merchavio
Changelog

Merchavio changelog: new features and updates

What has changed in Merchavio, one entry every week: new features, improvements and fixes. Important notices, for example on data protection, are at the top of the entry and also sent by email and to the bell in the dashboard.

The AI takes over the look of your current website and creates several products at once

New

  • When the AI builds your storefront, you can paste the link to your current website in the **Style** step. Merchavio reads its colors and fonts and uses them for your new page; texts are not copied. You can also just write it in the chat, for example “build my website in the style of my-site.com”.
  • Ask the AI for several products in one message, for example “create two courses”, and it sets them up one after the other, showing **Product 1 of 2** while it works. A price, billing or name you mention, such as “for 49 € a month”, is already filled in.

Changed

  • The cookie notice on merchavio.com now also asks whether we may measure clicks and scroll depth on our own pages (heatmap), so we can see which parts help and which confuse. Only with your consent, without a visitor ID and without anything stored in your browser; your shop and your buyers are not affected. Details in the privacy policy.
  • The cookie notice in your shop and on merchavio.com now has a third button, **Choose**, next to **Decline** and **Accept**. Visitors can allow each purpose separately: statistics (visitor ID), recommendations (referral codes) and, on merchavio.com, the heatmap; all switches start off. A visitor who allows only some of them is still counted in your statistics, just without a visitor ID, and a referral code without consent works until the page is reloaded, as before.

New buy box on sales pages, sortable main menu, communities get their own address

New

  • Your sales pages now start with a buy box: first the video, then the product name, the price, the payment badges, the purchase options and quantity, **Buy now** and **Add to cart**, a longer description and expandable points, for example “Personal support”, which open with a tap. On a computer the video stays on the left while the buy box sits next to it. Price and options always come from the product. Existing sales pages switch to it by themselves; your video, title and button settings stay.
  • Every product can now have an optional subtitle, not only e-books. Add it in **Products** right under the title. On the sales page it sits small under the product name in the buy box, a good place for the one sentence that tells buyers why it matters to them. Store cards, the product page and the marketplace show it too.
  • Choose how big a picture appears in an **Image + text** section: drag **Image size** in the builder (30 to 100 percent) and place a smaller picture left, centered or right with **Image align**. Handy for portrait screenshots, for example in 9:16. With **Image ratio** set to **Auto** nothing gets cropped.
  • Edit text right on the page in the storefront builder: click a heading or text in the preview and type. Line breaks work where the section shows paragraphs. A small bar above the text sets size, font, alignment, color and line spacing; **Done**, Esc or a click next to it closes it. The panel on the right stays in sync.
  • Every renewal of a subscription is now its own order in **Orders**, marked **Payment 2**, **Payment 3** and so on; the first payment shows **Payment 1**. Revenue, customer value and bookkeeping now include renewals in the month they are paid, while units sold, new buyers, the conversion rate and subscription numbers still count each subscription once. **Analytics** shows how many orders were renewals. A renewal sends no email to you or your buyer and gives no extra access. To refund a renewal, refund its own order. Before, only the first payment of a subscription appeared in your numbers; renewals paid before this update are not added afterwards.
  • Set your own community rules: in the community builder, click **Community rules**, write them and turn on **Members must accept before entering**. Members see the rules in a pop-up the next time they open the community and only get in after accepting; if you change the text, everyone accepts again. **Members & roles** shows when each member accepted, and **Preview pop-up** shows what members see. The **Accept rules** button in the welcome channel, which did nothing, is gone.
  • Choose the language of your dashboard under **Settings → Language**: English or German. All settings pages follow it (before, they mixed German and English), Merchavio prices and fees appear in the matching format, and the emails Merchavio sends you, for example about a new sale, a partner application, a new review or a password reset, now come in that language too. Emails to your buyers and members stay as before. Store languages under **Branding & theme** are only noted for later: your store appears in the language you write it in.
  • Mark test purchases under **Orders**: turn on the switch in the new **Test purchase** column. The order then no longer counts in revenue, orders, the conversion rate, customer value, best sellers or any other figure; for a subscription, all its payments are marked. Your bookkeeping and invoices keep it, because real money was paid, and the buyer keeps access. Switching it off counts it again. Checkouts that were started but never paid now show **Awaiting payment** and, after 24 hours, **Abandoned** instead of a lasting “pending”.

