Google’s September 2026 Spam Update: What Ecommerce Brands Need to Know

Selling internationally creates an ongoing content challenge. Every time your team improves a product description, launches a collection or updates important information, your translated storefronts need attention too. For a busy ecommerce team, that work can quickly fall behind. Shopify’s latest Translate & Adapt update aims to make that easier to manage. For eligible merchants, including those in the UK, it introduces weekly automatic translation updates and increases the automatic translation allowance from two languages to eight. For brands planning international growth, this could make maintaining a multilingual store considerably more practical. Here’s what has changed and how we would approach it. What has Shopify changed? Shopify’s announcement, published on 9 October 2026, introduces these changes: Weekly Auto sync: automatically translates new and updated content for published languages. Eight language slots: increased from the previous allowance of two. Control for each language: Auto sync is disabled by default and can be enabled individually. Manual translations protected: translations written manually are not overwritten. Immediate translation available: the renamed “Translate now” button lets merchants translate without waiting for the weekly update. Using Auto sync, Translate now, or both for a language counts towards one of the eight slots. Availability covers the UK and the other European countries specified in Shopify’s official announcement. Why this matters for ecommerce teams Launching a translated storefront is only the beginning. The harder task is keeping it useful as your business changes. Consider a fashion brand that regularly refines fit guidance, fabric information and product descriptions. Its English storefront might receive continuous improvements, while translated versions receive attention only when someone remembers to revisit them. Our view is that reducing this maintenance burden is the most valuable part of the update. It gives teams an opportunity to spend less time repeating routine translation work and more time reviewing the information that influences buying decisions. For a small team managing a growing catalogue, that could make international expansion easier to support alongside everyday trading. What are the potential benefits? A more consistent customer experience Customers need clear, current information to decide whether a product is right for them. A useful starting point is to review the questions your international customers ask most often. Are they unsure about sizing, materials, compatibility or product care? Prioritise those areas when reviewing translated pages. More capacity to explore relevant markets A larger language allowance gives merchants more options. However, the number of available slots should not determine your expansion strategy. Start with evidence: Which countries already generate orders or enquiries? Where do you see relevant traffic but limited sales? Can you serve those customers profitably? Do you have suitable delivery, returns and customer support arrangements? One well-supported market can be more valuable than several storefronts your team cannot maintain effectively. A clearer role for human review We recommend assigning someone responsibility for reviewing priority translations. Start with bestselling products, major collection pages and important campaign landing pages. Check whether the wording sounds natural, explains the product accurately and reflects your brand. Pay particular attention to product claims, instructions, sizing and anything customers might interpret differently across markets. Translation still needs a commercial strategy The opportunity is to make your store easier for international customers to buy from. That means reviewing the whole journey. A translated product page may attract interest, but customers still need to understand delivery costs, likely arrival times and how returns work. Before investing in international campaigns, walk through the experience as a customer in your target market. Can they find the right products, understand the offer and complete their purchase confidently? Our Shopify marketing services bring together acquisition, website performance and customer retention to help brands plan that wider journey. What about international SEO? Our recommendation is to treat translation as one part of your search strategy. Before choosing target pages and keywords, investigate how customers in each market describe your products. A direct translation of an English phrase may miss the terminology shoppers actually use. Prioritise commercially useful pages and make sure the content answers local buying questions. Your international content plan should reflect product demand, customer needs and the markets you can realistically serve. Explore our SEO services if you need help identifying those opportunities. How we would approach the update For a UK Shopify brand, we suggest a focused first phase: Choose a priority market using existing demand and commercial viability. Review the current translated shopping journey. Identify the products and collections that deserve the most attention. Enable the relevant translation settings and establish a review routine. Measure sales, conversion performance and customer questions by market. Agree what success looks like before expanding further. That might mean stronger conversion from existing international visitors, fewer product queries or profitable sales in a new market. Make international growth easier to maintain This update creates a useful opportunity to review how your business manages multilingual content. For brands already selling internationally, it could reduce recurring administration. For those considering expansion, it offers a reason to assess where a translated storefront could support a clear commercial opportunity. At Lionheart Marketing, we help Shopify brands connect their website, search strategy and customer experience with their growth ambitions. Speak to our team about your Shopify store and where international growth could fit into your plans.  

