What Happens To Apps When AI Can Do The Job? — Garry Egan | How AI Changes E-commerce Apps, What Replaces Single Task Apps, Why Apps Become AI Wrappers, How AEO Replaces Traditional SEO (#501)

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Claus Lauter
This episode is sponsored by Bizrate Insights. Star ratings tell you how customers feel. Bizrate Insights reveals what’s driving those ratings, helping ecommerce brands create smoother shopping journeys, inspire confident purchases, and build lasting loyalty. Turn verified shopper feedback into clear priorities and better customer experiences. Learn more at bizrateinsights.com/coffee.

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Garry Egan
You know, it's kind of like the tip of the iceberg. You got the app at the top. But behind the scenes is this robust architecture handling timeouts and messaging. And what happens if you resume or lose your internet connection. You know, and then you've got to take that into my I've got a store with 100,000 products. Now.

Claus Lauter
What if I can do what an app does? Why would a merchant still need an app?

Claus Lauter
Hello and welcome to another episode of the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast. AI is changing how we work, how we shop, and how we use software. And now it raises a big question for e-commerce what happens when AI can do the job and app was built to do? Will apps disappear, or will they simply change the way merchants use them?

Claus Lauter
To break this down, I'm joined by Gary Egan. He is the founder of Interlinked Development and a software developer with over 25 years of experience. Since 2010, he has built Shopify apps, e-commerce tools focusing on automation, conversation and customer experience, and he has also worked with companies like HBO, Disney and Cisco. Gary, great to have you on the show.

Garry Egan
Thanks, Klaus. Good to be back again.

Claus Lauter
Let's jump right into it. If AI can do what an app does, why would a merchant still need an app?

Garry Egan
That's a good question. So it's one of the situations where the layman store owner, these are people that with non-technical backgrounds for the most part, that are selling their goods. Right? They have a lot of hats to wear. They're not able to really articulate on a command line like a like a text prompt, exactly the steps required where AI would assist them.

Garry Egan
They're going to say these requests and very layman terms such as increased my sales or help me get more traffic to my site. Right. They're not going to know the very specific AI commands that you and I know, such as create a robust abandoned cart campaign. Right? Or improve my paperclip advertising by choosing the best keywords, right? These are very sophisticated commands, right?

Garry Egan
And the customer doesn't know how to ask these commands.

Claus Lauter
Now, you said just simply saying increase my sales. AI wouldn't know what to do with if somebody is using AI for e-commerce, how would they know if they use AI or an app to make it work?

Garry Egan
Customers need kind of guide rails and they need prompts and they need buttons, right? They are going to find themselves very frustrated if they try to type in increased sales. Right. Because the AI doesn't really know the context of what you're asking. And there's just a lot of different ways you can increase sales all the way from email campaigns to pay per click.

Garry Egan
So they are going to first probably try their hands at AI thinking, how hard can this be? But they're going to very quickly find out that a specialized app that kind of guides them to the AI answers that are going on behind the scenes, the app becomes an AI wrapper, a very sophisticated AI wrapper that's tailored for that specific purpose.

Garry Egan
For example, you may see an app called Increase My Sales, and inside that would be the different sub prompts that you might do in the context of increasing sales for a store. So and then when they click on those buttons back to DOS commands versus GUI based. Right. Customers love the GUI, right? They want to press a button that gives them context, gives them a list of choices.

Garry Egan
Right. And that's where they're going to know that. They're probably try AI first, but they'll find the specialized app is is much more in tune of what they're trying to do. It's going to get them to the end zone much quicker.

Claus Lauter
Totally agree. I think a app is just the sum of a lot of different customers, and with the developer putting it in there. So and as a merchant, you don't know what you don't know. And so you might have a task and AI you might not be able to formulate it. And an app is just better. Now obviously there will be apps that will be replaced.

Claus Lauter
What apps do you think are under the risk of being replaced? You're going.

