Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.
New York Magazine says In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing (paywall):
an orientation toward friction is really the only defense we have against the life-annihilating suction of technologies of escape.
Scan Club says Patience is trending in 2026:
For a long time, being online looked like hitting the gas and removing friction. Buy now, pay later, delivered the same day. But we’re noticing the energy’s shifting.
Where we used to count clicks from the homepage to checkout, reducing any obstacles to purchase, the focus now is more towards honoring attention.
If a customer makes the effort to visit your store, how do we greet them? And how do we guide them? Sure, we want to make purchases easy. But we also want to present them with thoughtful content, helpful navigation, genuine FAQs.
We should re-evaluate our tools to rush conversion through the lens of a patient host. Two great examples: Laura Mercier has a real person in chat that will build out a cart for you. And similarly with Competitive Cyclist where their "gearheads" will answer complicated technical questions in chat or on the phone.
750 new apps in the app store 😳
In the week from May 2nd to the 8th, Shopify added 750 new apps to the App Store. Estimates put the new total at over 20,000.
Part of this is because of how Shopify structures app development now. A lot of apps that were previously private or custom apps are now in the app store. AI is also making it easier to quickly develop apps.
What does this mean? It means there's a lot of chaff. The cost to develop and publish and app is very low. An app simply being in the Shopify App Store isn't an indication that it's safe, reliable, maintained, or even works as advertised.
When we can't bake functionality directly into the theme itself, sometimes we have to integrate an app. This is what we look for: In addition to reviews, we look for apps that are "built for Shopify". We also check the developer (were they bought by private equity, do they have published documentation), we check how long they've been in the app store (older can mean bugs are worked out), and we check for free trials.
Reunion Collage
After the pandemic, my 6 brothers and sisters and I decided we wanted to get together for a regular reunion. And we've actually made it happen! This year we all gathered at our place in New Mexico and one of the days we had a collage instructor host a workshop.
My siblings are a real mixed bag – one's a chef, another works for the EPA, a third works in cybersecurity. I wasn't sure how a group art project would go down. But they couldn't even wait for the instructor to finish the introduction before pawing through the stack of magazines and old estate sale books. 5 hours later, as we helped our instructor pack up all his materials, my big sister was still cutting and pasting.
I can't recommend enough this art project for your next gathering. Collage is so democratic – even the self-described non-artists quickly take to it and start making the most surprising associations.
