LAKE case study

Alberto Vena

Here's a conversation we've had more than once. An e-commerce director comes to a check-in and says: "Our CFO wants to know why we spent all that money on an accessibility audit and we're still not compliant."

It's a fair question. The audit was real. The remediation was real. The Shopify store launched on time. And then, in the months that followed, the team shipped a run of new seasonal sections, published product updates across the catalog, and added several third-party scripts, none of which had been through any kind of accessibility review.

The audit wasn't wrong. It was accurate on the day it was done. But it was designed to answer a point-in-time question, and the CFO was asking a continuous one.

## Why the audit feels like the finish line

The audit-and-fix model makes intuitive sense. It produces a deliverable: a WCAG violations report, a remediation checklist, a re-test confirmation. It has a beginning and an end. For a team tackling accessibility seriously for the first time, running an audit and fixing what it finds represents real, visible progress.

The problem is that this model treats accessibility the same way a brand might treat a website redesign: something you do, complete, and move on from. But your site doesn't stop changing. Features ship. Sections get added. Content editors upload assets. A new app gets installed. Every change is new surface area, and none of it was in the report.

In 2025, plaintiffs filed 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in federal court, a 27% increase from the year before, according to [Seyfarth Shaw's annual tracking](https://www.adatitleiii.com/2026/03/federal-court-website-accessibility-lawsuit-filings-bounce-back-in-2025/). Those lawsuits don't come with grace periods for "we passed an audit at launch." And increasingly, they don't come from disabled users who were blocked from completing a purchase. They come from automated bots crawling storefronts specifically looking for WCAG violations to generate demand letters at scale.

The exposure is continuous. The one-time audit is not.

## What "compliant" actually means on a living site

WCAG 2.1 AA is the practical standard that both US law (ADA) and European regulation (EAA) converge on. The EAA is more explicit about requirements and mandates an accessibility statement; its provisions apply to any brand selling into Europe, not only brands headquartered there.

But the standard itself isn't the hard part. What's hard is accepting that compliance isn't a state you achieve, it's a state your site is in or out of at any given moment.

Think about what a typical Shopify brand ships in a month: new product pages, seasonal campaign sections, an updated checkout flow, a third-party review app, a new loyalty widget. Each of those is a new set of DOM elements, a new interaction, a new potential WCAG failure. The audit covered the site that existed when the auditors logged in. It said nothing about the site you'd have sixty days later.

This is the reframe the CFO question requires. The audit was never going to keep the brand compliant. That was never its job. The question is what does.

## The three-layer discipline

What did you say? "Run more audits!"? Nope, that's not the solution. It's building three overlapping layers of coverage that catch different classes of issues at different points in the workflow.

**Layer one: developer-time tooling.** A browser extension like axe DevTools or WAVE installed in every developer's browser catches violations during development, before anything ships. Issues found here cost almost nothing to fix. Issues found in an annual audit cost an order of magnitude more in remediation time, in blocked releases, and sometimes in legal fees.

**Layer two: automated CI testing.** This is where most teams have a gap, and where the choice of tooling matters more than teams usually realize. Many rely on Lighthouse, which runs accessibility checks as part of its standard audit suite. Lighthouse is useful. It is not sufficient.

The problem is that Lighthouse tests a static page state, what the browser renders on load. It cannot test a drawer that's only visible after a click, a modal that opens mid-checkout, or a navigation menu that appears on hover. A significant share of interactive e-commerce UI never appears in a static page scan. A better approach is Playwright, or similar end-to-end testing tools with the axe SDK: you script the interaction first ("open the cart drawer, then run the accessibility check"), so the test covers the actual user path rather than the idle page.

**Layer three: periodic manual audits.** Automated tools catch roughly a third of WCAG violations. The rest require human judgment, whether alt text is meaningful, whether reading order makes semantic sense, whether a custom widget works correctly with a screen reader. Automated tools can confirm that an alt text attribute exists; they cannot tell you whether it says "image.jpg" or something a screen reader user would actually find useful.