Garry Egan
To find your what I call the lazy single task. Apps now interlinked, as you know, is an automatic word linker, right? We use AI and we analyze different words on the customer side, and we provide robust internal linking. Right. But I would be lying if I didn't say that. Even interlinked, my own apps days are somewhat numbered. You know, right now the app, the interlink app is robust enough to be able to let you know how many times you want to link a word and what pages you want to link that at, and the frequency and the color and the link style and the link color, and a bunch of slew other options that are

Garry Egan
related to linking. But the time will come when you should be able to ask these requests, improve my internal linking, you know, on my site. And at that point, you know, at that point, you know, your your app has become somewhat obsolete. Now, there is something to be said about customer support and whatnot, but the days are numbered for single task apps that are kind of low hanging fruit.

Garry Egan
These are going to be your and you kind of see it happening now, right? If you look at the majority of the SEO apps that are out there in terms of these two Shopify ecosystem, they're going to be alt text maximizes, you know, add alt text and all of your images using AI, right? That's gone because Shopify Magic is, you know, what's called Sherlock King, right?

Garry Egan
That's the concept of a major corporations sucking up an app in the ecosystem. Right? You see Apple do it all the time, and Shopify has done it, to which Shopify Sidekick and Shopify, you know, and Shopify Magic at the content level, you're able to just click on the magic wand. It fills in the product descriptions for you, right?

Garry Egan
That used to be an app in same with alt text descriptions, right? That used to be an app. So we're seeing it happen now at the very low level at the very basic level. Now I consider interlinked kind of the mid level. There's you know there's lots of going on. We're talking about changes sitewide to thousands of products.

Garry Egan
If you make a mistake that's a lot of undoing. You got back up. You know there's lots of work going on if you were to trust at all with AI, right? So right now an app suitable for that task, but not forever. And you can see on the higher end of the spectrum, let's say you have a, a very custom store and you sell a very risky product, let's say CBD products.

Garry Egan
Right, which are allowed here are not allowed here. And, you know, outlawed here and certain types of CBD here. You've got compliance issues. That sounds like a good opportunity for an app to manage that specific compliance section for risky products. So those are great ideas for apps and those aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Those are specialized workflow apps, but you can see the different ranges the low hanging fruit, really easy ones, the mid-level ones like interlinked, and then the very sophisticated ones that compliant apps are all going to have their life cycles.

Claus Lauter
That was a really good example that you just gave there. And it brings me to the next question. Obviously, Shopify and Amazon and other marketplaces out there have added more and more features, have added a ton of AI into their system. But what kind of features and apps will be harder for Shopify for Amazon to replace instead of what they're putting in?

Garry Egan
Right? So we give an example of a compliance app, which is good for a specialized store. But let's say you need an app that knows how to. Let's say you have a furniture store and we have different furniture. There's different bulky sizes, and one of them may need more shipping than the other because it's bulky. And the AI is not going to know that this ship furniture needs a special crate.

Garry Egan
That's a special price because of your destination and the route. That's something that you would handle with the company and receiving the product. And as you can see, yeah, is not going to be able to do everything like calculate a shipping price. As you can see how it would get stuck on just something like that. So a seemingly simple task like calculate the shipping price for a couch shipping.

Garry Egan
It might be a little harder than it sounds, and that's why you're going to find some apps that, you know, workflow apps that are still going to be specialized. Now you can see, especially if I said, hey Gary, build me an app for my my furniture company. I'm going to feed you a bunch of SKUs and some destinations, and I'm going to tell you these routes.

Garry Egan
Can your app help me get an accurate shipping price for our couch line? We have some really specialized couches. They're very heavy, but some are like, oh yeah, I can build you a perfect app for that. No way AI is going to substitute that. So specialized workflows, specialized situations, you're going to find a lot more longevity for those types of apps.

