has received the least attention despite affecting the most merchants. On that date, Shopify auto-upgrades every non-Plus store. Any Additional Scripts, app script tags, or deprecated customizations on the Shopify Thank You page and Order Status page are removed, not migrated. Official Shopify channel apps may carry over. Custom tracking pixels, GTM containers, affiliate scripts, and anything pasted directly into the Additional Scripts field do not. Here is what that means in practice: What stops working after August 26, 2026? Google Ads conversion tracking goes silent: Campaigns stop reporting conversions, Smart Bidding starts optimizing against zero-value events, and ROAS collapses within two to three days, with no obvious explanation in the ad account. Meta pixel purchase events stop firing: CAPI attribution breaks, retargeting audiences stop updating, and lookalike campaigns lose the purchase signals they depend on. Affiliate tracking scripts go dark: Commissions are no longer attributed correctly. Partner relationships that depend on post-purchase confirmation events break silently. Post-purchase upsell apps built on script injection stop loading: Any app that uses script tags on the Thank You or Order Status page to display offers, surveys, or loyalty prompts stops functioning after the auto-upgrade runs. What Breaks if You Miss the Shopify Checkout Extensibility Deadline The auto-upgrade on August 26 does not break the checkout itself. Orders are processed normally, and customers complete purchases without seeing any error. However, the damage happens in the systems that depend on what used to live in Additional Scripts and script tags on the Thank You and Order Status pages. Most merchants will not know anything is wrong until the data stops making sense. What breaks depends on how the store is set up. The scenarios below cover the most common breakages across non-Plus Shopify stores, based on how merchants typically use Additional Scripts and script-injecting apps today: Google Ads tracking: Conversion tags in Additional Scripts stop firing, Smart Bidding optimizes against zero data, and ROAS collapses within days. Meta pixel events: Purchase events stop sending, retargeting audiences lose signals, and lookalike campaigns degrade over weeks. GTM containers: All tags inside GTM go dark simultaneously, including GA4, Pinterest, TikTok, and Bing Ads. Affiliate tracking: Commission attribution breaks. Partners stop receiving confirmation events and may pause traffic. Post-purchase apps: Upsell offers, surveys, and loyalty prompts built on script tags stop rendering on the Thank You page. Shopify Checkout Extensibility: What Replaces Additional Scripts, checkout.liquid, and Script Tags Every legacy customization has a supported replacement in the new framework. Tracking pixels and conversion tags are moved to Shopify Pixels in Settings, then to Customer Events. Google and Meta have officially managed pixel apps that handle this automatically. For platforms without a managed app, Custom Pixels let merchants paste tracking code into a sandboxed environment that survives future Shopify updates. Post-purchase upsell and survey apps need to be rebuilt on Checkout UI Extensions. If an installed app has not been updated by its developer to support Checkout Extensibility, it will not work after the upgrade. Check each app in the personalized upgrade guide in Shopify admin under Settings, then Checkout. Apps flagged as incompatible must be replaced with Checkout Extensibility-compatible alternatives from the Shopify App Store by August 26. Also Read: https://www.codilar.com/blog/store-decode How to Audit Your Shopify Store Before the August 26 Deadline: A Step-by-Step Checklist Completing the audit before August 26 takes most stores between one and four hours, depending on how many customizations are in place. Start now, and there is time to migrate without developer pressure. Step 01: Go to Settings, then Checkout in Shopify admin. Check for a yellow upgrade banner in the Configurations section. If present, click Review Customizations. Step 02: Open the Additional Scripts field in Checkout settings. Copy every script into a document before August 26. After the deadline, this field becomes inaccessible. Step 03: Check Settings, then Customer Events. Confirm that your Google and Meta Pixel apps are installed and active as managed pixels, not as script injections. Step 04: Review every installed app that touches checkout. Ask the developer or check the App Store listing: is this app compatible with Shopify Checkout Extensibility? Incompatible apps need replacing. Step 05: Place a test order after migrating. Verify Google Ads and Meta purchase events fire correctly on their respective platforms. Check that all Thank You page content loads as expected. Shopify Plus vs Non-Plus: How Checkout Extensibility Works Differently Across Plans Checkout Extensibility is not the same experience across all Shopify plans. Understanding the difference matters because several features merchants associate with Checkout Extensibility are Plus-exclusive. The most important distinction for non-Plus merchants: Checkout UI Extensions for the information, shipping, and payment steps of the checkout flow are available exclusively on Shopify Plus. Non-Plus stores can customize the Thank You and Order Status pages using the new framework, but the core checkout steps remain Shopify's controlled environment on all plans below Plus.

Nikki KumariNikki Kumari
Jul 14, 2026 • 6 min read
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Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.5 is Ending: Upgrade Timeline, Risks, and Next Steps for Merchants Adobe

Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.5 is Ending: Upgrade Timeline, Risks, and Next Steps for Merchants

Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.5 is Ending: Upgrade Timeline, Risks, and Next Steps for Merchants On August 11, 2026, Adobe stops delivering security patches, bug fixes, and compliance updates for Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.5 and 2.4.6. Both versions hit the same deadline on the same date, affecting thousands of merchants worldwide. The stores that do not upgrade in time do not shut down; they continue processing orders and payments, but simply do so on a platform that Adobe will no longer protect. The risk that follows the end of support is not theoretical. When Adobe ended Magento 1 support in June 2020, over 7,500 Magento stores were compromised in a single coordinated attack campaign in the months that followed. Attackers specifically targeted stores on unsupported versions because the vulnerabilities were publicly documented and permanently unpatched. The same conditions apply after August 11, 2026, for every store still running 2.4.5 or 2.4.6. For merchants on 2.4.5, the extended support window Adobe offered at no additional cost since August 2025 ends on August 11. For merchants on 2.4.6, regular support simply ends on the same date with no extension available. The upgrade destination for both groups is Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.8, and a typical upgrade takes 2 to 6 weeks, depending on store complexity. The window is tighter than most merchants realize. What is the Latest Magento Version in 2026? The current latest version of Magento is Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.8, released on April 8, 2025, with regular support running through April 11, 2028. Most implementation partners recommend waiting for 2.4.9-p1 before upgrading production stores, since the .0 release of any major version carries early-adoption risk with third-party extensions that need time to validate compatibility. The version landscape below shows exactly where every merchant stands as of July 2026: Version Released on End of Regular Support End of Extended Support Status 2.4.4 April 2022 April 12, 2025 April 14, 2026 End of life 2.4.5 August 2022 August 12, 2025 August 11, 2026 Ending August 11 2.4.6 March 2023 August 11, 2026 Not available Ending August 11 2.4.7 April 2024 April 9, 2027 Not available Supported 2.4.8 April 2025 April 11, 2028 Not available Recommended 2.4.9 May 2026 May 2029 Not available Latest, wait for p1 Adobe supports direct upgrades from both 2.4.5 and 2.4.6 to 2.4.8, requiring not to pass through 2.4.7 first. A typical upgrade takes two to six weeks, covering extension audit, compatibility testing, staging environment validation, and go-live. Stores with heavily customized codebases or a large number of third-party extensions sit toward the six-week end of that range. Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.5 and 2.4.6 End of Support: Security Risks, Compliance Impact The end of Adobe Commerce 2.4.5 and 2.4.6 support does not mean the end of operations. The store keeps running, but responsibility for its security shifts entirely from Adobe to the merchant. Every vulnerability discovered after August 11 becomes a permanent exposure with no official patch available. The shift has three distinct consequences: Security: The Risk That Compounds Daily Adobe Commerce (Magento) stores process payment data and store customer records at significant volume, making them consistently high-value targets. Over 7,500 Magento stores were compromised in a single coordinated attack in early 2026, the majority of which were running versions with publicly documented, unpatched vulnerabilities. After August 11, every new CVE filed against 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 will remain permanently open. Adobe will not release patches or hotfixes for unsupported versions regardless of severity. Compliance: PCI-DSS Obligations Do Not Pause for Platform Deadlines Merchants processing card payments operate under PCI-DSS requirements that include maintaining a secure, patched environment. Running unsupported software is a direct compliance exposure that a qualified security assessor will flag. Adobe explicitly states that PCI compliance will be at risk for merchants who do not upgrade by the end of 2026. Operational Breakdown: What Stops Working After August 11 Three operational dependencies are already breaking down for stores that remain on 2.4.5. MySQL 8.0 PHP 8.1 Third-party extensions A store on 2.4.5 in September 2026 carries more technical debt than the same store on August 12. Every month without a supported platform adds unpatched vulnerabilities and compatibility conflicts that make the eventual upgrade more expensive and more complex. Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.8: Key Changes, PHP Updates, and What Merchants Need to Know Upgrading from 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 to 2.4.8 is not simply a matter of moving to a supported version, but a meaningful platform advancement. Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.8, released on April 8, 2025, introduces significant changes across infrastructure dependencies, security architecture, API performance, and B2B functionality. Understanding what changes gives merchants a clearer picture of what the upgrade delivers and what it requires in preparation: Infrastructure and Platform Dependencies The single most commercially important change in 2.4.8 is at the infrastructure level. Merchants upgrading from 2.4.5 are moving from PHP 8.1, which reached community end of life in December 2024, to PHP 8.3 or 8.4, both of which are actively maintained through 2027 and 2028, respectively. Dependency 2.4.5 Today 2.4.8 PHP 8.1, community EOL December 2024 8.3 and 8.4, maintained through 2027 and 2028 MariaDB 10.6, approaching the end of life 11.4 LTS, supported through 2029 MySQL 8.0, EOS April 30, 2026 8.4 LTS, supported through 2032 Adobe support Ends August 11, 2026 Runs through April 11, 2028 Stronger Security Architecture The Duo Security 2FA implementation updates to Web SDK v4, replacing a deprecated SDK with known weaknesses. REST API access control now restricts admin users to viewing only orders within their assigned website, closing a data exposure issue present in 2.4.5 and 2.4.6. Subresource Integrity support now covers all pages, not just payment pages, protecting against Magecart-style attacks that inject malicious code outside the checkout flow. B2B and Performance Improvements Bulk actions on catalog price rules allow multiple rules to be changed or deleted simultaneously, reducing manual overhead for merchants managing complex promotional pricing. Mobile preview for staged content lets teams review promotions and CMS changes on mobile before publishing. Indexer and caching improvements mean stores handle high-traffic events and large B2B order batches more reliably. Bulk API operations, including catalog updates and inventory synchronizations run faster, benefiting any store with an ERP or PIM integration. What stays the same The storefront architecture, checkout flow, and admin panel are operationally familiar from day one. Existing custom themes and modules that pass compatibility testing continue working. Merchants are not learning a new platform. They are running the same platform on a fully supported foundation. Adobe Commerce (Magento) Security Patches in 2026: The New Monthly Cadence Explained Adobe restructured how it ships security patches in January 2026, replacing the old quarterly model with monthly isolated fixes. For merchants on supported versions, this makes staying current significantly easier. For merchants on 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 after August 11, it makes no difference. The new cadence only applies to supported versions. How the New Patch Model Works Under the old quarterly model, a critical vulnerability could sit unaddressed for up to 90 days before the next patch bundle shipped. The new model closes that window. Adobe now ships monthly isolated security patches addressing specific CVEs as they are discovered, along with two aggregated patch bundles per year, in May and November. Patches are smaller, lower risk to apply, and reach production stores in weeks rather than months. Patch type Previous model 2026 model Security fixes Bundled quarterly Monthly isolated patches Aggregated releases Four per year Two per year, May and November Time to patch critical CVE Up to 90 days Weeks, sometimes days The Latest 2.4.5 Patch: What p17 Covers The latest security patch for Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.5, p17, released in May 2026, addresses vulnerabilities per Adobe Security Bulletin APSB26-49. It adds support for Valkey 8.1 LTS as a cache backend and for RabbitMQ 4.2 compatibility. Merchants on 2.4.5 who have not applied p17 should do so immediately. Running an earlier patch while planning the upgrade to 2.4.8 means carrying known, unaddressed vulnerabilities in the interim. Note: patches p11 through p17 are available only to Adobe Commerce customers. Merchants on Magento Open Source 2.4.5 cannot apply them and have been without official security patches since August 12, 2025. What the Cadence Means after Upgrading to 2.4.8 Once on 2.4.8, merchants immediately benefit from the monthly patch cadence. Adobe recommends applying patches within 30 days of release. The current recommended production version is 2.4.8-p4. Smaller, targeted patches reduce the risk of regression compared to larger quarterly bundles. For managed hosting merchants, the provider handles patch application. Self-hosted stores need their own patch management process and staging environment. How to Upgrade from Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.5 to 2.4.8: Steps, Timeline, and Cost A typical Adobe Commerce (Magento) upgrade from 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 to 2.4.8 takes two to six weeks. The upgrade includes the following two paths: In-place upgrade: Updates the platform core while preserving the existing theme, extensions, and data. The fastest and least disruptive path. Works best for stores with a relatively clean codebase and no major architectural changes planned. Most merchants on 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 with standard implementations take this route. Rebuilt with upgrade: Combines the version upgrade with a frontend rebuild, architecture modernization, or Hyvä theme adoption. Takes longer but addresses accumulated technical debt alongside the version requirement. Suited to merchants on 2.4.3 or earlier custom-heavy stores, or those using the upgrade as a trigger for a broader platform improvement. Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.5 to 2.4.8: Step-by-Step Upgrade Sequence Step 1: Environment audit and compatibility check Document the current PHP version, database version, extension list, and custom module inventory. Run the Adobe Commerce Upgrade Compatibility Tool against the 2.4.8 codebase to identify breaking changes in custom code. Check every third-party extension against the vendor's 2.4.8 compatibility matrix. Extensions without confirmed 2.4.8 support need alternative sourcing or custom development before the upgrade proceeds. Step 2: Staging environment setup Build a staging environment that replicates production as accurately as possible, including the same data volume, extensions, and integrations. The staging environment is where the upgrade runs first. Going straight to production without staging is the single most common cause of avoidable go-live failures in Magento upgrades. Step 3: PHP and database upgrade Upgrade PHP to 8.3 or 8.4 and migrate the database to MariaDB 11.4 LTS or MySQL 8.4. These infrastructure changes run before the Adobe Commerce (Magento) application upgrade. Merchants on 2.4.5 with PHP 8.1 are making a two-generation PHP jump, which requires validating every custom module and extension against PHP 8.1 before the application upgrade begins. Step 4: Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.8 application upgrade Run the upgrade via Composer: composer require magento/product-community-edition=2.4.8 --no-update, then composer update, followed by bin/magento setup:upgrade, setup:di:compile, setup:static-content:deploy, and cache:clean. Direct upgrades from 2.4.5 and 2.4.6 to 2.4.8 are fully supported. There is no requirement to pass through 2.4.7 first. Step 5: Extension and custom module testing Test every extension and custom module against the upgraded codebase in staging. Cover all critical user journeys, including product browsing, cart and checkout, payment processing, order management, and any B2B workflows. Extension testing is consistently the longest and most unpredictable step. Budget generously for this phase, especially for stores with five or more third-party extensions. Step 6: UAT and go-live Run user acceptance testing with the merchant team covering all operational workflows. Sign off on checkout flows, payment gateways, and any integrations running against live data. Go live on a low-traffic day, keep the previous environment accessible for 48 hours post-go-live for rollback if needed, and monitor orders, integrations, and error logs closely through the first week. Adobe Commerce (Magento) Upgrade Support: How Codilar Helps Merchants Migrate Before the August 2026 Deadline The August 11 deadline is not just a compliance requirement. It is the right moment to address accumulated technical debt, modernize the infrastructure stack, and evaluate whether the current frontend still serves the business. Merchants who treat it as a planned program rather than an emergency response get better outcomes on every dimension, including timeline, budget, and post-launch stability. Codilar Technologies brings over 240 specialists across Adobe Commerce (Magento), Shopify Plus, AEM, CRO, and performance hosting. For merchants on 2.4.5 or 2.4.6, Codilar provides a structured environment assessment, extension compatibility audit, and an execution plan built around the August 11 deadline. Ready to start immediately? Codilar's team can begin the pre-upgrade audit within days. Connect with us before the deadline.

Nikki KumariNikki Kumari
Jul 14, 2026 • 6 min read
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How Much Does a Jewelry eCommerce Website Cost in 2026?General

How Much Does a Jewelry eCommerce Website Cost in 2026?