Manual audits run quarterly are categorically different from those run annually, not just quantitatively. The site you're reviewing is closer to what you actually shipped. Issues caught at three months are cheaper to fix than issues that have been live for twelve.

## The gap no tool will find

Here's the part that gets left out of most accessibility conversations: three layers of technical tooling will still leave you exposed, because not all accessibility failures live in the code.

They live in the content.

A product image where the product name is rendered as a font inside the JPEG. A campaign banner where the call-to-action text is baked into the graphic. A blog post where every image lacks alt text because the editor who published it didn't know the field existed. No automated scanner catches any of these. They return clean. They fail WCAG 1.1.1 categorically.

Shopify's section architecture can help, but only if it's designed that way from the start. Section schemas can include required alt-text fields, mandatory aria-label inputs, and constraints that make non-compliant content harder to publish than compliant content. On projects where we've built sections with those requirements baked into the schema, content editors make fewer violations, not because they've read the WCAG spec, but because the form won't let them skip the field.

That's not a complete solution. An editor can still type "hero image" in an alt-text field and move on. Editorial guidelines and a basic accessibility orientation for anyone who publishes content are the other half. Less glamorous than CI tooling, harder to automate, and responsible for a disproportionate share of the violations that surface in real audits.

## Building the model that actually holds

Getting from "we had an audit" to "we have a workflow" requires three things beyond the initial report: CI tooling in the development process, content guidelines for the people who publish, and a vendor relationship structured for ongoing coverage, not event-based reviews.

That last one deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets. Some contracts give a brand a fixed number of manual reviews per year and charge per-review after that. The effect is predictable: teams ration their reviews, save them for after major launches, and end up with months of unreviewed surface area in between. You're rationing your own safety, and the gaps happen on a schedule.

Other managed services take a different approach: they monitor your site, identify violations, and deliver pull requests with fixes on a regular cadence. The output quality is often high. But there's a window between when you publish non-compliant code and when the fix arrives, and during that window, you're exposed. Whether that gap creates real legal risk depends on your specific situation, but it's worth pricing into the decision before you sign up.

We'll be direct: building this model takes time, and most brands are already behind. The audit-first approach isn't the wrong starting point, you need to know where you stand. But it becomes the wrong approach the moment it's treated as a destination.

## What keeps you compliant

The CFO question deserves a real answer, not a defensive one.

The audit was a snapshot. It told you where you were on one specific day. Everything that came after, the new sections, the content uploads, the app additions, wasn't covered, because it didn't exist yet. No audit covers a site that hasn't been built.

What keeps a brand compliant is everything that runs after the snapshot: the extension that catches an issue before it ships, the CI test that fails a PR because a new modal has no focus trap, the content editor who knows what alt text should actually say, the quarterly manual review that surfaces what automation missed.

The question worth asking isn't "have we passed an accessibility audit."

It's "would we pass one today?"

If accessibility is on your roadmap, whether as part of a Shopify replatform or as a standalone initiative, [we're happy to talk](https://nebulab.com/contact-us) through what the right model looks like for your team.

No, Your Shopify Accessibility Audit Won't Keep You Compliant

Nicolò Rebughini

The Shopify ecosystem features a plethora of services and frameworks designed to help developers launch their own apps, whether they’re custom apps only meant to be installed on a specific store or public apps that will be listed on the Shopify app store.

Among these tools is [Gadget](https://gadget.dev/), claiming to be “the fastest way to build and run web apps.”

Gadget wants to be your one-stop shop for all of your full stack app development needs by providing a platform to handle all of the infrastructure needed to build and deploy an app.

At its core, it offers a managed PostgreSQL database and auto-generates an API package, complete with TypeScript support and React client integration. Developers can write server-side JavaScript code that runs on a serverless Node.js platform powered by Fastify, while the frontend development is simplified with a pre-configured React scaffold powered by Vite.

![](/media/blog/building-shopify-apps-with-gadget/ccc1ec82bad8e5a6f57c4d51528ddd41b1a9278a.png)

Gadget apps are always live from the moment they are created, and development environments can be promoted to production with a couple of clicks. On top of this, it offers an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to manage both code and data in a unified location.