Claus Lauter
This episode is sponsored by Bizrate Insights. Your analytics can show you what shoppers do, but verified feedback reveals why BizRate Insights helps e-commerce brands understand the full customer journey from discovery and checkout through post-purchase and fulfillment so teams can create smoother experiences, drive more purchases, and strengthen customer loyalty. Move beyond just star ratings, and uncover the insights that show you where to focus next.

Claus Lauter
Turn shopper feedback into clear, practical action at BizRate Insights.com/coffee.
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You mentioned that AI will be a wrapper and you mentioned that apps some will go away, but I don't think developers will go away. I think the position or the type of developer will change. Can you talk about this a little?

Garry Egan
That's a good question to, you know, and as my as a developer myself, you know, I have learned I'm a full stack developer 20 years. Right? I've been doing it by hand for a long time, and AI has been my super crescent wrench. Right? I review every line of code, right? I never just blindly do code. I know everything that goes into my apps.

Garry Egan
Each line, there's not a single day I have every line I review, right? Oh, that's how you did that. That's gorgeous. So I think you're going to find the vibe coders and the people that got into it and are able to do very low, though. They're going to have a tough time. Right now, we're way beyond just being able to vibe code your way through a specific project.

Garry Egan
The developers now that are going to last are the ones that really know the full stack, the infrastructure, not able to just deploy the app itself, but scalability. What about a store with 100,000 products, timeouts and and then you've got that's just at the app level. What about the server level timeout two. And now you've got, you know, nginx configurations.

Garry Egan
And now you're now you're at the web server level and then you've got the database. Well how much rams on your database. How many CPUs I don't know. What processes are you running. It gets pretty complicated really quick. And that's just one app. So I do think we're kind of seeing this influx of vibe coded stuff kind of.

Garry Egan
And I don't mean in a bad way. People are really being able to sit down and create some pretty good apps. And there I see it. They're having a good time doing it and creating some pretty niche apps that I think are pretty crafty. But at the end of the day, no, you're going to find the more experienced developers are going to make a big comeback in the sense of it's getting ready to get pretty competitive and very specific.

Garry Egan
And and then no one wants a buggy app. And people are getting really sick of these apps that are getting in a buggy out of the gate. Right. And so only the really good developers kind of know how to make a robust app. And so, you know, it's kind of like the tip of the iceberg. You have the app at the top.

Garry Egan
But behind the scenes is this robust architecture handling timeouts and messaging. And what happens if you resume or lose your internet connection, you know, and then you've got to take that. And I've got a store with 100,000 products. Now what. You know, so you know, again, robustness. So those are the developers that are going to be able to really stick it out, ones that kind of we're here from for a long time to know what it takes.

Garry Egan
Already knew what it takes to make a robust app. And now they just got the world's best crescent wrench that accelerates their timeline and runs processes in parallel. Right. I consider you know, that's what that's what AI has done for me. I've got a skyscraper full of developers in my back room all listening to me perfectly, you know, but all the code goes through me, you know, I am the top of the food chain.

Garry Egan
The buck stops here, and I think that's what's going to keep me around.

Claus Lauter
I want to come back to e-commerce. Our listeners are obviously interested in what's happening with AI and how product recommendation, how the purchase changes through AI, with which apps it works best, and so on. Could you talk about this a little?

Garry Egan
So the old way, right. You want to find, let's say, a red dot down jacket with feathers. Right. So you go to Google and you type in down jackets. Right. And there you see your Google shopping up there. And you can see, oh I want a red one. So red down jacket you modified your query. And there's the 8 or 9 vendors at the top.

Garry Egan
And then you've got the blue links below. And you start scrolling. Right. That's the old way. The new way is going to AI and go help me find a red jacket in the $200 range that's shipped locally. Right? Wow. That's something Google's going to have a tough time doing, you know? And so now you're going to get instead of in we're going to say GPT or some other type of tech space.