Key Takeaways There's no single "correct" jewelry eCommerce website cost. It depends on catalog size, platform, and feature depth, and any guide quoting one exact figure is oversimplifying. Live gold and diamond pricing, SKU variant management, and component-level discounting are the biggest jewelry-specific cost drivers, regardless of investment tier. Shopify suits smaller to mid-size catalogs; Adobe Commerce suits large, complex, high-volume jewelry operations. Purpose-built platforms like Hyza can shortcut jewelry-specific development work compared to building the same logic from scratch. Budgeting for ongoing maintenance and hidden costs (photography, transaction fees, hosting) avoids unpleasant surprises after launch. How Much Does a Jewelry eCommerce Website Cost in 2026? If you sell jewelry, you already know it isn't like selling t-shirts or phone cases. Gold rates change daily, every ring comes in a dozen size and metal combinations, and customers want to zoom in on a diamond before they'll trust it enough to buy. All of that shapes one very practical question for jewelry brand owners and D2C founders: how much does a jewelry eCommerce website actually cost in 2026? There's no single number that fits every business, and any guide that hands you an exact figure without knowing your catalog, features, and platform is guessing. What we can do instead is break down the real cost drivers, show you the tiers businesses typically fall into, and explain what jewelry-specific features actually add to the equation, so you can have an informed conversation with a development partner instead of walking in blind. What Determines the Cost of a Jewelry eCommerce Website Before looking at tiers, it helps to know what actually drives the number up or down. Six factors matter most: Platform choice: A hosted platform like Shopify versus a self-hosted system like Adobe Commerce (Magento), or a jewelry-specific platform built on top of one Catalog complexity: How many metal, size, and stone variants each product needs Custom features: Ring builders, live gold-rate calculators, virtual try-on, appointment booking Design: A premium theme versus a fully custom, brand-led experience Integrations: ERP, inventory, CRM, and payment gateway connections Ongoing support: Maintenance, security, and feature updates after launch Jewelry specifically adds cost that a typical apparel or electronics store doesn't have to think about. Live gold and diamond pricing, component-level discounting (a sale on making charges isn't the same as a sale on the whole product), and hundreds of SKU variants per design all require backend logic that a standard store template simply isn't built for. As Codilar's guide to jewelry eCommerce development points out, a single ring design can generate over 500 variants once you account for purity, color, size, and diamond grade, and pricing every one of those correctly in real time is a technical problem most generic platforms were never built to solve. The Three Investment Tiers for Jewelry eCommerce Rather than quoting exact figures, which vary widely by region, agency, and scope, it's more useful to think in terms of three broad investment tiers. Starter tier: Suited to new jewelry brands, home-based sellers, or businesses testing the market with a smaller catalog. This typically means a premium theme with light customization, standard checkout, and basic product photography, enough to launch and validate demand. Live gold-rate pricing and ring builders are usually out of scope at this level. Growth tier: Where most established jewelry D2C brands land. This includes custom storefront design, integrations with payment gateways and marketing tools, and often a first jewelry-specific feature like a basic ring configurator with pre-set combinations. Codilar's Shopify development services largely serve this tier, building conversion-focused storefronts with the performance and trust signals jewelry buyers expect before completing a high-value purchase. Enterprise tier: Built for brands with large, complex catalogs, multiple locations, or ambitions to compete with established players. This is almost always built on Adobe Commerce (Magento) rather than a hosted platform, because it needs backend flexibility a hosted platform doesn't offer natively, dynamic pricing engines, centralized product tables for hundreds of SKU variants, full virtual try-on, and deep ERP/OMS integrations. Codilar has built exactly this kind of system for major jewelry retailers, including Candere by Kalyan Jewellers, where a redesigned Adobe Commerce architecture doubled average session time. That work, along with projects for Joyalukkas and Malabar Gold & Diamonds, is what shaped Codilar's approach to jewelry ecommerce more broadly. "Jewelry eCommerce is one of the few verticals where the backend has to work as hard as the storefront. If your pricing engine can't keep up with the gold rate, nothing else about the site matters, the customer won't trust the number on the screen." - Mahaveer Devabalan, Co-founder & Head of eCommerce Solutions, Codilar Jewelry-Specific Features That Add to the Cost A few features consistently push jewelry eCommerce budgets higher than a standard store, regardless of which platform or tier you choose: Live gold and diamond rate pricing: Requires a pricing engine that recalculates SKUs whenever the market rate shifts, a meaningful chunk of backend work regardless of catalog size. Ring builders and product configurators: A basic version with pre-set combinations is a relatively contained build; a fully dynamic version with real-time inventory checks is a much larger undertaking. Virtual try-on (VTO/AR): Adds meaningful development time but can reduce returns by cutting down on size and style mismatches. High-resolution imagery and 360-degree views: Essential for jewelry, but they slow down page speed if not optimized, and a slow jewelry site loses buyers fast, since shoppers researching an expensive purchase won't tolerate a sluggish experience. Shopify vs. Adobe Commerce for Jewelry Brands There's no universally "best platform to sell jewelry online". It depends on your catalog size and growth stage. Choose Shopify (or Shopify Plus) if: Your catalog is smaller and more manageable in scope You want faster launch timelines and lower upfront investment You're comfortable using apps for advanced customization Choose Adobe Commerce (Magento) if: You need live pricing tied to gold and diamond rates across a large catalog You require deep ERP or multi-store integrations You're operating at enterprise scale with dedicated technical resources For brands scaling on Shopify or Adobe Commerce, Codilar's Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce experts focus on exactly this kind of growth-stage complexity, without the overhead of a full platform migration before it's actually needed. And if you do outgrow your current platform, migration doesn't have to mean starting from zero or losing your search rankings in the process. Codilar handles migrations from any platform, including WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or a legacy custom build, to Shopify or Adobe Commerce, with SEO preservation (redirects, metadata, internal links) built into the process rather than treated as an afterthought. Hyza: A Purpose-Built Platform for Jewelry eCommerce There's also a third path worth knowing about: instead of building jewelry-specific logic from scratch on a general platform, some brands start on a platform already built for jewelry. Hyza, Codilar's jewelry eCommerce solution, is built on Magento specifically to handle the mechanics covered in this guide, live gold rate management, dynamic weight configuration, engrave management, and price breakup display, without needing custom development for each one. Hyza is structured in tiers based on catalog size and feature depth, which maps naturally onto the investment tiers above: Its entry-level plan covers core jewelry mechanics like gold rate management, weight configuration, size selection, and catalog and order management for smaller catalogs. Its mid-level plan adds appointment booking, 360-degree product views, and more advanced payment and promotional tools for growing catalogs. Its top-level plan adds ERP and CRM integration, custom jewelry product logic, and advanced saving scheme support for larger, more complex operations. Because these features are already built rather than custom-developed, brands using Hyza often reach launch faster than a fully custom build would allow, particularly for the growth-tier features covered earlier in this guide. Pricing is quote-based depending on plan and scope. You can get in touch with our Hyza team at Codilar for a plan that matches your catalog size. Hidden Costs Most Jewelry Brands Overlook Beyond the initial build, a few recurring costs catch jewelry brands off guard: Ongoing maintenance and support, typically billed as a percentage of the original build cost annually Payment gateway and transaction fees, which matter more in jewelry given higher average order values Professional product photography, priced per image and easy to underestimate at scale Hosting and security, especially for self-hosted platforms like Adobe Commerce Open Source Marketing and customer acquisition, which is separate from the website cost but essential to making the investment pay off How to Keep Your Jewelry eCommerce Costs Under Control Launch with core features first. Add ring builders and AR try-on once you've validated demand, not before. Choose a partner with jewelry-specific experience. Pre-built solutions for pricing engines and configurators save significant rework later. Budget for the full first year, not just launch. Hosting, maintenance, and feature updates are recurring costs, not one-time ones. Match your platform to your catalog size, not the other way around. Overbuilding on Adobe Commerce for a small catalog wastes budget; underbuilding on a basic theme for a large, complex catalog creates operational headaches down the line. Conclusion "How much does a jewelry eCommerce website cost" doesn't have a one-line answer, and it shouldn't. What matters more than a number is choosing a platform and partner that fits your catalog today and won't need to be rebuilt the moment your business outgrows it. Whether that means a custom Shopify build, a full Adobe Commerce platform, or a jewelry-specific solution like Hyza depends entirely on where your business is and where it's headed. Thinking through your own jewelry eCommerce build? Get in touch with Codilar's commerce team to talk through what your catalog actually needs before you commit to a budget. FAQs Which platform is best for selling jewelry online, Shopify or Magento? Shopify suits smaller to mid-size catalogs and faster launches. Magento (Adobe Commerce) suits large catalogs that need live gold rate pricing and deep integrations. Most jewelry brands start on Shopify and move to Magento once complexity grows. How do I add live gold rate pricing to my jewelry website? You need a dynamic pricing engine that pulls live gold or diamond rates, adds making charges and tax, and recalculates prices automatically. Standard platforms do not support this natively. It requires a custom app or a jewelry-specific platform like Hyza that has this built in. Can I migrate my jewelry store from WooCommerce or Shopify to Magento without losing SEO? Yes, if SEO is planned into the migration from the start. This means preserving URLs or setting up proper redirects, carrying over metadata, and rebuilding internal links. Skipping this step is what causes traffic drops after migration. What features does a jewelry website need: ring builder, AR try-on, 360 view? High-resolution zoom photography and a 360-degree view are essential from day one. A ring builder matters once you sell customizable pieces. AR try-on is a growth-stage feature that reduces returns but is not required at launch. How do I manage hundreds of ring size and metal variants without the catalog breaking? Do not create a separate SKU for every variation. Use centralized product models that reference shared metal and stone price tables instead. This keeps pricing accurate and the catalog fast, even with hundreds of combinations per design. How much does it cost to start an online jewelry business, including the website? Beyond the website itself, factor in initial inventory or sample stock, product photography, a business license, and early marketing spend. These costs vary significantly by region and scale, so it's worth budgeting them alongside your website investment rather than treating the site as the only cost. How much does an eCommerce website cost in general, outside of jewelry? General eCommerce websites span a wide range, from simple template-based stores for small businesses to fully custom enterprise builds. Jewelry-specific features (dynamic pricing, configurators, high-end imagery) tend to push costs toward the higher end of whatever range a given platform or agency quotes.

Meghna VinodMeghna Vinod
Jul 9, 2026 • 8 min read
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SEO for Shopify in 2026: Optimizing for Google AI, ChatGPT, and AI SearchShopify