While Gadget is now a tool for building any sort of Web app, it was originally born to accelerate the development of Shopify apps. The Shopify integration provided by Gadget streamlines a lot of boilerplate work by offering:

- Data models for all your Shopify objects that you can augment with new attributes, stored on Shopify as custom metafields.
- Webhook subscriptions for object creation, update and deletion.
- So-called **actions** which allow you to run custom logic to keep Gadget in sync with your Shopify instance.

Gadget also publishes a TypeScript API that you can use to manage your custom data models. As an added bonus, this package is then made available through a registry, so it can be integrated in your Shopify storefront or any other JavaScript application.

Today, we’re going to take Gadget for a spin by using it to build a simple custom app that records the history of price changes for our Shopify products.

## Building Our Sample Gadget App

When creating a new app, we suggest starting with an  **Empty React embedded app**. Gadget also offers some pre-built app templates, but these don’t always work out of the box unfotunately, making for a subpar development experience.

Our Gadget app will need to read **productVariant** objects, as that’s where Shopify stores the variant price, so we need to select the **Product variant** scope when creating the app:

![](/media/blog/building-shopify-apps-with-gadget/50696d4cc9fd8601284264d42b53520aeae783ed.png)

At this point, can install the app in our Shopify store. To do this, we need to:

1. Create a Shopify app from the Shopify Partner Portal.
2. Copy the Shopify app’s Client ID (the app identifier) and Client Secret and plug them into Gadget’s configuration panel for our Gadget app.
3. Copy the URLs generated by Gadget and paste them in our Shopify app’s configuration panel. 
4. Go back to the Shopify app overview and select a store where we want to install the app.
5. Grant our app the required permissions in the dialog that pops up.

If all went well, we should now be able to see the default Gadget app UI in our Shopify store’s admin panel.

### Syncing Data Between Gadget and Shopify

To experience a bit of Gadget’s magic, we can check the **Installs** tab in the Gadget sidebar and start a **Sync** for the store we just installed our app in. This will sync our Gadget database with our Shopify store.

![](/media/blog/building-shopify-apps-with-gadget/4d65fe5ba7b9900c0d9944b25cff6d13aa58793f.png)

To explore our data, we can head over to the **shopifyProduct** model and check out its data view. 

The **data** view is one of the highlights of Gadget: without Gadget, we’d have to make GraphQL API calls to be able to see the data. Being able to quickly see our Shopify data in a tabular form feels like magic.

![](/media/blog/building-shopify-apps-with-gadget/c00c913b45be8117514f0aa5fe3574c989eb79ab.png)

Furthermore, Gadget automatically creates webhook subscriptions for every accessible Shopify model, and by default, reacts to every change in the Shopify stores by ingesting changes: object creations, updates deletions are synced in near-real-time with Gadget’s database. If we attempt to edit a product, we should be able to see the changes shortly thereafter in the corresponding data view.

### Extending Our Gadget App with Custom Functionality

The simple app we're building just needs to record the history of prices set for our products. To do that, we need to store this data *somewhere*.

One way to do this would be to add a metafield to our variants. However, reading and writing the metafield would still requires going through the good old Shopify GraphQL queries and mutations, which requires a lot of boilerplate code. This is an annoying limitation of Gadget’s operating model.

Instead, let’s create a new **priceChange** model via the sidebar. Given we don't need to run calculations or any fancy analyses, we can structure the price field as a string, just as it is presented in the **productVariant** model.

We also want to correctly model the relationship between the **productVariant** model and the **priceChange** model: each **productVariant** should have multiple **priceChange** records. Setting this up via the Gadget UI is a breeze and very intuitive:

![](/media/blog/building-shopify-apps-with-gadget/1a30f13a82c332cfb7d06c17b3a903ad6af445cd.png)

Finally, we need to actually create a **priceChange** record on every price change. In order to do that, we can edit the **update** action for the **shopifyProductVariant** model, which governs what happens when variants are updated:

```jsx
// api/models/shopifyProductVariant/actions/update.js

export async function onSuccess({ params, record, logger, api, connections }) {
  const newPrice = params.shopifyProductVariant.price;

  if (newPrice != api.shopifyProductVariant.findOne(record.id).price) {
    api.priceChange.create({ newPrice, shopifyProductVariant: { _link: params.shopifyProductVariant.id } });
  }
};