Changed

  • The main menu under **Storefront → Navigation** now also lists the pages from the builder, such as Home, Shop and FAQ, together with your own entries. Drag them into any order, for example a sales page before Home; the order applies right away in the builder and in your live store. The x takes a page out of the menu, the page itself stays.
  • When you rename a product, its sales page takes the new name and address (for example /new-name), and menu items follow automatically. The old address keeps opening the page, so shared links still work.
  • Your community shows its own icon in the browser tab, otherwise your store’s icon, just like your sales pages. Before, it showed a generated initial.
  • An address in your store that leads nowhere now shows **Page not found** instead of your home page.
  • Every item in your store menu now looks the same when selected: pages, entries from **Navigation** (including sales pages) and categories, in the builder and in your live store. The selected item is bold with a line in your accent color, always equally thick.
  • The three image and text modules of the standard sales page are now three separate **Image + text** sections. You can move or delete each one on its own, for example if you only need two. Existing sales pages switch over automatically and keep your images, texts and button.
  • The buy buttons on the standard sales page now say **Buy now**, without product name and price. Free products say **Get it free**. A button text you entered yourself stays.
  • The text at the bottom of your store pages, under your store name, can now be longer: up to 600 characters with line breaks, for example a short notice for your buyers. It now uses more of the width. In the storefront builder you edit it right in the preview: click the text in the footer and type.
  • Edit your legal pages right in **Settings → Legal pages**: **Edit** opens the text in a window, and saving updates the page in your shop right away. The generator now uses the small business rule of your country (for example Art. 53 CIVA in Portugal instead of § 19 UStG), and the imprint names the German § 5 DDG only for shops in Germany. Shops in Portugal can enter their NIF.
  • On phones your community no longer covers the message field: the **Chat** button now only appears on the community home page, and **Get the app** now sits in the menu at the top left instead of floating over the send button.
  • In the affiliate program you now set the commission per product with a slider from 1 to 100 % of the net price (without VAT), instead of choosing 20, 25, 30 or 40 %. With the second tier on, both tiers together never exceed the net price, so the slider stops a little lower (95 % with the default 5 %). The badge now says **Program paused** when your program is paused, the funnel counts the last 30 days, and the **Email notifications** switch now really controls the emails about new partners and payout requests.
  • Products, checkout and the community builder now only show settings that really take effect. Options that did nothing are gone, for example drip release, attachments, quizzes and templates in the course builder, top review, upsell and logo choice in the **Checkout** tab, and about 30 switches in community channels such as recording, certificates, points or a member discount. A course takes its color from your members area and its cover from the product image. What Stripe sets on its payment page (name field, one-tap payment with Link, wording of the pay button) is now marked as controlled by Stripe. In the community builder, **Access** shows the price of the linked product with a button to change it, instead of a Free, Paid or Invite choice without effect.

