The best Shopify app teams don't research once, before launch, and call it done. They talk to merchants continuously, and they use those conversations for specific, different jobs at each stage: validating an idea, shaping the roadmap, nailing positioning, pricing, and finding their first customers. This is a breakdown of how app teams actually use merchant research, drawn from what real Shopify app founders told us they were trying to learn, so you can see which kind of research your team is missing.

The unifying insight, in one founder's words: "building apps can be expensive, especially if you build the wrong things." Research is how you avoid building the wrong things. Here's what that looks like in practice.

The 6 ways app teams use Shopify merchant research

1. Validating an idea before building

The highest-leverage research, because it's the cheapest place to be wrong. Teams use it to confirm a problem is real and that merchants would pay to solve it, before committing engineering time.

"We are launching our new set of products and would love to validate our idea with customers, and also find an initial set of customers willing to try it." — Inez Wihardjo, Gigit.ai

"We were building a world-first product... and we needed to get it in the hands of qualified Shopify brands to listen to their feedback." — Soma Toth, Recart

If you're pre-build, this is the research to run first. Our guide to validating a Shopify app idea covers the full method.

2. Roadmap and discovery research

Once you're live, research shifts to what to build next, testing which opportunities are real before you invest in them. This is continuous, not a one-time event.

"Building apps can be expensive, especially if you build the wrong things. We've run a number of studies... to understand if there's an opportunity to build personalization APIs for headless environments." — Mark Dodgson, Context

"We are constantly rolling out new features and testing product ideas, and needed a reliable way to talk to our audience whenever we need to." — John Chao

Teams that research their roadmap build fewer wrong things and waste less engineering time on features nobody asked for. This is product discovery and roadmap validation.

3. Competitive and switching research

Before you position against an incumbent, you need to know why merchants would leave it, and what it's failing to do. Switching research surfaces exactly that.

Their goals included understanding, if a brand "already has a mobile app, what issues are they running into with their current provider." — Nihal Mandanna CP, MobiLoud

Knowing precisely why merchants churn from a competitor tells you what to build and how to pitch it. This is competitive research and switching analysis.

4. Positioning and messaging validation

Even a great product fails if the pitch doesn't land. Teams use research to test whether their messaging resonates with the specific ICP, and to explore which market segments respond.

"We were looking to explore different strategic directions and gauge market interest across different types of brands." — Yishai Segev, Loox

Testing your positioning on real merchants beats guessing which message converts. This is positioning and messaging validation.

5. Product and UX feedback

Once there's something to show, research confirms the build actually works for merchants, the UI, the features, the integrations they need, and surfaces gaps before they cost you installs.

"To connect with merchants who could test out our platform and give us feedback on the UI, features, and integrations they'd need." — Emily Hughes, Supermoon

"I'm always trying to make sure the way the product works matches the workflow of the merchant. Merchants also help me understand new use cases." — Timothy Daniell, Curvature

That last point is underrated: merchants don't just validate what you built, they reveal use cases you hadn't imagined.

6. Finding your ICP and first customers

Early-stage teams often don't yet know exactly who their product is for. Research narrows it, and often the same calls that clarify your ICP produce your first customers.

"We were trying to identify the right customer profile for our products when we just began." — Apurva Chawla, ConvertWise

"Find an initial set of customers who are willing to try our product." — Inez Wihardjo, Gigit.ai

The best early research does double duty: you learn who your buyer is, and you meet them.

How often should app teams run merchant research?

Continuously, not once. The pattern across successful teams is that research isn't a pre-launch box to tick, it's an always-on input. One founder described needing "a reliable way to talk to our audience whenever we need to," across onboarding, product usage, and landing-page feedback. The teams that build the best apps treat merchant access as infrastructure, something they can tap any week a decision comes up, not a project they scramble to set up each time.

That's the real shift: from research as an occasional event to research as a habit. The blocker has always been access, reaching the right merchants on demand is hard. Solve the access problem and continuous research becomes realistic.

Make merchant research a habit, not a scramble

Every use case above depends on one thing: being able to reach vetted Shopify merchants in your ICP, quickly, whenever a question comes up. That's the problem app store research solves, post a project and pre-screened merchants apply to talk to you, whether you're validating an idea, testing a feature, researching a competitor, or finding your first customers.

Not sure how to reach the right merchants in the first place? Start with our guide to recruiting Shopify merchants for user research.

Building a Shopify app? Talk to merchants at every stage, not just launch. Get matched to vetted Shopify merchants in your exact ICP and book research calls on demand, for validation, roadmap, positioning, or your first customers. On calls in days. Start a research project →

Quotes are from Shopify app teams and researchers describing their research goals, collected via the app store research network, 2026.