SEO for Shopify in 2026: Optimizing for Google AI, ChatGPT, and AI Search

SEO for Shopify is evolving as AI becomes a larger part of how users discover products online. Google AI Overviews now generate summarized answers for many search queries, while AI assistants like ChatGPT are increasingly used to research products, compare options, and support purchase decisions. Thus, Shopify stores are no longer competing only for rankings in traditional search results but also for visibility within AI-generated responses. For merchants, Shopify SEO optimization now extends beyond keywords and metadata. AI-powered search systems rely on structured data, detailed product information, technical website performance, topical authority, and credible trust signals to understand and recommend content. Stores that provide clear, accurate, and well-structured information are better positioned to appear across both conventional search results and AI-driven search experiences. The guide examines how SEO on Shopify is changing in 2026, the factors influencing AI-powered product discovery, and the Shopify SEO best practices businesses can adopt to strengthen long-term organic visibility. Why Shopify SEO Has Changed in 2026: Google AI, Zero-Click, and GEO Search behaviour shifted faster in the last two years. Traditional Google search now accounts for 67% of product research, down from 89% in 2023. The gap went to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. Zero-click is now the default. When AI Overviews appear, organic clicks drop 38% and zero-click searches jump from 54% to 72%. For eCommerce specifically, only 3.2% of shopping queries trigger an AI Overview today. Transactional queries still drive clicks because shoppers need to visit a store to buy. That advantage narrows every quarter as AI systems build native checkout capabilities into their responses. This is where Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, comes in. GEO structures content, data, and brand authority so AI systems recommend a store's products in their generated answers. It does not replace traditional SEO. It builds on top of it. Traditional SEO GEO Goal Rank in Google's blue links Get cited in AI-generated answers Primary signals Keywords, backlinks, and authority Structured data, content quality, and brand trust Channels Google Search ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews Conversion rate Baseline organic Nearly 50% higher than standard organic Brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more clicks than those not cited. Being recommended is the new ranking. Shopify Technical SEO in 2026: Core Web Vitals, Canonical Tags, and AI Crawl Access Before any content or schema work delivers results, the technical foundation has to be solid. Below are the three areas that consistently limit Shopify stores the most: The duplicate URL problem: Shopify creates two accessible URLs for every product: /products/[handle] and /collections/[handle]/products/[handle]. Both resolve and can be indexed, splitting ranking authority. Canonical tags must point Google to the primary URL consistently across all product and collection pages. Core Web Vitals: he performance floor: In March 2026, Google tightened the Good LCP threshold from 2.5 seconds to 2.0 seconds, and only 39% of eCommerce sites pass all three Core Web Vitals simultaneously. The three metrics in 2026 are: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Under 2.0 seconds. Optimize hero images, convert to WebP or AVIF, use Shopify's CDN. INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Under 200ms. Minimize JavaScript execution. Over-installed apps are the most common cause of INP failure on Shopify. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Under 0.1. Define image and video dimensions to prevent layout jumping during load. The AI crawler blind spot: Many Shopify stores block AI crawlers through outdated robots.txt configurations. A store blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, or Google-Extended is invisible to those platforms regardless of content or schema quality. This is a one-line fix with significant visibility implications. Quick technical audit checklist: Canonical tags configured correctly for all product URLs Core Web Vitals passing: LCP under 2.0s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1 robots.txt open to GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended XML sitemap clean, submitted to Google Search Console, excluding noindex pages Mobile-first experience validated via Google's Mobile-Friendly Test App stack audited for performance impact Shopify SEO Optimization for Product and Collection Pages Most Shopify stores concentrate SEO effort on product pages and leave collection pages thin. That is the wrong priority order. Stores that fix technical SEO before chasing keywords or backlinks see organic revenue grow two to three times faster. For collection pages: Map one primary commercial keyword per collection page Write 150 to 300 words of unique content above the product grid Include what the category covers, who it suits, and what to look for when buying Add FAQ schema targeting the most common pre-purchase questions in that category For product pages: Target long-tail, transactional keywords in the page title and H1 Write descriptions that answer what the product is, who it suits, what problem it solves, and what makes it different Include specific attributes: dimensions, materials, compatibility, certifications, and use cases Never use manufacturer copy. Duplicate descriptions are one of the most penalized issues in Shopify SEO For blog content: Map informational keywords to buying-journey stages: awareness, consideration, decision Build topical clusters with a pillar page per category linked to spoke articles on specific questions Buying guides and product comparisons earn AI citations three to five times more frequently than generic articles Update all content at a minimum quarterly. Content freshness matters three times more for maintaining AI citations than for traditional SEO rankings. MageStore Best SEO Tools for Shopify in 2026: Schema, Analytics, and AI Visibility The right tools eliminate guesswork and surface issues that are invisible to manual auditing. Tool Purpose Best for Google Search Console Rankings, impressions, Core Web Vitals, AI Overview appearances Every Shopify store and non-negotiable Google PageSpeed Insights Core Web Vitals scoring at URL level Performance auditing Google Rich Results Test Schema validation After every schema implementation Ahrefs / Semrush Keyword research, competitor analysis, backlinks Keyword strategy and content planning Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit AI Overview citation tracking, AI visibility score GEO measurement Otterly.ai / Promptmonitor Brand citation tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude AI mention monitoring Judge.me / Loox Review collection with automatic schema markup Review SEO and star ratings in SERP Shopify SEO Best Practices for Structured Data and Schema Markup Schema has shifted from a nice-to-have SEO tactic to a load-bearing part of how Shopify stores get found. This is due to AI overviews showing on roughly 16% of eCommerce searches in 2026, and shopping agents like Perplexity and ChatGPT pulling answers directly from structured data. Shopify's default themes include basic Product schema, but it is almost always incomplete. Schema implementation by priority: Tier 1: Ship immediately Product: Price, currency, availability, brand, SKU, GTIN, images, AggregateRating Organization: Brand name, logo, contact, social profiles BreadcrumbList: Sitewide Tier 2: High impact for AI citation FAQ: Collection pages and buying guides Article: All blog posts Tier 3: Add for additional SERP features Review: Product-level reviews from Judge.me or Loox Offer: Pricing details for time-limited promotions LocalBusiness: Stores with physical locations Pages with complete Product schema are 2.5 times more likely to be cited in Google's AI Overviews, and stores with proper schema see 20-40% higher click-through rates compared to plain blue links. Star ratings from the Review schema increase clicks by 30% or more compared to listings without ratings. How to Improve SEO on Shopify for AI Search: GEO and AEO Implementation Shopify's Summer '26 Everywhere Edition, shipped June 17, enabled Universal Commerce Protocol by default across all stores. Every eligible merchant's catalog is now discoverable inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, and Gemini without custom integration. But availability is not visibility. Whether AI agents recommend a store's products depends on data quality, content structure, and brand authority. Here’s how to optimize specifically for AI search discovery: 1. Open AI crawler access Confirm GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, and Google-Extended are not blocked in robots.txt. Without this, nothing else matters. 2. Complete product data for every SKU AI systems match products to buyer queries using product attributes. Every SKU needs a complete, specific description with use cases, dimensions, materials, and compatibility information. Vague descriptions do not get recommended. 3. Answer the questions buyers ask AI The queries shoppers type into ChatGPT are conversational: "What is the best waterproof backpack for commuting under $100?" Product pages, collection pages, and buying guides optimized to answer these specific question formats are the ones AI systems cite in their responses. 4. Build external authority E-E-A-T is evaluated by AI systems primarily through off-site validation: which authoritative publications mention or link to the brand, which trusted third-party platforms reference it, and what the broader web says about its credibility. Trustpilot reviews, editorial coverage, and industry citations are not optional for AI visibility. They are the trust layer AI systems use to validate whether a store is genuinely credible. 5. Measure AI visibility quarterly Run 20 to 30 high-intent buyer queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. Track whether the brand, products, or content appears in the responses. Use Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit or Otterly.ai to automate tracking at scale.

Nikki KumariNikki Kumari
Jul 7, 2026 • 6 min read
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How to Migrate from Zid to Shopify Without Losing Your Data, SEO, or Revenue Shopify