Fixed

  • The **Live offer · countdown** section now counts down for real. Link a discount with an end date from **Discounts**: the timer runs to its end, the badge shows its value and a code is shown if it needs one. Or set your own end date, without a discount. Your live store shows the section only while the offer runs. Before, it showed a fixed sample timer and “−33%” even without a real offer.
  • You can now edit the points in **What you learn** on your sales page: click **Points** in the section and add, change, reorder or delete them. Until you add your own, a course shows its lessons. Without points or lessons the section stays hidden in your live store instead of showing example points, and the builder says so right on the section.
  • The visitor numbers in **Storefront** and **Analytics** are now correct. Your own visits no longer count when you open your store from the dashboard, and neither do search engine bots and automated browsers. **Visits** now counts every visit, also from people who declined statistics (before, all of them counted as one visitor). The conversion rate only counts orders from your store and appears from 20 visits on. Numbers from before this change stay in the 30-day window until they age out.
  • When you rename a product, everything that still carries the old name follows: its community (name and hero), its sales page and address, menu items and sections that show the product. This works from **Products**, the course builder and the assistant. Renaming the community in its builder renames the product too. A new product image also replaces the community cover if the community still used the old one.
  • Deleting a product now also removes its community, its sales page and its menu items, and it disappears from bundles. Before, the community stayed under **Spaces** and the sales page could stay reachable.
  • You can now delete a community under **Spaces** and in the community settings in its builder. If it belongs to a product, the product and its sales page go with it, after a clear question.
  • The **Community URL** field now says who already uses an address, for example the sales page of your own product. A sales page and its community need two different addresses.
  • A sales page goes offline as soon as its product is no longer live (back to draft, archived or deleted).
  • **Image + text** sections now show their button: **Buy now** on sales pages, and new sections on other pages get **Shop now** with a link to your shop page. Before, the button was listed in the section but did not appear. Clear the button text if you want none. On phones the image now always comes before the text.
  • The **Testimonials** section on your sales page now shows the quotes you enter in the builder: name, role, quote, stars and a photo, or a video link that plays right on the card. Until you add your own, your live store hides the section instead of showing sample quotes.
  • A menu item that leads to a product’s sales page opens it again, in the storefront builder and in your live store, even if you renamed the page or created the product after your last **Publish**. Menu items for products that are not live yet stay hidden in your live store until the product is live, and **Navigation** shows a note next to them. Categories in the menu now also open with a click or a tap on phones and tablets.
  • A community and the sales page of its product no longer share one address: **View live**, member links and access emails open the community again instead of the sales page. New communities get a free address (for example “name-community”), older ones get it as soon as you open them under **Spaces**, and new sales pages avoid addresses your communities already use.
  • On phones, the 6-digit code from the email now goes in completely when it comes from a keyboard suggestion or autofill, in any of the six fields.
  • The three image and text modules of the sales page now show image, text and button in this order on phones in every module. Before, a module with the image on the right showed the text first. The mobile preview in the storefront builder now shows them exactly like that, in one column.
  • The **Image** block in your community now shows the picture you upload, in its own format, with the same size and alignment controls. Before, members only saw a gray placeholder.
  • Discount codes now work reliably: your buyers enter them in the cart. The payment page no longer shows its own extra code field, which did not know your codes and rejected them.
  • The button in **Image + text** sections is now large by default, exactly as **Size L** in the builder says. Before, it showed L but appeared in the smallest size. **Solid** or **Outline** is now set in one place under **Style**; before, two switches changed the same button.
  • If a page has the same section more than once, for example several **Image + text** sections, the **+ Element** bar now appears only on the one you selected. The same goes for channels of the same kind in the community builder.
  • After **Publish** you now stay where you are: in the product editor (before, it jumped to Home), in the discount editor (before, back to the list) and after embedding a product in your community from **Sell** (before, it jumped to the community).
  • The settings overview now shows your real Stripe status and your real VAT rate. Before, **Payments** could say “not connected” while Stripe was active, and **Taxes** always showed 19 %. Portugal can now be chosen as your country under **Taxes**, and changing the country asks for the matching VAT rate again. The button **Manage payment methods** is now called **Update Stripe details**, because that is what it opens; Merchavio sets the payment methods at checkout.
  • Buyers who confirm the very first payment of a subscription in their banking app (for example with 3D Secure or Revolut Pay) no longer get a “payment failed” email while they are still confirming. Before, the email arrived as soon as the bank asked for confirmation, and some buyers stopped there.
  • If a member's access to your community ends while they are inside it (refund, cancelled or expired subscription), they now see a page saying they currently have no access, with a button to book it again. Before, the community stayed open but empty and messages could not be sent. A fully refunded one-time purchase also leads to this page instead of the sign-in form.
  • Blocks in your live community, such as Call to action, Callout or Product, no longer show a frame and a label like “Call to action” when members tap them on a phone. That frame belongs to the community builder only.
  • Your numbers now match across **Home**, **Analytics**, **Orders**, **Customers** and the AI home page. Partial refunds reduce revenue everywhere (bookkeeping keeps them in the month of the refund), orders you recorded by hand no longer count as revenue in **Analytics**, a running free trial only becomes a sale with its first payment, and revenue counts on the day of payment. The refund rate is calculated the same way everywhere. **Next billing** is never in the past, the MRR overview adds up, the **New vs Cancelled** chart counts cancellations, and buyers with a cancelled subscription show as **Churned**. A custom date range in **Analytics** now also applies to traffic and products. The menu next to a subscription in **Analytics → Subscriptions** now opens and, after a confirmation, really cancels or pauses it at Stripe; before, it did not react.
  • Prices and amounts are now read correctly: a course price typed as “1.299” is now 1,299 euros (before it became 1.30), and in **Discounts** “9,99” is €9.99 (before €999), with or without a thousands separator. Percentages stop at 100, and a warning appears if a fixed amount would make a product free. A discount for specific products keeps working after you rename one of them. Lesson descriptions from the course builder are now saved and shown to buyers under the lesson title. The order bump in the **Checkout** tab only offers live one-time products, and a membership keeps **Annual** after **Save draft**.
  • Your live store now looks like the storefront builder: elements keep their width (½, ⅓) and spacing and take the full width on phones, spacers stay invisible, and the **Video** element plays (YouTube and Vimeo after a click, MP4 directly) with poster and label; a video without an address stays hidden. **Product** and **Buy box** use your layout, price setting and button text; if they point to a product that is not live, your live store hides them instead of showing another product, and the builder tells you. Prices show currency and billing period, **Pricing** plans appear as you set them, and **Product grid** only offers settings that work. The logo bar shows your own label and names and stays hidden without names.
  • The legal links at the bottom of your store (imprint, privacy, terms, withdrawal) now open your own legal pages instead of Merchavio’s. Without an imprint page, a window shows the provider details from your settings, as on community and link pages. The footer menu no longer contains sample entries, old **Terms**, **Privacy** and **Refunds** entries are left out because the legal links appear automatically, and deleting a page also removes its footer links.
  • Team access now matches your plan: **Settings → Team** shows the seats of your account, you count as one seat, open invitations are listed separately, and inviting stops when all seats are taken. The **Discounts & offers** right now opens **Discounts**, the mobile menu follows team rights like the sidebar, **New product** is grayed out without the right to create products, and the **Manage team** right is gone because only the owner manages the team. Team members now see the real Stripe status instead of “not connected”. On **Home**, the step **Connect payouts** leads straight to **Settings → Payments** and is only ticked once Stripe has enabled payments.
  • In the community builder, moving channels by dragging or with the arrows now works in every category, not only the first. Cancelling a member’s subscription now says **Subscription cancelled** (before “resumed”), and on phones you can choose all four layouts, including **Website**. Channels no longer show a fixed unread dot or LIVE badge, the course card on the start page shows your real course with its product image instead of sample numbers, and a channel’s heading is now separate from its name.
  • **Media** now asks before deleting a file and names where it is used, including storefront, link page and campaign images, because the file is missing there afterwards.
  • The menu on the left of your dashboard now stays where you scrolled it when you open an entry further down. Before, it jumped back to the top with every click.