Garry Egan
Now you're going to be presented maybe 2 or 3 options that are perfectly suited for what you asked. Here's your red down jacket, just like you asked for in the $200 range. I got one from Kohl's. I got one from this place. And which one would you like? You know, and so the customer experience now where the where it used to be.

Garry Egan
Go to Google, find a vendor, visit vendor get promoted get up sold get popped up. You know added to a mailing list that's going away. You know, now the customer experience starts and ends at AI inside the text. You know. So that's going to bypass a lot of those front ends. Now will the Shopify are you Shopify for an example.

Garry Egan
But will the, you know, the store owner still get that customer list? Absolutely. You still have to ship the item right. And you'll still be able to remarket to those people. But in terms of the flow it used to know, you're looking at very specialized queries that are specifically and perfectly answered, allowing you almost immediate checkout right from the command line, bypassing the entire previous experience.

Garry Egan
So who owns the customer experience moving forward is going to be whatever AI you use to find that product. So that's what it means for the store owner.

Claus Lauter
Yeah, I read a number today that 67% of all US customers use ChatGPT or any other kind of large language model to get a feedback, if that's the right choice to buy. So that tells you already where it goes. So the process obviously to buy online is has changed or is changing rapidly. Now the old things when you touch on this SEO for instance, probably does not the way work anymore as it does, but there's no new ways to it.

Claus Lauter
What's your perspective on SEO and optimizing for organic traffic?

Garry Egan
Right. So it's SEO versus aiyo right. And so you know, we're not we're talking about optimizing for search engines now. And you're going to see a slew of new companies that are popping up for optimizing, you know, track 100 queries. We'll get GPT or whatever LLM to recommend your company or your brand. And, you know, they're trying to manipulate those results and to an extent or at least leverage the proper method to get into the results, right?

Garry Egan
You know, like, what are the best five snowboards? You know, I want to be listed in there. How do I get listed in the best five snowboards? You know, and there are companies that will help you with that. So from the store owner standpoint, I do encourage that's actually a pretty viable pretty good way to spend 100 to 300 bucks a month is to become, oh yeah, I want to be I want to be recommended in GPT right now.

Garry Egan
I haven't really explored that because that's just not where I'm going right now. I see my interlink seems to be doing pretty well, just naturally on its own. So I haven't really had that. The drive to go out there and optimize on this yet. Right. So I don't I can't really speak to much of the specifics on that, but it's going to be SEO versus I think Ayo is the actual new term, right.

Garry Egan
And that's going to be optimizing for GPT and other. So for the store owner, that's what it means for them. For the shopper it means yeah, they're going to go ahead and check. Give me the five best snowboards. You know it's going to be like and it's going to research and be like I found these five and it's going to give you prices and locations and whatnot.

Garry Egan
So yeah definitely shifting from search to LM.

Claus Lauter
Now when it comes to optimizing, I want to touch on the developer side of it. And there's a for few. I'm sure there's a few developers listening to this episode. If you would start building a app today, what would you build differently than in the past?

Garry Egan
You know, we're talking about doing tasks that are specialized for purpose, and any type of lazy app is going to have a problem, like we said earlier. So the apps I would focus on today are going to, you know, be around specific processes. And we spoke earlier about compliance apps, you know, because that's around a specific process. But, you know, if I knew early which apps to do, you know I would probably be crunching on those.

Garry Egan
It's really there's a lot of different ways that you can craft an app for a specific purpose. But I would have to say for the developer, learn a process to its fullest extent. I don't care what that process is. Maybe you know how to get large furniture from A to B, or maybe you know how to read. You have a really good way of digesting legal requirements for a specific industry, not just in the United States, but in different regions of the world.

Garry Egan
For example, you might know that you can't ship this product to that country. It's illegal. But, you know, and this app will manage that for you, right? So you're going to find very specialized disciplines, and it's going to be more specialized than I think most people realize. You're going to have to become an Uber expert on whatever your your app is doing, because you think of what you're competing against, you're competing against the LM that can get get them 80% of the way.