How to Migrate from Zid to Shopify Without Losing Your Data, SEO, or Revenue

Key Takeaways Zid helps Saudi brands launch quickly, while Shopify provides the infrastructure needed for GCC expansion and long-term growth. Products, customers, and order history can be migrated to Shopify without losing critical business data. Shopify unlocks advanced capabilities such as B2B commerce, multi-currency selling, and extensive app integrations. Saudi-specific requirements like mada, STC Pay, Tabby, Tamara, Arabic RTL, and ZATCA compliance must be addressed during migration. Testing both stores in parallel before launch minimizes risk and protects revenue during the transition. As Saudi eCommerce continues to expand, Shopify offers the scalability needed to support future business growth. How to Migrate from Zid to Shopify Without Losing Your Data, SEO, or Revenue Zid merchants collectively process SAR 1.6 billion in annual sales across the Kingdom, reflecting the commercial weight local platforms carry at the launch and early growth stages. The platform ceiling only becomes visible once a brand starts growing past that point, and it tends to show up in the same places every time. The gap can be seen in 3 places, including a wholesale client in Dubai who expects tiered pricing at checkout that Zid cannot configure natively; a UAE expansion plan that encounters multi-currency limitations; or a marketing automation tool the business needs that is not available in Zid's app marketplace. When those moments accumulate, the Zid to Shopify migration conversation begins. This guide covers how to complete that migration without losing the data, rankings, or revenue the business has already built. Zid Launched Your Brand. Here Is Why It Cannot Take You Further Zid built its product around a specific promise to get Saudi merchants online fast, with Arabic-first design and local payment support baked in from day one. It kept that promise well. The problem is not what Zid does. It is what Zid was never designed to do, and that gap becomes commercially significant the moment a Saudi brand starts operating at scale. Scaling on Zid means hitting the same walls in the same order. Checkout extensibility stops at what Zid's native configuration allows, which means complex B2B discount logic, conditional pricing by customer segment, and wholesale-specific payment rules either require workarounds or cannot be built at all. Expanding into GCC markets means managing currency conversion manually rather than relying on multi-currency checkout built into the platform. Furthermore, every time the business needs a new integration, whether for CRM, advanced analytics, email automation, or logistics, the answer from Zid's app marketplace is often that the tool simply is not there. Saudi Arabia's eCommerce market grows at 11.92% CAGR through 2031, and Vision 2030 actively pushes Saudi brands toward GCC expansion and international ambition. The brands that capture that growth are not working around platform limitations every time a client asks for something reasonable. They are on infrastructure built to handle it, and the distance between where a Zid merchant is today and where Shopify takes them is shorter than most expect. What Shopify Unlocks for Saudi Brands That Zid Simply Cannot Match Moving from Zid to Shopify is not just a platform upgrade. It is a shift in what the business can do commercially. The capabilities Shopify offers at the point where Zid closes are exactly what Saudi brands need when they start operating beyond the domestic market. Native GCC expansion: Shopify's multi-currency and multi-language checkout lets Saudi brands sell into the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain without rebuilding their stores or manually managing currency conversion. The same Shopify store handles the entire GCC from a single backend. B2B wholesale infrastructure: Shopify Plus provides brands with a dedicated B2B portal featuring customer-specific pricing, net payment terms, draft orders, and wholesale checkout flows that Zid's architecture does not support. For Saudi brands with wholesale clients in Riyadh, Jeddah, and across the GCC, this is a direct commercial unlock. App ecosystem depth: Shopify's global app marketplace carries over 8,000 integrations covering every function a scaling eCommerce business needs, from Klaviyo for email automation and Loop Returns for returns management to advanced inventory and ERP integrations. Zid merchants regularly hit a wall when the tool they need does not exist on the platform. AI discoverability: Shopify's agentic storefront feature, active by default for eligible merchants since March 2026, makes every Shopify store automatically discoverable through ChatGPT's shopping experience. Zid merchants are not part of that discovery layer, which matters as AI-driven search becomes a primary channel for product discovery in the region. Checkout extensibility: Shopify Functions lets brands build custom checkout logic, tiered discount rules, and payment-method controls that go far beyond what Zid's native checkout configuration offers. For Saudi brands running complex promotional pricing or B2B rules at checkout, this is the difference between a workaround and a solution. Not sure what your Zid store needs before migrating? Codilar will map it out for you. Will You Lose Your Data, Rankings, and Revenue When You Migrate? Here Is the Truth A Saudi brand that has spent years building a product catalog, a customer base, and an organic search presence does not want to start over. The good news is that a properly executed Zid to Shopify migration does not require starting over. What transfers cleanly: Products, product images, collections, customer records, and order history all migrate cleanly from Zid to Shopify using established tools like LitExtension, Matrixify, and Cart2Cart. The data the business has built does not disappear, but it moves. What requires rebuilding: The storefront design, Arabic RTL layout, payment gateway configurations, shipping rules, and any custom discount logic need to be rebuilt in Shopify's environment. This is not data loss; instead, it is platform reconfiguration, and it is where an experienced Shopify partner makes the difference between a smooth go-live and a disruptive one. What protects SEO: the biggest organic traffic risk in any platform migration is a change in URL structure. Zid and Shopify use different URL formats, which means every product page, collection page, and blog post needs a 301 redirect mapping to its new Shopify URL before the store goes live. Without this, Google treats the old URLs as deleted pages, and rankings drop. With a properly executed redirect map, Google follows the redirects, transfers link equity to the new URLs, and rankings recover within the standard 60 to 90 day window. The search rankings a brand has earned on Zid do not have to be sacrificed. They have to be protected deliberately. From Zid to Shopify, without losing a thing. Connect with Codilar's team today. Zid to Shopify Migration: The Exact Steps Saudi Brands Follow to Switch Safely A migration without a clear sequence can lead to data loss, SEO drops, and a revenue hit during the transition. The steps below reflect the order that produces the cleanest, lowest-risk migration for Saudi brands moving from Zid to Shopify: Pre-migration Audit Catalog the full scope before touching anything, including the number of products, active customer records, order history, existing integrations, active discount codes, and current URL structure. The audit defines the migration plan and prevents surprises mid-transfer. Data Export From Zid and Import to Shopify Use LitExtension for first-time migrations needing secure, guided data transfer. Use Matrixify for large catalogs needing bulk import control. Use Cart2Cart for migrations where minimizing downtime is the priority. Each tool handles products, customers, and order history differently, and the right choice depends on catalog complexity. Shopify Store Setup and Theme Build Build the Shopify storefront with Arabic RTL support, brand identity preserved, and a mobile-first design that matches the device behavior of Saudi shoppers. 63% of eCommerce sessions in the region happen on mobile, making this a conversion priority, not just a design one. Saudi Payment Gateway Configuration Activate Mada and STC Pay via certified gateways such as HyperPay, PayTabs, or Moyasar. Integrate Tabby and Tamara for BNPL, which Saudi shoppers use actively and expect at checkout. Configure payment methods for the correct currency and region before testing begins. SEO Redirect Mapping Map every active Zid URL to its corresponding Shopify URL and implement 301 redirects before go-live. Submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console immediately after launch, and monitor rankings weekly for the first 90 days to catch and address any drops before they compound. Parallel Testing and Go-live Run the Shopify store in parallel with the Zid store during final testing. Check every checkout flow, payment gateway, discount rule, and Arabic display before switching DNS. Go live on a low-traffic day, keep the Zid store accessible for 48 hours post-migration, and monitor orders and rankings closely in the first week. The Saudi-Specific Shopify Setup No Generic Migration Guide Will Tell You About A Shopify store migrated from Zid is not automatically configured for the Saudi market. Global Shopify setup guides cover payment gateways and theme selection. They do not cover what a Saudi eCommerce store actually needs to perform from day one in this market. Below are the configurations that make the difference: Arabic RTL and bilingual setup: Shopify supports Arabic RTL natively, but the store needs to be configured correctly for both Arabic and English audiences. Hreflang tags for both language versions ensure Google serves the right language to the right user, protecting search visibility across both markets. mada, STC Pay, Tabby, Tamara: Saudi shoppers expect these payment options at checkout. mada and STC Pay require certified local gateway integration. Tabby and Tamara BNPL options directly lift AOV and conversion rates in a market where instalment purchasing is mainstream, not a premium feature. ZATCA e-invoicing compliance: Saudi Arabia's Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority requires Phase 2 e-invoicing compliance for VAT-registered businesses. Shopify handles this through dedicated apps, including Marmin, Sufio, and the Qoyod Connector. This is a legal requirement, not an optional configuration. Snapchat and TikTok pixel setup: Saudi shoppers discover and purchase through Snapchat and TikTok at rates that significantly exceed global averages. Pixel setup for both platforms from day one ensures retargeting campaigns, conversion tracking, and product catalog sync work from the moment the store goes live. AI agent discoverability: Shopify's agentic storefront feature makes stores discoverable in ChatGPT's shopping experience by default. Structured product data, complete meta information, and clean schema markup determine how prominently the store appears in AI-driven search, which is already becoming a primary discovery channel in the region. Local shipping and logistics integration: Integrating with Aramex, SMSA, and Naqel Express via Shopify's shipping apps provides Saudi customers with accurate delivery estimates and real-time tracking in Arabic, directly reducing cart abandonment at the shipping selection step.

Nikki KumariNikki Kumari
Jul 7, 2026 • 7 min read
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SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) Migration: A Complete Guide for EnterprisesAdobe

SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) Migration: A Complete Guide for Enterprises

The SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) migration has become one of the most consequential platform decisions for enterprise eCommerce teams in 2026. With mainstream maintenance for SAP Commerce on-premise ending July 31, 2026, thousands of enterprises running SAP Hybris are facing a forced platform decision. For businesses managing complex B2B operations on a mixed technology stack, not exclusively tied to SAP's ecosystem, Adobe Commerce (Magento) is emerging as the default migration destination. It delivers the closest native B2B feature mapping to Hybris, a significantly larger developer talent pool, a vendor-neutral integration architecture, and a lower total cost of ownership than staying within the SAP ecosystem. This guide covers what makes SAP Commerce and Adobe Commerce (Magento) fundamentally different, what drives enterprises toward Adobe Commerce (Magento) in 2026, what migrates cleanly, and what does not. Furthermore, the challenges that consistently derail migrations, the migration process itself, and how to assess whether Adobe Commerce (Magento) is the right destination for the business's specific operational profile. SAP Commerce vs Adobe Commerce (Magento): Key Differences SAP Commerce and Adobe Commerce (Magento) are both enterprise-grade platforms, but they are built on fundamentally different technical foundations and serve different operational philosophies. Understanding those differences is the starting point for any migration decision. SAP Commerce is a Java-based platform built natively for large-scale enterprise B2B and B2C operations. Its core strength is deep integration with the SAP ecosystem, including native connectors to S/4HANA and ECC, native CPQ integration, and a B2B Accelerator. It is cloud-hosted on Microsoft Azure through SAP BTP and delivers enterprise-grade governance, compliance, and scalability. The trade-off is platform complexity, specialized developer requirements, and a licensing model that scales with GMV regardless of additional feature usage. Adobe Commerce (Magento) is a PHP-based, modular platform built on open-source Magento roots. Its core strengths are flexibility, a large global developer ecosystem, and a vendor-neutral API architecture via REST and GraphQL that integrates cleanly with non-SAP CRMs, ERPs, and marketing systems. Adobe Commerce's B2B module delivers company accounts, shared catalogs, quote management, requisition lists, purchase orders, credit limits, and approval workflows natively. Its cloud version runs on containerized infrastructure with Fastly CDN and elastic scaling built in. The platform integrates natively with Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Target for enterprises running content-led commerce operations. Why Enterprises Are Migrating from SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) in 2026 The July 2026 end of mainstream maintenance is the forcing event, but it is not the only reason enterprises are choosing Adobe Commerce (Magento). Several structural commercial trends are independently pushing this migration conversation, and they matter as much for the long-term platform decision as the deadline itself. Escaping SAP's proprietary expertise dependency: The Hybris developer market is contracting as the ecosystem shifts toward SAP Commerce Cloud. Adobe Commerce (Magento) runs on PHP, which carries a significantly larger global developer pool, lower hourly rates, and faster hiring cycles. Enterprises consistently reduce development costs by 30-50% after moving off SAP Hybris. Mixed technology stack compatibility: Enterprises running non-SAP CRMs like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics, non-SAP PIMs, or non-SAP marketing automation find Adobe Commerce's vendor-neutral API architecture considerably more practical. SAP Commerce integrates cleanly within the SAP ecosystem and requires significant customization for everything outside it. API-first and composable architecture readiness: Adobe Commerce (Magento) is advancing toward API-first, headless, and composable architectures through App Builder, API Mesh, and Edge Delivery Services. SAP Commerce Cloud, despite cloud delivery, retains a largely monolithic core that limits architectural agility compared to Adobe Commerce's modular approach. B2B depth without the SAP premium: Adobe Commerce (Magento) delivers native B2B capability, including company accounts, shared catalogs, quote management, requisition lists, and approval workflows at a structurally lower cost than SAP Commerce Cloud. For mid-market B2B enterprises that need depth but cannot justify SAP's pricing model, Adobe Commerce (Magento) provides comparable functionality at a fraction of the licensing cost. Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem integration: Enterprises running Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, or Adobe Target gain native integration advantages on Adobe Commerce (Magento). For content-led commerce operations that manage rich editorial workflows alongside transactions, this ecosystem coherence has no equivalent in SAP Commerce Cloud. What Can Be Migrated from SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento)? Understanding what transfers cleanly and what requires rebuilding is the foundation of accurate migration scoping. Enterprises that treat everything as migratable consistently discover the gaps mid-project. The discovery is the primary driver of cost overruns and timeline extensions in SAP to Adobe Commerce (Magento) migrations. What Migrates From SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) Cleanly? Products, variants, categories, attributes, and product images Customer records and account data B2B company account structures and pricing hierarchies Historical order data for reporting and self-service access CMS page content and static blocks SEO metadata with proper redirect mapping What Requires Rebuilding During the SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) Migration? Custom Java extensions and Hybris-specific business logic Storefront themes and frontend templates Checkout customizations and payment gateway configurations SAP ERP integration connectors Complex pricing rules requiring custom module development Punchout catalog integrations Note: The extension audit happens before any development begins. Every extension classified as "rebuild" adds to the budget and timeline. Every extension classified as "retire" reduces it. Accurate classification in the assessment phase is the single most effective lever for controlling migration cost. SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento): What to Prepare For The SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) migration presents a distinct set of challenges that differ from those of other platform migrations. Enterprises that anticipate these challenges in the planning phase consistently deliver better outcomes than those that discover them mid-project. Each challenge below represents a known failure point in enterprise SAP migrations, not a theoretical risk. B2B Pricing Complexity Translation SAP Commerce manages pricing through condition records, price rows, and customer group hierarchies tightly coupled to SAP ERP. Translating this logic to Adobe Commerce's shared catalog and tier pricing model requires careful mapping before any data moves. Some pricing rules require custom Adobe Commerce (Magento) module development to replicate accurately. Teams that start data migration before completing the pricing architecture design consistently encounter reconciliation issues that delay go-live. SAP ERP Integration Rebuild Adobe Commerce (Magento) connects to SAP S/4HANA and ECC through middleware or custom API integration rather than native connectors. Building and testing this integration layer typically runs 8 to 12 weeks as a parallel workstream. Enterprises that treat this as a post-migration task rather than a parallel workstream consistently experience post-launch issues with order posting, inventory synchronization, and pricing accuracy. It is the most common source of operational disruption in the weeks following go-live. Custom Extension Library Audit and Rebuild Most Hybris environments carry years of custom Java extensions with no direct equivalent in Adobe Commerce's PHP module architecture. Each extension requires individual assessment. The classification decisions taken at this stage, retire, replace, or rebuild, directly determine the migration budget and timeline. Teams that skip a thorough extension audit in the scoping phase consistently underestimate project cost by 30 to 50%. SEO Continuity at Enterprise Scale Large enterprise catalogs on SAP Commerce carry significant organic search equity built over years of indexing. Differences in URL structures between the two platforms require comprehensive 301 redirect mapping before go-live. Enterprises that treat SEO migration as a post-launch task typically lose 30 to 50% of organic rankings, with recovery taking six to twelve months. At enterprise traffic volumes, that loss translates directly into measurable revenue impact from the first week post-launch. Team Readiness and Skill Transition Development teams familiar with SAP Commerce's Java-based architecture need reskilling or augmentation for Adobe Commerce's PHP stack, App Builder, API Mesh, and Edge Delivery Services. Starting team preparation concurrently with the migration planning phase prevents productivity dips during the build phase and reduces the post-launch support burden significantly. SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) Migration Process A structured migration process is what separates SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) projects that deliver on time and on budget from those that do not. The seven steps below reflect the sequence that produces the most predictable, lowest-risk migration for complex enterprise B2B deployments. Each step builds directly on the previous one, and the ERP integration workstream runs in parallel from week one rather than sequentially. Step 1: Migration Readiness Assessment and Scope Definition Inventory every active Hybris extension, B2B pricing rule, ERP integration flow, CMS content type, and URL structure. Classify each extension as retire, replace, or rebuild. Map the B2B pricing hierarchy to Adobe Commerce's shared catalog and tier pricing model. Define the ERP integration architecture before development begins. This step determines the accuracy of every budget and timeline estimate that follows. Step 2: Adobe Commerce (Magento) Environment Setup Provision sandbox and development environments. Activate App Builder for custom business logic, API Mesh to connect ERP, CRM, and PIM under a single API layer, and Edge Delivery Services for storefront performance. Establish integration methods early using Adobe's Starter Kit to avoid integration bottlenecks later in the project. Step 3: Data Migration From SAP Commerce to Adobe Commerce (Magento) Migrate products, variants, categories, customer records, B2B company structures, order history, and CMS content. Apply data transformation to align SAP Commerce's type system with Adobe Commerce's catalog architecture. Validate all migrated data against SAP Commerce source records before ERP integration testing begins. Adobe's bulk data migration tooling is available by request for large enterprise catalog volumes in 2026. Step 4: ERP and Third-party Integration Rebuild Build the integration layer connecting Adobe Commerce (Magento) to SAP S/4HANA or ECC through middleware or direct API. Define all integration flows: order posting, inventory synchronization, customer master data, and pricing rules. Test every flow against live SAP data in a non-production environment. This workstream runs alongside the storefront build from week one and is the most common source of post-launch issues when it starts late. Step 5: Adobe Commerce (Magento) Storefront Build and B2B Configuration Build the storefront covering theme development, B2B module configuration including company accounts, shared catalogs, quote management, requisition lists, and approval workflows, and custom module development for Hybris logic that does not map natively. Configure multi-site and multi-currency through Adobe Commerce's store view architecture. Test all B2B user flows end to end before UAT begins. Step 6: SEO Migration and 301 Redirect Implementation Map every active SAP Commerce URL to its Adobe Commerce (Magento) equivalent and implement 301 redirects before go-live. Configure hreflang tags for multi-site deployments. Submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console at launch. Monitor organic traffic, keyword rankings, and crawl errors weekly for at least 90 days post-launch to catch ranking movements before they compound. Step 7: UAT, Parallel Testing, and Phased Go-live Run Adobe Commerce (Magento) alongside the live SAP Commerce store through UAT. Test every checkout flow, B2B pricing rule, ERP integration event, and payment method before switching DNS. Choose between full cutover for speed or phased migration by market or brand to reduce go-live risk. Keep SAP Commerce accessible for at least 48 hours post-migration for rollback if needed.

Nikki KumariNikki Kumari
Jul 6, 2026 • 8 min read
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June 2026 eCommerce Round-UpEcommerce Roundup