```

With all of this in place, we can then test it by editing a product price on our store and then heading to the **priceChange** data view to verify the new addition:

![](/media/blog/building-shopify-apps-with-gadget/3fc38fe79407ae829db1952d8485118b7cb1cf73.png)

### Taking It Further

Consuming the API built on the Gadget backend from any JavaScript or TypeScript application is as easy as installing an NPM package hosted directly in the Gadget registry, or including a minified script in your already existing web application. The API is kept in sync and documented automatically for you by the Gadget platform, which makes it a breeze to work with.

This would allow us, for instance, to read the record of price changes in our Shopify theme in order to show them to the customer (something that may be useful for compliance with the European Omnibus directive).

## Is Gadget Right For Your Shopify Customizations?

The answer is “it depends.”

If your team is already familiar with Gadget’s underlying technologies and ecosystem, picking up Gadget and feeling the magic of the robust webhook management and data synchronization  is a huge productivity boost, greatly reducing time-to-market for the applications you’ll be building.

However, if your Shopify application needs to deploy a checkout extension, a Shopify Function, or some other feature that’s not directly integrated in the app codebase, you can’t just use the Gadget UI. Instead, you’ll need to clone the code locally via the `ggt` command line tool, and then rely on the Shopify CLI to complete these tasks. While this adds some friction, it also allows you to use your preferred tools to work on the codebase, and `ggt` will still keep your data models in bi-directional sync between Gadget and your codebase.

Developers evaluating Gadget should also be mindful of platform lock-in: the platform takes over pretty much your entire custom app infrastructure, forcing you to play by their technical and commercial rules. If you ever need to migrate off of Gadget, the price to pay may be significant.

In conclusion, for teams prioritizing rapid Shopify app development over platform independence, Gadget offers a compelling and solid foundation to build upon. If, on the other hand, you value owning your infrastructure and want full control over your development environment, you’re probably better off developing your app from scratch.

A Primer to Building Custom Shopify Apps with Gadget

Michela Frecchiami

For direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are more than just shopping events; they’re a prime opportunity to forge lasting customer relationships, expand market presence, and drive brand loyalty. [BFCM 2023 set new records](https://www.shopify.com/news/shopify-merchants-drive-record-high-9-3-billion-in-black-friday-cyber-monday-sales), with Shopify merchants generating $9.3 billion in sales—a 24% increase from the previous year. This isn't just a period for bargain hunters; shoppers are keen to treat themselves, stock up on essentials, and find meaningful gifts for loved ones.

Smart DTC brands that offer personalized recommendations, exclusive bundles, and tailored shopping experiences can take full advantage of this critical period. By focusing on these strategies, brands can enhance the shopping experience, boost cart values, and nurture customer loyalty well beyond the holiday season.

In this article, we’ll delve into five key strategies DTC brands can use to optimize the user experience, increase sales, and strengthen customer relationships during BFCM.

## 1. Use Personalization to Build a Tailored Shopping Journey

BFCM is the perfect time to elevate the shopping experience with personalized recommendations. Shoppers are often on the lookout for items they've been considering for months, and by tailoring product suggestions based on customer preferences, you can significantly improve conversion rates.

To achieve personalization during BFCM, DTC brands can leverage the following strategies:

* **Tailored Product Recommendations**: Use browsing history and previous purchases to recommend products that align with a customer's past behavior. For instance, if someone bought skincare products last year, suggest complementary items they might appreciate this season. Relevant suggestions make it easier for customers to find what they need and feel understood by your brand.
* **Exclusive Offers for Returning Customers**: Rewarding returning customers with early access to sales or exclusive discounts fosters loyalty. This personalized touch can be a game-changer during BFCM, making shoppers feel valued and more likely to return for future purchases.
* **Personalized Shopping Experience**: Tailoring the shopping journey with custom landing pages for different customer segments enhances the overall experience. These pages can feature curated collections that align with the customer’s preferences, creating a more relevant and engaging shopping experience.