Garry Egan
But that 20% is what they can't get over, right? They can get they know what they can do. They they know there's compliance. They know that there's some countries that can they may even have a list of countries that can and can't. But is there a way for them to click, you know, update compliance or don't show products that are prop 18 in California?

Garry Egan
You know, like a specific, you know, don't sell their products in in India that's outlawed there or in different countries, right? So you're going to find people having to become very much of an expert on some topic. So that in and of itself prevents kind of you from herding cats. You're going to have to pick a discipline and become really good at it.

Claus Lauter
Yeah, I think that's where the human brain is still better than AI. And again, 80% right, specifically when it comes to compliance and legal stuff is not good enough. The 20% can get you in really big trouble. Now with tools with apps built, are they built in the future for people or are they built for AI?

Garry Egan
I think they're a combination of both. It always starts with the people, right? Because you've got two audiences. We've got the store owner which needs apps for something. Right. And then I would say you've got the customer. Well, you know, we're really talking about the store owner when it comes to apps. You know, let me backtrack a bit.

Garry Egan
You know, we know that the customer is the customer. They're sitting on their couch with their laptop looking for the product. Right. That's where their story ends, right? And if they like it, they'll buy it. And you'll note if they do. So I'm going to focus more from the store owner standpoint. So an app is going to it's kind of the argument with Dawson Windows again right.

Garry Egan
You've got you know a blank prompt and you know some some store owner that you know, it's going to supposedly just start typing this, start this answer, like where do they start? But if they had an app that you could open up and at least guided them to some of these answers, they could choose which they're specifically looking for.

Garry Egan
So I think those are the the apps that are going to survive are the AI wrappers that are specifically suited for purpose, giving the customer a very specific, simple set of options for them to choose so they can get through their task. And those are the apps that are still and there's lots of room for that. Those are the apps that the store will need, and the developer will need to serve the demand.

Claus Lauter
For now, you're in the software development space for a long time. Your Shopify partner, if somebody approaches you, what kind of homework does a merchant or brand do before they can start working with you?

Garry Egan
That's good. Yeah, I just had that. And the reason why I use the compliance thing is specifically the exact request I had. Right. They came to me. They've got to think of vape store stuff. And you can't show these types of supplies. These you can't call it this word. You can't. So I crafted an app for them, a compliance app that kept them compliant for their vape industry.

Garry Egan
Right. It allowed them to search for products, marked them not visible, you know, for example, viewable in the catalog specifically if you had a link. Right, but not blocking from a search engine, right. So or just the opposite, like show it in the catalog, but block it from the search engine and from search. But if I give someone a direct link to it, it should come up, right?

Garry Egan
Currently we're Shopify. You can publish it or not publish it, you know. And if you not publish it, there is no link to hit from the public. Right? It's an unpublished item. So that's the last app I crafted. Anyway.

Claus Lauter
Who's your perfect customer? What kind of brands do you work with?

Garry Egan
I work with, you know, like I said, risky brands that are looking for specific solutions. And based on my my experience, you know, I'm very thorough all the way. And I have a legal background as well. Used to be in criminal defense, you know, so, you know, I've got kind of that hybrid brain, which is very specific on legal terms.

Garry Egan
So I do find that I'm getting a request for a lot of if you need Shopify and apps and anything in the legal space, here's your guy. Right. And then I get kind of handed around. And I like it because it pays pretty well. Usually customers like that are people of means. Right. And you know, I know that the gigs are going to be worth it.

Garry Egan
So, you know, when they want something, you know, I act pretty quickly and they know they're going to get the job done right. And it's perfect. And they kind of feel like they've got a peer up to their level. That takes the matter very seriously. You know, gravely, seriously. You know, so it's that's that's my stake in the ground is, you know, you know, we don't get to make mistakes as developers.