January brings a fresh wave of motivation. For health, fitness and nutrition brands, it also creates an opportunity to turn renewed consumer interest into sustainable ecommerce growth. But here's the challenge: more interest doesn't automatically mean more sales. Whether you sell sports nutrition, vitamins, supplements, fitness equipment or activewear, the opportunity goes beyond attracting more visitors. You need to reach the right customers, give them a reason to buy and create an online experience that encourages them to return. As you plan for 2027, it's worth asking a simple question: is your ecommerce website helping you achieve your growth ambitions, or is it holding you back? At Lionheart Marketing, we help Shopify brands improve website performance, increase search visibility and identify opportunities to turn more traffic into revenue. Here are five challenges worth addressing before the New Year opportunity passes you by. The opportunity: A growing health and fitness market The UK health and fitness sector continues to demonstrate its commercial potential. According to ukactive's 2025 market report, covering 2024: UK health and fitness market revenue reached £5.7 billion. Revenue grew by 8.8% year on year. Membership reached 11.5 million. Fitness facilities recorded more than 600 million visits. These figures highlight the scale of consumer engagement with health and fitness. For ecommerce brands, the opportunity is to capture a share of that interest. But with more businesses competing for attention, simply having a website and running occasional campaigns may not be enough. Your ability to get found, convert visitors and encourage repeat purchases can make a real difference to your online performance. Source: ukactive: UK health and fitness market report Challenge 1: You're getting website traffic, but not enough sales You might be investing in Google Ads, publishing content and building your social presence, yet your sales aren't reflecting the effort. The immediate reaction is often to drive more traffic. But before increasing your marketing spend, it's worth understanding what's happening once visitors reach your website. Are your product pages answering customers' questions? Is your pricing and value proposition clear? Can shoppers find the products they're looking for? Is the journey from product discovery to checkout straightforward? Even small points of friction can affect whether someone completes a purchase or leaves to look elsewhere. For health, fitness and nutrition brands, customers may also need reassurance about ingredients, product benefits, suitability, delivery and how products fit into their routines. How we can help We help Shopify brands identify opportunities to improve their online store, from product-page design and navigation to checkout journeys, development improvements and conversion rate optimisation (CRO). Rather than assuming you need more traffic, we look at where improvements to the existing customer journey could help you get more value from the visitors you already attract. Explore our Shopify marketing services. Challenge 2: Your competitors are appearing in search. Are you? When customers search for protein powder, vitamins, supplements or fitness products, they're often already considering a purchase. If your brand isn't visible when those searches happen, you could be missing opportunities to attract new customers. Relying on branded searches or paid advertising alone can also limit your reach. You may be visible to people who already know your business, while missing potential customers discovering products or comparing alternatives. A stronger search strategy considers how people search, the questions they ask and the products they're looking to buy. That means looking beyond individual keywords to technical SEO, product-page optimisation, useful content and the commercial intent behind searches. Search behaviour is also evolving. Customers are increasingly using AI-powered tools alongside traditional search engines to research products and find recommendations. Building a stronger online presence means considering how your brand and products are represented across these discovery channels, too. How we can help We help Shopify businesses improve their organic visibility through SEO and reach relevant audiences through PPC and Google Ads. The objective is to attract the right people at the right stage of their buying journey, while making sure your marketing activity supports wider commercial goals. Explore our services: SEO services PPC and Google Ads Challenge 3: January customers aren't coming back New Year campaigns can generate an initial surge in demand. But what happens when the motivation fades? For nutrition and fitness brands, repeat purchasing can be particularly important. Customers may need to replenish supplements, replace equipment, explore complementary products or adapt their routines as their goals evolve. If your marketing strategy focuses entirely on acquiring new customers, you could be overlooking opportunities to build loyalty and increase customer lifetime value. Your website plays an important role here. Customers need to find relevant products easily, understand what to buy next and have a straightforward experience when returning to your store. Product recommendations, complementary products, bundles and a well-organised customer journey can all help support repeat purchasing where they genuinely meet customer needs. How we can help We help Shopify brands improve the ecommerce experience, making it easier for customers to discover products, navigate the store and complete purchases. By combining website improvements with a wider view of acquisition and customer journeys, we can help you identify opportunities to support both new customer growth and repeat business. Explore our Shopify marketing services. Challenge 4: You're spending on marketing, but struggling to prove the return More clicks, more website sessions and higher advertising spend don't necessarily mean more profitable growth. The important questions are: Are you attracting the right visitors? Which marketing channels are generating sales? Where are potential customers dropping out of the buying journey? Are conversion rates improving? Are customers returning to purchase again? Is your marketing investment delivering against your commercial objectives? Without clear measurement, it's easy to keep investing in activity without understanding what's genuinely making a difference. For example, a campaign might generate plenty of traffic but very few purchases. The problem could be the audience, the offer, the landing page or the product experience. Increasing