June 2026 eCommerce Round-Up

June was not defined by a single product launch or feature release. Instead, it was the month when commerce platforms accelerated the shift toward AI-native experiences while moving away from the legacy technologies that shaped online retail for years. Shopify retired its legacy checkout engine and shipped 150 updates in a single drop. Amazon moved Prime Day to June, broke its own records, and credited AI for nearly doubling referral traffic. Pinterest launched a standalone AI shopping app. Adobe held its monthly security cadence. Across every platform, generative AI stopped being an experiment and started being infrastructure. Here is everything that mattered. Platform Updates June 17: Shopify Summer '26 "Everywhere Edition" Ships 150+ Updates Shopify's biggest product release of the year, Shopify Summer 2026 Editions, landed on June 17, branded the Everywhere Edition by CEO Tobi Lütke. The theme: commerce wherever the customer is, which, in 2026, increasingly means within AI assistants rather than on a brand's homepage. Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is now default on all stores. UCP lets AI shopping agents read a catalog and build carts automatically. Every Shopify merchant's products are now discoverable through ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity without additional configuration. A new Agentic section in the admin surfaces AI channel performance in one place. Shopify Catalog standardizes product data for AI channels. This new first-party feature enriches and standardizes product data so it can be served directly to AI shopping surfaces with consistent attributes and structured fields. Clean product data is now as commercially important as on-page SEO. Checkout Components reach GA for Shopify Plus. Plus merchants can now customize the checkout UI using reusable, upgrade-safe building blocks instead of editing checkout.liquid, which is being retired. This covers promotional messaging, loyalty elements, and dynamic checkout content. Native A/B testing launches for themes and checkout. Rollouts, live from June 5, gives merchants built-in split testing with scheduling and gradual rollout controls. Basic theme and checkout testing no longer requires a third-party app. Horizon: new theme system with 10 free themes. Shopify's block-based theme system ships with 10 new themes including Fabric, Ritual, and Vessel. For merchants rebuilding or starting fresh, Horizon is now the default direction. B2B enhancements and Storefront API 2026-07. Native net payment terms, grouped catalog publishing, and multi-location order handling now run natively on Shopify Plus. The updated Storefront API improves GraphQL-based access to product data, cart operations, and customer sessions. Also Read: https://www.codilar.com/blog/shopify-summer-2026-edition/ June 30: Shopify Scripts Fully Retired The most operationally significant event of June for Shopify Plus merchants was not an addition, but a removal. Shopify Scripts, the Ruby-based checkout customization engine that powered custom discounts, shipping logic, and payment rules on Plus stores, ceased executing entirely on June 30, 2026. Editing and publishing had been locked since April 15. There was no gradual phase-out, and Shopify confirmed the date would not move again. Merchants who completed Shopify Scripts to Shopify Functions migration avoided the disruption. For any store still evaluating its migration status, Codilar's Shopify Plus team can assess the current environment and complete the migration. Read More: https://www.codilar.com/blog/shopify-scripts-deprecation-guide/ June 2026: Shopify Collective Expands to Australia Shopify Collective is now available in Australia, which is the platform's cross-merchant wholesale and dropshipping network. Australian merchants can now source products from Collective suppliers globally or list their own products for other merchants to sell, without holding inventory. June 2026: Adobe Commerce Monthly Security Patch Released Adobe released its June 2026 security patch per the monthly cadence adopted in January. Merchants on Adobe Commerce (Magento) should note two approaching deadlines: regular support for the 2.4.6 release line and extended support for 2.4.5 both end August 11, 2026. Stores on either version must upgrade to 2.4.7 or 2.4.8 before August. The current recommended production version is 2.4.9, released in May 2026, which added PHP 8.5 support and resolved 581 issues. Industry Updates June 23-26: Amazon Prime Day Moves to June, Breaks Records Amazon moved Prime Day to June for the first time, running June 23 to 26 and integrating Alexa for Shopping, its AI agent combining Rufus and Alexa+, to help shoppers build personalized Deals Guides. Day 1 results: US eCommerce sales hit $8.3 billion, up 5.3% year over year and more than Thanksgiving Day 2025. Over the full four days, US online sales grew 9.3%. Generative AI referral traffic to retail sites grew 98.3% year over year on Day 1, per Adobe. Electronics jumped 105%, appliances 95%, and strollers 220% versus average June 2025 daily sales. Target, Walmart, Costco, and Best Buy all ran parallel sales events during the same window, confirming that Prime Day's halo effect on the broader retail industry is now a structural feature of the June calendar. June 17: Pinterest Launches Ask Pinterest Pinterest launched Ask Pinterest on June 17, a standalone experimental AI shopping app powered by its Taste Graph, a proprietary system that maps the interests, aesthetics, and shopping intent of its 631 million monthly active users. The app handles multi-step shopping decisions that do not fit a single search query and retains context across sessions. Currently limited to the US only. Pinterest also announced Business Assistant for advertisers, Pinterest MCP (Model Context Protocol) for AI agent integration with ad campaigns, and new Performance+ creative capabilities, all unveiled ahead of Cannes Lions. Pinterest's Q1 2026 results reported revenue of $1.008 billion, up 18% year over year, and 631 million MAUs, the tenth consecutive quarter of double-digit user growth. June 2026: AI Traffic to Retail Sites Now Converts 42% More Than Non-AI Traffic Adobe data from March 2026 confirmed that AI-driven traffic to retail sites now converts 42% more often than non-AI traffic. One year earlier, AI visitors converted at nearly half the rate. The reversal signals that merchants optimizing for AI discoverability, through structured data, schema markup, and clean product metadata, are now seeing measurably better commercial outcomes. June 2026: eBay Restricts Autonomous AI Checkout While every other major platform moved to embrace agentic commerce in June, eBay moved to restrict it, blocking autonomous AI checkout while allowing approved agentic uses. The stated concern is marketplace fairness, pricing integrity, and the risk that autonomous agents could exploit pricing gaps or undermine trust mechanisms. eBay is the first major platform to formally draw this line in 2026, and it signals a debate the rest of the industry has not yet had publicly. Upcoming Events Shopify Editions dot dev — Toronto, July 21 to 22 Shopify's developer and partner event lands in Toronto on July 21 and 22. This is where Shopify goes beyond the consumer-facing Editions announcements to give developers, agencies, and partners direct access to the engineering teams building the platform. For Shopify Plus merchants and implementation partners, this event provides the earliest access to what is coming in the Winter '26 Editions cycle and the deepest technical briefings on Checkout Components, Shopify Functions, and the Storefront API. It is the highest-signal event of the second half of the year for anyone building on Shopify. DMEXCO 2026 — Cologne, September 17 to 18 Europe's flagship digital marketing and tech event runs in Cologne under the motto "Scaling Intelligence." The 2026 edition organizes around four pillars — World of Agencies, Commerce, Media, and Tech — with a strong focus on turning AI pilots into measurable business value. Registration is now open for the September event, and early-access pricing is available through July.

Nikki KumariNikki Kumari
Jul 6, 2026 • 6 min read
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How to Harden Your Magento 2 Database Against Unauthorized AccessGeneral

How to Harden Your Magento 2 Database Against Unauthorized Access

Your Adobe Commerce Store Has a Hole That SSL Cannot Patch. You locked the front door. You installed the alarm. You hired the guards. And the thief walked in through the floor. That is exactly what happens when an eCommerce store runs Adobe Commerce or Magento 2 with customer data sitting in plain text inside the database. SSL protects data in transit. WAFs block attacks at the perimeter. But the moment a bad actor bypasses the application layer and lands directly inside your database, every name, every email, every order, every address is right there. Readable. Exportable. Sellable. We spent weeks searching the Adobe Commerce ecosystem for a field-level PII encryption solution that could fix this. We found nothing. So we built one. We called it PII Shield. The Problem No One Talks About Out Loud Adobe Commerce already does several things right. Payment credentials are encrypted. System configurations are protected. Passwords are hashed using SHA-256. But actual customer PII, the names, phone numbers, street addresses, email IDs, and order histories that make your database a goldmine, those are stored as plain text. This matters more than most merchants realize. According to IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report, more than half of all data breaches globally involve customer PII, including tax identification numbers, emails, phone numbers, and home addresses. On top of that, each compromised customer PII record cost organizations USD 160 to contain in 2025. And the threats to Magento specifically have been escalating. The CosmicSting vulnerability (CVE-2024-34102) in 2024 was described by security researchers at Sansec as the worst Magento bug in two years, and it was estimated to have left 75% of all Adobe Commerce stores exposed. Then came SessionReaper (CVE-2025-54236) in 2025, rated 9.1 out of 10 in severity, allowing attackers to take over customer accounts through the Commerce REST API. These are not fringe scenarios. These are documented, widespread, and recurring patterns of attack. Here is the part people do not want to say openly: the threat is not always external. An employee with database access can export a customer list in one Excel sheet and sell it. It happens. No one admits to it. But it happens, and it is precisely why people sometimes receive scam calls from numbers they never shared with anyone. What PII Shield Actually Does PII Shield is a field-level encryption extension for Adobe Commerce and Magento 2, built at Codilar. It encrypts sensitive personal data at the database level, automatically, the moment it is written. When authorized users, whether a logged-in customer or an admin, access that data through the website or backend, it decrypts in real time. The experience for users is completely unchanged. What changes is what a hacker sees if they ever manage to reach the database directly. They see gibberish. Not obfuscated data. Not partially masked strings. Encrypted noise that cannot be decoded without the application-level decryption keys, which live inside the system, never in the database itself. The encryption algorithm powering this is Libsodium, which happens to be the same modern cryptographic library that Adobe Commerce trusts internally for its own encryption operations. We did not invent a proprietary algorithm. We used the gold standard and applied it to the fields that Adobe left exposed. What Gets Encrypted PII Shield does not encrypt everything indiscriminately. Operational metadata like store IDs, timestamps, group assignments, and system-level data remain untouched because encrypting them would create unnecessary overhead with no privacy benefit. What gets encrypted are the fields that actually identify a person and their behavior in your store. Across nine data areas in Adobe Commerce: Customers: First name, last name, email address, phone number, date of birth, and other identity fields stored in the customer table. Carts (Quote table): Customer-linked information stored when items are added to cart, including billing and shipping details entered at checkout. Orders: Full order records including the customer's name, contact details, and delivery address. Invoices: Invoice-level records tied to customer identity and order specifics. Shipments: Shipping address, recipient name, and tracking-related PII. Credit Memos: Refund records tied to customer identity. Newsletter Subscriptions: Email addresses collected through newsletter sign-up flows. Admin Users: Backend user accounts, because your internal team's data deserves the same protection as your customers' data. In agencies or large organizations with multiple admin roles, catalog managers, marketing specialists, and sales teams all have profiles in the system. Those are encrypted too. Payment-related records: Payment card and billing information stored at the database level. Everything else stays normal. Performance is unaffected. Search, checkout, order management, and every customer-facing workflow continues without disruption. Why Perimeter Security Is Not Enough The security stack most eCommerce stores rely on, SSL certificates, firewalls, WAFs, and fraud prevention tools, is designed to protect the perimeter. They assume that if attackers cannot get in, the data is safe. That assumption breaks the moment the perimeter is breached. The pattern of database-level breaches has not slowed. In 2025, retail security incidents rose to 837 confirmed cases, up from 725 the prior year, with nearly half of all breaches involving customer PII including names, email addresses, payment details, and purchase histories. The Ticketmaster breach, where over 560 million customer records including order history, payment information, names, and email addresses were leaked after attackers accessed a cloud database, remains one of the clearest examples of what direct database access means in practice. And the National Public Data breach exposed 2.9 billion records because plain-text credentials were sitting in a publicly accessible file, not through a sophisticated attack, but through data that was simply left readable. Field-level encryption is the answer to this. It ensures that even a successful breach of your infrastructure does not result in a usable data leak. The attacker reaches the database and finds nothing readable. This is the principle behind Codilar's PII Shield: protecting the data itself, not just the routes to the data. Compliance and Commercial Reality GDPR penalties since 2018 now exceed 7.1 billion euros, with 1.2 billion euros in fines issued in 2025 alone. European data protection authorities now receive 443 breach notifications per day, a 22 percent year-over-year increase. The largest single fine of 2025 was 530 million euros against TikTok for unlawful EU-China data transfers. India's DPDP Rules were approved by Parliament in November 2025 and are now entering enforcement, which directly affects merchants operating in or serving Indian consumers. Field-level encryption is increasingly recognized as the expected standard for PII protection in eCommerce. If your customer data is stored in plain text today and you face a breach tomorrow, regulators will ask what preventive measures were in place at the database level. SSL and a firewall will not be a satisfying answer. On the commercial side, the average data breach cost for retail and eCommerce businesses reached USD 4.1 million in 2025, with 32 percent of breaches tied to payment data. And 75 percent of consumers say they will not purchase from organizations they do not trust with their data. If you want to understand what your current database exposure looks like, or if you want to explore deploying PII Shield on your Adobe Commerce store, talk to our team. "Adobe Commerce is one of the most capable platforms in the world. But capability without database-level encryption is like a vault with the door open. PII Shield exists because we refused to leave that door open for our clients." - Shahed Jamal, Practice head, Adobe Commerce, Codilar For Adobe Commerce Merchants Specifically If you are running Adobe Commerce or Magento 2 and you have not addressed database-level PII encryption, your architecture has a gap that existing platform features do not close. Adobe encrypts payment keys. Adobe encrypts system config credentials. Adobe does not encrypt PII fields in the customer, quote, order, invoice, shipment, or newsletter tables. PII Shield closes that gap. It works across Adobe Commerce versions, integrates cleanly with existing Magento architecture, and requires no changes to your frontend or admin workflows. At Codilar, we are an Adobe Gold Solution Partner with implementations across the world. We built PII Shield because we could not find anything in the ecosystem that actually solved this problem. Our clients across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and globally are already running it. If you want to understand what your current database exposure looks like, or if you want to explore deploying PII Shield on your Adobe Commerce store, talk to our team. Frequently Asked Questions Does PII Shield affect the performance of my Adobe Commerce store? No. PII Shield encrypts and decrypts data at the field level in real time, and only for PII-designated fields. Operational data like store IDs, timestamps, and system metadata is untouched. The encryption and decryption operations add negligible overhead, and no frontend functionality, including search, checkout, and account management, is affected. What encryption algorithm does PII Shield use? PII Shield uses Libsodium, which is the same modern cryptographic library that Adobe Commerce uses internally for its own encryption. We chose it specifically because it is already the trusted standard within the platform and is widely recognized as one of the most robust encryption libraries available today. If my store is already PCI-compliant, do I still need PII Shield? PCI compliance addresses payment card data security, which is a separate domain from PII protection. Adobe Commerce already encrypts payment credentials. PII Shield addresses the gap that PCI compliance does not cover, which is the plain-text storage of customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, order histories, shipping addresses, and admin user data in your database. Does PII Shield affect how admin users manage orders or customer records? No. Authorized admin users still see all customers and order data normally through the Adobe Commerce backend. PII Shield decrypts data in real time for any access that goes through the application layer. The encrypted state only applies to direct database access, which is exactly where unauthorized access typically occurs in a breach. Which versions of Adobe Commerce and Magento 2 does PII Shield support? PII Shield is compatible with Magento 2 and Adobe Commerce. If you would like to confirm compatibility with your specific version before proceeding, reach out to the Codilar team and we will validate your setup.