<figure>
  <img src="/media/blog/key-bfcm-ux-strategies-for-dtc-brands/a8afd37c8557c53ec4629f67a9b0abff752996fd.jpg" alt="Cometeer personalized black friday email">
  <figcaption>Cometeer's Black Friday emails ensure that returning customers get the exclusive offers before the general public.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
  <img src="/media/blog/key-bfcm-ux-strategies-for-dtc-brands/342ff6cf7110501c14642682563f633c42ae4842.jpg" alt="LuLuLemon upsell and personalizationl">
  <figcaption>Lululemon offering discounts on upsells and crossells as a way to tailor product recommendations to their customers.</figcaption>
</figure>

## 2. Increase AOV by Featuring Cross-Selling and Up-Selling Opportunities
The cart is a critical touchpoint for boosting the average order value (AOV). By implementing strategies like volume discounts, bundling, and upselling complementary items, DTC brands can maximize each purchase during BFCM.

* **“More of the Same” Strategies**: Capitalize on popular items frequently bought together, leveraging BFCM shoppers' tendencies to stock up. Offering volume discounts (e.g., "Buy 3, Get 1 Free") or bundling products is a great way to drive higher cart values.
* **Complementary Product Suggestions**: Highlight 2-3 complementary items based on what's already in the cart. For example, if someone is buying a skincare set, suggest related accessories or add-ons like travel-sized products. This makes it easier for customers to discover products that enhance their purchases.
* **Tiered Free Shipping and Gift Incentives**: Highlight how close customers are to free shipping or a gift incentive (e.g., "You’re only $20 away from free shipping!"). These small nudges often encourage additional purchases, enhancing the perceived value of the order.
* **Mobile-Friendly Design**: Ensure that upselling and cross-selling sections are visible on mobile devices without obstructing the user's view. Experiment with different methods, such as collapsible sections, carousels, or dismissible pop-up windows displaying relevant suggestions immediately after a customer adds an item to the cart. Monitor user engagement and adjust the design accordingly.

<figure>
  <img src="/media/blog/key-bfcm-ux-strategies-for-dtc-brands/d1e5f36a97b2d8b3979fd7a51adfee38b9927f5e.jpg" alt="Cart upsell examples">
  <figcaption>Some examples of mobile cart upsell UX that we love!</figcaption>
</figure>

## 3. Provide Alternative Product Recommendations for Out-of-Stock Items 
High-demand products sell out quickly during BFCM, leading to frustrated customers and missed sales opportunities. Offering alternative product recommendations is a proactive way to keep customers engaged and reduce the likelihood of abandonment.

However, the visibility of these recommendations is key—product recommendation carousels, while useful, can easily be missed if placed at the bottom of the page, particularly on mobile.

Here there are a few ideas, that brands should consider to leverage alternative products avoiding to miss any potential conversions:

* **Anchoring Similar Items**: implementing anchor links near the out-of-stock button (often disabled or converted to a “Notify Me when Available”) that direct customers to a section featuring similar items. This approach provides customers with immediate alternative choices, letting them discover deals on similar products.
* **Display product recommendations near the buy section**: Display alternative items near the “buy” button or in a non-intrusive pop-up when an out-of-stock product is selected. Make sure these suggestions are easy to find and relevant to the customer's browsing history.
* **Non-Intrusive Pop-Up Recommendations**: A pop-up window that recommends alternative products when a shopper encounters an out-of-stock item can save the sale. Ensure the pop-up is easy to close but remains accessible for the customer to revisit.

<figure>
  <img src="/media/blog/key-bfcm-ux-strategies-for-dtc-brands/fed609443a842656a8c6b1bfde54c1878f09e8d2.jpg" alt="Aloyoga out of stock messaging">
  <figcaption>Aloyoga (left) uses anchoring messaging and alternative cross sells when products are out of stock. Princess Polly (right) also uses "alternative" products alongside a "notify me" call to action.  </figcaption>
</figure>

## 4. Show Delivery and Return Expectations to Reduce Customer Anxiety 
Clear communication is key to preventing cart abandonment, especially during the BFCM rush. By setting clear expectations around delivery times, shipping costs, and return policies, you can reduce anxiety and encourage purchases.