the budget without investigating the issue could simply increase the cost. How we can help We take a commercially focused approach to search marketing and website performance. By looking at the relationship between traffic, customer journeys and conversions, we can help identify where improvements may have the greatest impact. That might mean refining a Google Ads campaign, improving a product page, addressing a technical issue or investigating why customers abandon their journey before purchasing. The aim is to make better-informed decisions about where to focus your time and investment. Explore our Shopify marketing services. Challenge 5: Is your Shopify store ready to scale? Your website should support your ambitions, not hold them back. As an ecommerce business grows, the demands on its website grow too. You might need to launch new products more quickly, improve the mobile experience, introduce new functionality or make changes to support conversion. But limited internal development resource, outdated design or technical restrictions can make it harder to move forward. Perhaps your existing website no longer reflects your brand. Maybe you've outgrown your current platform. Or you simply need reliable design and development support to keep improving the store without committing to additional permanent resource. Whatever the challenge, your website needs to be capable of supporting the next stage of your business. How we can help We work with Shopify businesses on new website builds, platform migrations and ongoing development support. Whether you're planning a complete redesign or looking to make incremental improvements to an established store, we can help you identify the right approach for your requirements. Explore our services: Shopify website design Shopify migrations Shopify Priority Support From New Year motivation to measurable ecommerce growth The New Year creates a natural opportunity to review your goals, challenge existing assumptions and plan for the months ahead. But sustainable ecommerce growth takes more than a seasonal campaign. It means getting found by the right customers, creating a website experience that encourages purchases, understanding what your marketing investment delivers and continually improving how your business performs online. For health, fitness and nutrition brands, that could mean addressing a specific conversion issue, improving organic visibility, making better use of Google Ads or building a Shopify store that can support future growth. You don't necessarily need to change everything at once. Often, the most useful starting point is understanding what's preventing you from achieving the results you want. At Lionheart Marketing, we combine Shopify design and development with SEO, PPC and conversion-focused thinking to help ecommerce businesses tackle those challenges. Ready to make 2027 your strongest year yet? If you're planning a new Shopify website, looking to improve search visibility or want to understand where your existing store could perform better, let's have a conversation. No assumptions about what you need. Just an opportunity to discuss your goals, understand the challenges and explore where improvements could make a difference. Email: letstalk@lionheartmarketing.co.uk Or visit our contact page to get in touch.  

“Can AI build my website?” Yes. Of course it can. Claude and other AI tools can help generate code, create layouts and turn ideas into working prototypes. Anthropic’s guide to Claude Artifacts explains how users can create and develop interactive content. Anthropic Help Center You can describe what you want, make a coffee and return to something that looks surprisingly impressive. A headline. Some product cards. A few animations. A button with beautifully rounded corners. Lovely. But once the initial excitement wears off, a more useful question appears: Will this website give your customers a reason to choose your brand? Congratulations. You Have a Website. So Does Everyone Else. Getting a website online is increasingly accessible. Standing out in a crowded market still takes thought. Your potential customers are comparing products, prices, delivery options and brands. They need to understand what you offer, why it matters and whether they can trust you. A prompt such as “build me a modern, premium ecommerce website” leaves quite a lot unanswered. Premium to whom? Selling what? Solving which problem? Competing with which brands? Without those details, you might get the digital equivalent of a show home: attractive, tidy and strangely difficult to remember. Your business deserves more personality than “Discover the future of shopping”. Unless you sell time machines. In which case, carry on. Customers Don’t Need to Detect AI to Notice Something Feels Generic Can customers always tell that a website was built using AI? No. A well-directed, carefully reviewed website can be distinctive and effective, regardless of the tools used to create it. But customers can notice vague messaging, repetitive layouts and content that could belong to almost any business. Imagine covering your logo and asking someone which brand they are browsing. Would the photography, language and experience still feel like you? Or could the page belong to a clothing retailer, a software company or someone selling luxury wheelie bins? That is the challenge. The concern is whether your website communicates enough substance and personality to earn attention and trust. You Buy an Agency’s Expertise Alongside the Website When you invest in an agency, the value should extend beyond the finished pages. You are paying for people who ask questions, challenge assumptions and turn business objectives into decisions about design, content and functionality. Questions such as: Why do customers choose your products? What stops them from purchasing? Which information matters most before they buy? What makes your brand different? Where are you losing potential customers? How will you know whether the new website performs better? Those answers influence everything from navigation and product templates to messaging and merchandising. Our Shopify website design approach brings together customer understanding, UX, design, development, SEO and CRO. The website is the visible result. The thinking behind it gives that result direction. “Make It Look Premium” Is a Starting Point It is also the sort of brief that can lead to beige backgrounds, enormous headings and a suspicious number of floating rectangles. Premium means different things to different customers. A luxury fashion buyer may want detailed fabric information, confident photography and a clear sense of craftsmanship. A