Meghna VinodMeghna Vinod
Jun 30, 2026 • 8 min read
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BigCommerce to Shopify Migration: The Complete 2026 Guide General

BigCommerce to Shopify Migration: The Complete 2026 Guide

If you're a BigCommerce merchant wondering whether it's time to move, you're not alone. Hundreds of brands have made the switch over the past year, and their reasons go well beyond features. The conversation has shifted to money. The Fee That Changed Everything On June 1, 2026, BigCommerce introduced an Open Payment Provider Fee of 0.6% to 2% on every order processed outside its approved gateway list. For years, BigCommerce's strongest argument against Shopify was straightforward, no transaction fees. That argument no longer holds. For a brand doing $5M a year, a 1% fee quietly eats $50,000 in annual revenue. That is not a platform preference. That is a business problem. BigCommerce vs Shopify: The Financial Reality The new fee is only part of the picture. The broader cost comparison was already tilting toward Shopify before June 2026. BigCommerce's pricing model ties plan upgrades to revenue thresholds. The more your business grows, the higher your tier, even if you never needed what that tier includes. Shopify's monthly plans are fixed. You pay for what you choose, not for how well your store is performing. Signs Your Brand Has Outgrown BigCommerce Not every brand is at the tipping point. But certain patterns show up consistently in stores that have stayed too long on a platform that stopped serving them. Your team is spending more hours managing the platform than actually growing the business. Every customization, even a minor one, requires a developer. Your app stack is a collection of tools that barely talk to each other, stitched together to cover gaps the platform should handle natively. Performance slips during traffic peaks, right when it matters most. And plan upgrades are arriving not because you need new features, but because your revenue crossed a threshold. If more than one of these sounds familiar, the platform is likely costing you more than your monthly subscription fee. What Can Be Migrated and What Cannot One of the most common fears before a BigCommerce to Shopify migration is losing something important. Here is an honest breakdown. Products transfer cleanly, including titles, descriptions, images, variants, SKUs, pricing, and inventory levels. Customer accounts move with contact details and address history. Order history comes across for continuity in reporting and customer service. Blog posts, pages, and SEO metadata including page titles, meta descriptions, and alt text also migrate successfully. BigCommerce product categories become Shopify collections, and the mapping needs to be handled deliberately to preserve your navigation logic. Custom product options, variant structures, and third-party integrations do not carry over automatically. Each one needs a Shopify equivalent identified before launch, not after. Customer passwords cannot be transferred between platforms. This is a platform-level security limitation on both ends. After your Shopify store goes live, you will need to send password reset emails to your customer base. Plan that communication early so your customers are not caught off guard on day one. Your BigCommerce theme does not transfer either. That is not necessarily a loss. Migration gives you a clean moment to rebuild with Shopify's mobile-first architecture, which matters considerably given that the majority of eCommerce traffic today arrives on a phone. How to Migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify A migration done properly is methodical. Rushing any phase creates problems that surface at the worst possible time, usually during launch or the first big traffic event. Step 1: Audit and back up your store. Before anything moves, document what exists. Products, variants, customer data, order history, URL structures, integrations, custom code, and configurations. Export everything from BigCommerce as CSV files and store those backups separately. They are your safety net. Step 2: Set up your Shopify store. Create your account, keep it password-protected while you build, and configure your core settings like taxes, shipping, payment gateways, staff permissions, and primary currency. Most brands migrating from BigCommerce land on Shopify Advanced or Shopify Plus based on their revenue and operational complexity. Step 3: Choose your migration method. Three routes exist. Manual CSV import works for smaller stores with simple catalogs and gives you direct control, but requires reformatting since Shopify's import structure differs from BigCommerce's. Migration tools like Cart2Cart, LitExtension, and Matrixify automate the heavy lifting for mid-sized stores and reduce the risk of mapping errors, always run a demo migration first before committing. For stores with large catalogs, custom integrations, B2B workflows, or established SEO rankings, an agency-led migration is the route that protects what you have built. Step 4: Transfer your data and rebuild the storefront. Start with the product catalog, then customer accounts, then order history. Check variants, images, inventory levels, and SKU mapping carefully at each step. Use this moment to improve your storefront rather than replicate it. Shopify's theme library and mobile-first design standards give you an opportunity to build something better than what you had. Step 5: Set up 301 redirects. This step is not optional. BigCommerce and Shopify use different URL structures, which means every product, collection, and blog page URL will change. Build a complete URL mapping document before launch, implement all redirects inside Shopify, and submit your updated XML sitemap to Google Search Console immediately after going live. Stores that handle this properly typically see organic traffic stabilize and recover within 60 to 90 days. Step 6: Test everything, then launch. Run through the full customer journey on staging before anything goes live, homepage to product page, add to cart, checkout, payment, and email confirmation. Test across devices and payment methods. Pick a low-traffic window to launch and watch performance closely for the first few weeks. Mistakes That Cost Brands the Most Skipping the pre-migration audit is how products go missing and integrations break silently on launch day. Migrating during peak season, especially Q4, is how a technical project becomes a revenue crisis. Forgetting 301 redirects is the single most common cause of organic traffic drops after a migration, and rebuilding that ranking equity can take months. Assuming every BigCommerce app has a direct Shopify equivalent is a mistake that shows up in post-launch scrambles. Audit your app stack before migration and identify alternatives as part of your setup, not as an afterthought. And rushing the testing phase almost always creates a customer experience problem on day one that takes weeks to repair. The AI Gap Between the Two Platforms Shopify Sidekick is included in every Shopify plan at no additional cost. It writes product descriptions, builds marketing copy, creates Flow automations, and reads your live store data, all from a single interface. BigCommerce has no native equivalent. At Codilar, we have built on top of that with Store Decode, an AI-powered audit tool that analyses your store the way a customer actually experiences it and surfaces ranked conversion, performance, and UX gaps before they affect your revenue. What Migration Looks Like With the Right Partner Codilar is a premium Shopify Plus Partner with over 11 years of experience and a team of 240+ specialists. Every migration we deliver is documented for zero downtime, zero data loss, and full SEO preservation. Beyond the Beach, a UAE-based lifestyle retail brand, came to Codilar to migrate their eCommerce platform to Shopify Plus. The store needed more than a data transfer. It needed features rebuilt from the ground up like virtual try-on for eyewear, a custom loyalty point redemption system at checkout, staff discount logic built through Shopify Functions, and performance improvements across the board. The outcome after migration: 51% growth in conversion rate 23% increase in average engagement time 3% reduction in bounce rate 9% increase in transactions per purchaser "A beautiful store that doesn't translate opportunity into value isn't a viable store, it's a liability. We built something that's both effortless to use and impossible to ignore." Mohammad Aamir, Shopify Practice Head at Codilar Codilar has delivered similar outcomes for global brands including Reebok, Oakley, Ajmal Perfumes, and Marina Home across markets in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and beyond. Explore the full portfolio.

Meghna VinodMeghna Vinod
Jun 29, 2026 • 8 min read
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