Garry Egan
You hired us to not make any mistakes, right? You know, you command a premium and you better, you know, there's no mistakes to be made because your mistake is their mistake. And their mistake means possible monetary damages. And if they hit monetary damage that passes through to you, you know, there's no room for mistakes in this industry. You know, at least that's my thought anyway, especially with AI.

Garry Egan
Now where how did you make a mistake? What? Didn't you know? What? Didn't you prep for that? So that's why I'm pretty serious about it. We've got all the tools we need to never make a mistake. So, you know, don't be lazy.

Claus Lauter
Very good. Gary, before our coffee break comes to end today, is there anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

Garry Egan
We talked about the developer space, and to my fellow developers out there, you're probably a little worried right now. Is the last developer really out there? Is AI the last developer will need, you know, is there going to be one app to rule them all that just says just knows it all? Yeah, maybe eventually. But if you really I know developers and I you're looking at 5 to 10 years minimum before you've got some master one app that just seems to and I see five.

Garry Egan
It's not even five. There's just no way. Think about every situation you could ever think of. And there's some that are just unsolvable. Let's take the bulk furniture. You know, I build custom furniture. How could I possibly know what it cost to ship this oblong thing? Only you calculated this cost. Only you know what it takes. So you know there is there is longevity in this business.

Garry Egan
Because there was a kind of the five stages of death. I kind of went through where you just kind of were angry and then crying, then finally acceptance. Right. Bargaining. Then acceptance. Right? No, there is longevity for developers. So keep your head high. It's not over yet by any means. Just get specialized, look for specialized workflows and you will find that you can still not just going to be a good developer, you're going to be the best developer you could ever imagine because you've got your own skyscraper, your names at the top of it, you're in the top floor and you've got hundreds of developers right below you, waiting with a big loudspeaker, waiting for

Garry Egan
you to bark some directive over the loudspeaker so they can go work. Congratulations on your new skyscraper.

Claus Lauter
I think the word is there is being specific, being a specialist, being an expert in a specific field and then you really stand out. I mean, if you're just a average developer, probably AI has taken over already. But having your niche, your niche, whatever you want to call it that gives you safety, job safety clients for a very, very long time.

Claus Lauter
Gary, where can people go and find you and find out more about you?

Garry Egan
You can go to Get links and send me an email support at Get Links and kind of mention Klaus in the e-commerce coffee break, and I'll make sure I get you all set up for free consult. Or, you know, I generally help for the first couple consults. My goal is to get you get you going, not necessarily exchanging money.

Garry Egan
And if my work requires a little bit outside of a consult, we can chat about that. But feel free to reach out anytime. If you need any help or just need some guidance. I love helping people. I've been doing it for 16 years with Shopify and I absolutely love my work, so that's always paramount. Just helping the people first.

Garry Egan
And if the money happens, great, you know? But helping my passion?

Claus Lauter
Cool. I will put the link in the show notes and you just want to click away. Gary, thanks so much for this very interesting chat. I'm a big fan of development myself. I'm as you in this field for a very, very long time. I don't see developers going anywhere anytime soon and they will just facilitate AI to help them in their job.

Claus Lauter
Thanks so much for your time today.

Garry Egan
Thank you, Claus.

Claus Lauter
This episode was sponsored by BizRate Insights. Every customer journey has opportunities to improve. BizRate Insights, turns verify chopper feedback into clear priorities, helping e-commerce brands make smarter decisions, strengthen customer relationships, and help customers coming back. Learn more at BizRateInsights.com/coffee.

That's all for this episode. Thanks again to Xero for sponsoring today's show. If you're tired of messy spreadsheets and manual, reconciling, Xero brings your invoicing, cash flow, and reporting into one simple dashboard. At the time of recording get a special Xero offer 90% off for six months using this link. Check it out at referrals.xero.com/ecb. That's referrals.xero.com/ecb. Thanks for listening. We will catch you next time. Ts & Cs apply.