Since gifting remains a significant element of the holiday shopping season, consider improving the shopping experience for gift-givers by implementing these key insights.

* **Transparent Shipping Costs**: Display shipping costs upfront, ideally on the product page or in the cart. Surprising customers with hidden fees during checkout is a surefire way to lose them.
* **Order Cutoff Dates**: Ensure customers know when they need to place orders to receive them on time, particularly for gifts. Prominent banners or product page messages like "Order by December 10 for guaranteed delivery before Christmas" give customers confidence in their purchase.
* **Extended Return Policies**: Offering an extended return window for purchases made during BFCM reassures customers that they can buy gifts without worrying about strict return deadlines.
* **Order Tracking**: Providing detailed tracking updates helps ease customer concerns about delivery times during this busy season. Clear tracking information can make a significant difference in the overall customer experience.

<figure>
  <img src="/media/blog/key-bfcm-ux-strategies-for-dtc-brands/e357399262e62a1eabe41e084d895a68f0eb2b3a.jpg" alt="Aloyoga out of stock messaging">
  <figcaption>Lake (left) and Alo (right) both have clear information about delivery and returns in the checkout, ensuring customers don't get an unwanted suprise!  </figcaption>
</figure>

## 5. Provide an Optimized Experience to Mobile and Desktop Users 
[During BFCM 2023](https://www.syte.ai/blog/bfcm-resources/bfcm-2023-top-trends-and-takeaways/), while mobile transactions were significant, desktop shoppers displayed higher conversion rates and average order values (AOV), particularly in industries like Fashion, Jewelry, and Home Decor. This trend suggests that many shoppers turned to their computers for focused sessions, whether they were stocking up on essentials for the upcoming year or purchasing high-value items they'd been considering and researching for some time.

To provide an exceptional shopping experience for both desktop and mobile users, consider these tactics:

* **Site Speed Optimization**: High traffic during BFCM can lead to slow load times or crashes, causing customers to abandon their carts. Use tactics like lazy loading, content delivery networks (CDNs), and site performance testing to ensure a smooth, speedy shopping experience.
* **User-Generated Content (UGC)**: Customer photos, Q&A sections, and verified reviews enhance trust, particularly for desktop shoppers researching high-value items. UGC adds authenticity to your brand and boosts conversion rates by providing social proof.
* **Accessible Product Information**: Make essential product details like size guides, specs, and return policies easy to find. During the hectic BFCM season, customers don’t want to search for information. Providing it upfront ensures a smoother shopping experience, and real-time support through chatbots can further assist.

## Maximizing BFCM Success for DTC Brands 
As BFCM approaches, DTC brands must seize the opportunity to optimize the shopping experience, connect with customers, and build long-term loyalty. By focusing on personalized shopping journeys, effective cross-selling strategies, and clear communication around shipping and returns, brands can turn BFCM into a catalyst for sustained growth and engagement.

Need help planning your e-commerce strategy for BFCM? We’re here to assist you in creating a seamless user experience that drives results. [Contact us](https://nebulab.com/contact-us) to learn more!

Unlocking BFCM Success: Key UX Strategies for DTC Brands

Stefano Sarioli

At Nebulab, we take a lot of pride in our two-pronged approach to creating value for eCommerce brands: on one side, we have our Consulting Services department, working with customers on a one-on-one basis to develop bespoke solutions. On the other, our R&D team is constantly looking for new product opportunities. When the two work together holistically to inform each other’s work, magic happens.

Today, we’re proud to announce [Sprout](https://getsprout.app), our product seeding toolkit born precisely from such a spark of magic. When we found ourselves solving the same problem over and over for different customers, we realized it was time to create a reusable solution that could put an end to brands’ influencer gifting pains once and for all.

## What’s The Big Deal with Influencer Gifting?

After Apple released App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14.5, dramatically increasing the cost of paid social media advertising, most DTC brands began looking for novel marketing channels that could sustain their growth without killing their bottom line.