AI creates products and communities, simpler sign-up, “Ready to sell” before the first sale

New

  • The Merchavio AI now creates complete products: write “create a course for me” in the chat or click **Create it with the AI** under **New product**. It asks only what fits the product type, and you upload your files right there: course videos (the AI turns them into modules and lessons), the file of an e-book, plus cover image and price. It works for courses, e-books and downloads, coaching, memberships, bundles, services and software. Everything is saved as a draft and opens in the product editor; nothing goes on sale until you publish it.
  • The AI also sets up communities: with **Set it up with the AI** under **New community** (or in the chat) it asks for topic, areas, welcome message, rules, look and price, then builds the community and the membership that sells it, and opens the community builder.
  • In the chat the AI can now also change existing products and communities on request, for example the title, the description, a course outline or a community’s welcome message. Publishing asks for your confirmation first in **Manual** mode.
  • A simpler start: sign-up only asks what you need at the beginning. You confirm your email with a 6-digit code, then enter your name, your country and who buys from you, and name your store. You don’t need a company for this.
  • **Ready to sell**: company and tax details now come right before you sell. When you connect Stripe for the first time, you enter who is selling (you or a company), your business address and your VAT status once. They appear in your imprint and on your customers’ purchase confirmations, and your store takes payments only with them. The setup guide shows this as its own step.
  • After setup, a short introduction shows what the Merchavio AI can do for you and where you find it on every page.
  • Moderators can now mute members for a while (timeout) from the member list of your community. Blocking members and assigning roles stays with you and your admins, and moderators don’t see members’ email addresses.