trade customer may value accurate specifications, stock visibility and straightforward ordering. Both need a credible experience. They may need very different designs. A useful brief connects the visual direction to the audience and the business objective. For example: “Our customers are unsure about fit. We need product pages that explain sizing clearly, show the garment on different models and make the size guide easy to find on mobile.” Now there is something meaningful to design around. Personalisation Begins With Understanding the Customer Personalisation is easy to reduce to a first name in an email or a row of recommended products. A relevant commerce experience goes deeper. It considers how someone arrived, what they are trying to achieve and what information would help them take the next step. A first-time shopper may need reassurance about quality and returns. A returning customer may want to find their usual product quickly. Someone buying a gift may need help choosing, wrapping and delivery. For a fashion brand, that could mean outfit inspiration, useful fit advice and complementary items that make sense together. AI can support the implementation of ideas like these. Someone still needs to identify the right ideas, provide accurate information and check that the resulting experience works. The brief needs more detail than “add personalisation”. Otherwise, your customer buying a summer dress may be introduced to a winter coat with great enthusiasm. A Beautiful Button Still Needs Somewhere Useful to Go There is a particular joy in seeing your first generated website. Everything looks finished. Then you click “Learn more”. Nothing happens. Or the contact form looks excellent but sends enquiries nowhere. Or the product options behave unexpectedly. Or the mobile menu has decided it prefers a career in abstract art. These issues can occur in any website build. They are a reminder that a convincing preview needs proper testing before launch. A review should cover the journeys that matter to your business, including: Navigation and internal links. Product options and basket behaviour. Forms and their destinations. Mobile layouts and accessibility. App integrations. Analytics and conversion tracking. A website needs to support real customers doing real things, beyond looking good in a screenshot. Can AI Help Improve Conversion Rates and AOV? It can help you explore and deliver improvements. The important part is choosing improvements that address a real customer need. If customers struggle to understand sizing, clearer fit guidance may deserve attention. If they frequently buy related products separately, relevant bundles or complementary recommendations could be worth testing. Adding more features does not automatically improve conversion rate or average order value. A popup, a countdown timer and three recommendation widgets can quickly turn a calm shopping experience into a digital car boot sale. Start with a clear hypothesis. Decide what you expect to change, implement it carefully and review the results. Our Shopify growth support helps brands plan and deliver improvements across design, development and the customer journey. Your Website Also Needs to Be Found A newly generated website may look polished while still needing work on its content and search foundations. Your product pages need useful descriptions. Your collections need clear organisation. Your important pages need relevant headings and internal links. For a fashion brand, customers may be looking for particular materials, fits, styles or occasions. Your content should answer those needs naturally and accurately. Publishing fifty pages of enthusiastic waffle does not become a content strategy because it arrived quickly. Our SEO services connect keyword research, useful content and technical reviews with the pages that matter to your business. Speed is helpful. Direction gives that speed a purpose. How Many Opportunities Are You Losing? “How much did the website cost?” is a reasonable question. So is: “Where might this website be losing customers?” Perhaps visitors cannot understand why your product costs more. Perhaps delivery information is difficult to find. Perhaps your service pages make broad promises but provide little evidence. Those are opportunities to investigate. You cannot calculate lost sales simply because a website looks generic. Nor will customers know what you spent on it. They can, however, judge what they see. Clear information, genuine photography, relevant reviews, useful case studies and consistent functionality all help them assess your business. The investment decision should focus on whether your website gives customers enough confidence to buy or enquire, and how you can measure improvements. Do You Need a Bespoke Website to Look Credible? No. A carefully chosen Shopify theme, strong content and thoughtful customisation can create a distinctive, credible storefront. A bespoke build makes sense when your requirements justify the additional design and development work. The right choice depends on your customers, functionality, budget and ability to maintain the website. We explore that decision through our Shopify website design services, helping brands assess what they need before committing to a build. You should expect a clear explanation of why the proposed approach suits your business. “Because bespoke sounds expensive and impressive” is a fairly weak explanation. AI Is a Useful Tool. Give It a Useful Job. AI can support prototyping, coding, content development and design exploration. Used with a detailed brief and expert review, it can contribute to excellent work. But a prompt cannot fill gaps in customer knowledge that nobody has researched. A generated testimonial cannot replace genuine evidence. And a stylish layout cannot decide your commercial priorities for you. Those decisions need ownership. An agency should bring that understanding, judgement and accountability to the project, alongside the tools used to deliver it. Can Claude Build Your Website? Yes. The more interesting question is whether the finished website reflects your brand, serves your customers and supports your objectives. If you want to explore an idea, AI can be a useful starting point. If you are planning a website your business will depend on, give equal attention to the strategy, design decisions, testing and ongoing improvements. Whether you are reviewing an AI built website, choosing a Shopify theme or considering a bespoke build, speak to our team of Shopify experts. We can help you turn “that looks quite good” into a website with a clear commercial purpose. And make sure “Learn more” actually lets people learn more.