One of the most promising new channels is influencer marketing: by partnering with like-minded influencers and content creators, brands can access highly engaged audiences, usually at a fraction of the price of paid social. Influencer marketing is being adopted by brands of all sizes to complement and enrich their channel mix.

![](/media/blog/announcing-sprout/6ca1956b5ba7812852239ee7c48481df3d1dd597.png)

When partnering with an influencer, brands typically send them a free sample to try the product and generate relevant UGC to share with their audience. These samples may vary depending on how many SKUs the brand has, and they may include handwritten notes, branded merchandise, or other goodies to give the influencer even more firepower to efficiently promote the brand. Large brands also have stringent requirements around budget control, fulfillment, and revenue reporting.

As we worked with customers such as [Cometeer](https://cometeer.com) and [Goodles](https://goodles.com) to develop bespoke solutions to solve these challenges, we realized that there was no product out there to facilitate influencer gifting campaigns at scale. All the gifting toolkits we looked at were either too focused on peer-to-peer gifting or part of larger, incredibly expensive influencer marketing platforms that do way more than the average brand will need.

As a result, most brands are using spreadsheets and manual work to run influencer gifting campaigns: they reach out to influencers individually, collect their shipping address and product preferences, and then ship out the samples manually. The entire process is time-consuming, prone to error, and above all, soul-sucking. We think that there are better uses of a marketer’s time.

So we set out to solve this problem once and for all.

## Enter Sprout, Influencer Gifting Peace of Mind

Sprout is a simple product at its core: you connect it to your Shopify store, set up a gift link, and share it with your influencers. The influencer uses the link to select the product(s) they want to receive and enter their shipping information, and an order magically appears in your eCommerce platform, which you can fulfill like any regular order.

![](/media/blog/announcing-sprout/25f5ad60bb46e1ee9349d1fc124742576d0cf1ae.png)

The magic of Sprout lies in the level of integration and control it offers:

* **It supports rich product catalogs.** You can have option selectors for multi-variant products, allow influencers to redeem merchandise and goodies along with the primary SKU, and specify redemption limits for each type of product.
* **It’s on-brand through and through.** The entire redemption experience can be customized from the ground up to match your branding. You can also add custom content blocks and even custom fields to collect additional information.
* **It integrates seamlessly with your stack.** Rather than forcing you to fulfill orders manually or through a separate UI, Sprout simply uses the eCommerce stack you already have: it integrates natively with your eCommerce platform and any apps you might have installed, so that any post-purchase automations will still fire–as long as you want them to, of course.
* **It’s made for data-driven brands.** Serious brands take reporting seriously. All gift orders created by Sprout use a special discount code and are tagged granularly, so you can easily filter them out in your reports and analytics.
* **It gives you the control you need.** If you’re a big player, we have what you need: Sprout allows you to invite multiple team members with different permission levels, assign monthly budgets to each team member, and automatically expire gifts to reclaim unused budgets.

And this is just the beginning: we’re working closely with our first cohort of customers to inform the product roadmap and enable Sprout to automate even more of your influencer gifting campaigns. With the capabilities unlocked by generative and predictive AI technologies, there’s an opportunity for Sprout to become a one-stop solution for your entire influencer funnel–but more on that when the time is ripe.

## Take Sprout for a Spin!

Sprout is currently available to select brands in early access.

**For $400/month, you get unlimited access to all features and a branded redemption page, lovingly crafted by our design team.** In pure SaaS fashion, you can try Sprout for 30 days and cancel at any time if you don't think you're getting your money's worth—although we guarantee you will.

If you want to give it a try, reach out through [Sprout's website](https://getsprout.app?utm_source=nebulab&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=sprout_announcement) and we’ll be in touch!

The Nebulab

No, Your Shopify Accessibility Audit Won't Keep You Compliant

A Primer to Building Custom Shopify Apps with Gadget

Unlocking BFCM Success: Key UX Strategies for DTC Brands

Announcing Sprout, Our Toolkit for Influencer Gifting