Changed

  • The website layout of your community now looks live the way you built it: without an intro video or image the intro area stays as an empty frame, and the leaderboard shows an empty frame until the first posts. In the builder you upload the image or video right there: hover over the intro area.
  • The AI’s guided questions in the chat window now have the calm glass look of the AI window: the question at the top, your answer and one button at the bottom, with less small print. The window keeps a pleasant size at any browser zoom.
  • The role descriptions under **Members & roles** in the community builder now show exactly what admins, moderators and members can do.
  • Sign-up checks whether emails can be delivered to your address and suggests a fix for typos like “gmial.com”. The welcome email comes in your language, German or English.
  • Sign-in, sign-up and the new-password page are fully available in German and English. A wrong address now leads to a separate **Page not found** page.

Fixed

  • Buyers of a bundle now get every product in it: courses, downloads and communities appear in their member area and in the access email. Before, they only got the bundle itself. Products included in a membership are unlocked as long as the subscription runs.
  • Lessons inside course modules show their title in the product editor again and can get a video upload or link right there.
  • The eye in password fields now shows and hides your password, and the cursor stays where it was. It is in every password field of sign-in, sign-up and the new-password page.
  • The dark frame around a selected input field now sits exactly on the field’s border instead of further inside.
  • After saving your name or store details, the page no longer reloads by itself a few seconds later and keeps what you were typing.
  • Course videos are now prepared for playback right after you upload them, not on the first play. If a buyer opens a lesson while a video is still being prepared, the member area shows **Preparing video…** and starts the video by itself as soon as it is ready.
  • Waiting for a video that is still being prepared no longer counts toward your monthly video allowance. Only a video that actually plays is counted.
  • After a purchase, **Open course** on the confirmation page takes buyers straight into your member area, signed in. Before, they landed on the sign-in page.
  • Products you set to **Free** under **Pricing** no longer show subscription terms to buyers. Product page, cart, order button and purchase confirmation say free, without a billing interval or cancellation note. Before, a free community could say “Monthly subscription: renews every month until you cancel”. If you switch back to **Paid**, your price and billing interval come back.
  • On the Merchavio homepage the switch between monthly and annual prices works right away, even before the page has fully loaded on a slow mobile connection.
  • When you open your community from your dashboard, you can now write announcements and chat messages there, delete posts, notify all members with @everyone and use the bell. Before, this only worked after signing in to your own community with an email code.

AI asks step by step and changes only what you want, member area design, Shopspotting without a shop

New

  • Withdrawal button in every store: buyers withdraw from a contract with **Withdraw from contract here** at the bottom of every page, in the checkout and in the purchase confirmation, without logging in, and immediately get an acknowledgement of receipt with date and time. You get an email and see the withdrawal under **Orders → Withdrawals** with its 14-day deadline and whether the buyer agreed to immediate delivery at checkout; there you refund or decline it.
  • Invoices in your name through Stripe: for every sale Stripe now creates an invoice on your own Stripe account, with your business details, Stripe numbering, your VAT ID and your VAT rate as included VAT (or the small-business note). The buyer gets it as a PDF link in the purchase confirmation. Choose your VAT rate and switch invoices on or off under Settings → Taxes; Stripe charges a fee per invoice.
  • Refund orders right in Merchavio: **Refund** in Orders pays the money back through Stripe to the buyer’s original payment method, in full or in part, and can end access and the subscription at once. Revenue and customer value are corrected and the buyer gets an email. Merchavio keeps its sales fee on refunds.
  • Shopspotting without a shop: anyone who wants to recommend Merchavio now creates a free Shopspotter account with its own Shopspotter area for their personal link, referrals, commission and payout, without a shop, plan or trial. If they want to sell themselves later, **Open your own shop** takes them to the normal sign-up with the same email.
  • The AI assistant now asks about your storefront step by step right in the chat window instead of a long form, and only what fits your wish. Want new colours, other fonts, new images or another page? You answer just that question, see a live preview and the AI changes exactly that without rebuilding your storefront. Colours, fonts and images you pick yourself are applied straight away and use no AI allowance.
  • More pages when the AI builds your storefront: About me, Contact, FAQ or your own pages (e.g. Coaching). The AI creates them, fills them and puts them in your menu.
  • The page builder now shows **Live · changes not published** and a dot on **Publish** when your storefront has changes that visitors don’t see yet. Changes by the AI are saved as a draft too.
  • In the page builder you choose for each page whether it appears in the header menu, in the footer or nowhere (page settings → **Show in menu**).
  • Upload several files at once: in the media library select several or simply drag them onto the page, and in the AI’s storefront questions or the image picker of the builder you can choose several images in one go.
  • Footer of your storefront: a short description under your store name, set in the builder under **Footer**.
  • Design your member area under **Storefront → Members**: welcome message, accent colour, course progress on or off, and products your buyers don’t own yet shown as locked with a button to their product page. The preview shows the real member area; changes reach your buyers once you click **Save**.
  • Sign-in page of the member area: your own headline and text, colour, background and logo. Buyers sign in with a 6-digit code, a sign-in link or both, as you choose.
  • Events in a community can now carry a link, for example to your Zoom meeting. Only members with access see it, and it is in the reminder email.

Changed

  • The email buyers get after paying is now a purchase confirmation with your details as the seller (name, address, VAT ID) instead of a receipt with an assumed 19 % VAT line.
  • Refunds you make directly in Stripe are now booked on the order too: revenue and customer value go down, and a full refund of a one-time purchase ends access.
  • Plans describe live streaming as a monthly live allowance instead of a number of viewer hours. The livestream guide explains how the allowance is calculated and counted.
  • Terms, seller terms, withdrawal policy and privacy policy updated: withdrawal button and cancellation button, refunds and fees, live allowance. The legal page templates under **Settings → Legal pages** now include the online withdrawal function with your store address; generate your withdrawal policy again so it is included.
  • Your Shopspotter account is now separate from your shop: it has its own login (**Go to Shopspotter area** on the Shopspotting page) and may use the same email. As a seller you start it at the bottom of **Settings** with the same email and password; an existing Shopspotter link, your referrals and your commission move with you. Shop and Shopspotter account can be signed in at the same time, and **Seller dashboard** in the Shopspotter area takes you back to your shop.
  • Your page colour now runs through the whole storefront: product cards, the sales pages of your products and every section take their shades from it, and offer grids use your heading font. Buttons in a very light accent colour get dark text so they stay readable.
  • When a subscription ends, its courses, videos and downloads close too, just like communities already did. The member area shows the product as “Subscription ended” with a button to renew it.
  • The **Subscription** tab under Storefront → Members now shows what members can do themselves: manage the subscription in your Stripe customer portal and cancel without logging in.
  • When the AI builds your storefront from your answers, it places your images where you marked them: header image, about me and a gallery. It also fills the shop and FAQ pages and the footer and hides sample sections that are still empty. Sections with images and text sections take turns, and the background shades match your page colour, also when you change it later.
  • Your Merchavio plan in one place: **Settings → Plan → Payment method & invoices** opens a window with three tabs. **Invoices** shows every invoice right there as a PDF, **Payment method** shows your card and lets you change it, **Manage plan** lets you switch plans and, at the bottom, cancel with one click. The plan stays active until the end of the paid period, and until then **Keep my plan** undoes the cancellation. After every plan payment you get an email with your receipt, and a confirmation when you cancel.
  • Your member area now shows **More from the shop** by default: up to six products the buyer doesn’t own yet, each with its price and a **Buy** button that goes straight to checkout. You can switch it off under **Storefront → Members**. If you open the member area yourself as the store owner, a note now tells you that you see every product unlocked.
  • Course and product videos you upload are now delivered directly from our storage at Cloudflare (region EU). Bunny is no longer a sub-processor; the privacy policy and the DPA are updated.
  • Tidier header in your storefront: with **Center** the store name sits in the middle, your pages in a row below and the icons on the right; **Split** puts the name on the left, the pages in the middle and the icons on the right. On wide screens the content stays in a centred column.
  • New communities start clean: five empty channels (Start here, Announcements, Events, Resources, Course) instead of sample posts and sample channels.
  • A new community product starts with one monthly plan instead of three sample plans.
  • The Merchavio marketplace is now opt-in: products appear there only after you agree, and the window shows the marketplace fee.
  • Events are created in the live view of your community; the builder takes you there.
  • The welcome email and **Open community** in the member area take buyers straight into your community and sign them in.
  • Publishing a course at €0 now asks first: anyone can take a published free course. As the video library of a community, keep it as a draft; members still see it.

Fixed

  • An empty announcement bar no longer shows sample text in your public store, and product pages no longer show a sample “only 14 spots left” countdown; scarcity notes appear only with real numbers from your product.
  • Images you give the AI for your storefront now really appear in the storefront it builds.
  • Your public storefront no longer shows the sample line “A short line about your store” in the footer, and an AI-built page without a header image no longer shows an empty image box.
  • The footer of your storefront lists your pages instead of an empty column, and the “Contact” link that led nowhere is gone.
  • **Manage** next to a membership in the member area now opens the Stripe customer portal.
  • If someone buys several products at once, every access link in the email works, not only the last one.
  • Sign-ups with **Sign up with Google** through a Shopspotter link are now credited to that Shopspotter.
  • Dates in the Shopspotter area are shown correctly (e.g. 14 Oct 2026 instead of “Wed Oct 14”).
  • Communities in English: texts that were still German in the English interface (for example “Watch”, “Remind me”, “Today”, livestream, events and replays) are translated, and dates follow the interface language. Legal links in the community follow it too.
  • Communities show the real number of members instead of a fixed sample number.
  • The mobile preview in the storefront builder shows the header like your store on a phone (name, menu button, icons); before, the store name overlapped the menu.
  • After paying in your store, purchases were not marked as paid, so buyers did not get access. Merchavio now confirms every payment, also when the buyer closes the page right after paying.
  • Prices with a comma (for example 29,90) in the plans of a product are saved correctly instead of as 2990.
  • A cancelled checkout no longer uses up a discount that is limited to one use per customer, so a free trial is still there on the next try.
  • Saved plans of a community stay as they are after reloading the page.
  • **View live** opens your community without putting your owner access into the address, so a shared address no longer gives access.
  • Mentions with @everyone only notify members with current access, not former members.
  • The course builder keeps your lessons and your price, including €0, when saving.
  • A new community is saved right away, so its live view is no longer empty before your first change.
  • On the confirmation page after a purchase, **Open community** still works after a few minutes, and memberships no longer say “lifetime”.
  • Events with a link are shown as online events instead of a built-in livestream.
  • A new discount now applies as soon as you publish it. Before, it only started at 11:00 German time on the day you created it, although the dashboard already showed **Active**; a free trial could then be missing and the buyer was charged right away. Planned start and end times now apply exactly as shown, and if a code only starts later, the checkout says when.
  • Memberships with a free trial: the purchase confirmation now says what was paid today (€0.00), when the trial ends and when the first charge of how much follows, and your sale email says the same. Revenue, customer value and affiliate commission count from the first real charge, and Subscriptions shows these members as **Trial** with the date of the first charge. Before, a trial booking was confirmed and counted with the full price.

Ready-made blocks, AI builds your storefront, AI in the free trial

From now on we sum up every week what has changed in Merchavio. This first entry covers the last seven days.

Privacy

New sub-processor for the AI assistant: Groq

Since 9 October 2026, Groq, Inc. (USA) provides the language model for the AI assistant “Merchavio AI”. Anthropic remains only as a substitute if Groq has an outage. Groq does not use the content for its own purposes and as a rule does not store it (at most 30 days to fix outages or when abuse is suspected); transfers to the USA are safeguarded by EU standard contractual clauses. Details are in the privacy policy (section 15) and the data processing agreement (section 7). If you as a seller object for an important data protection reason, write to team@merchavio.com; we will then switch the AI assistant off for your account.

Applies since 9 October 2026

New

  • Ready-made blocks: in the page builder, **+ Section** now has a **Ready-made blocks** tab with finished sections (intro, benefits, process, about, offers, FAQ, closing) in three styles. They take on your colours and fonts and land above the footer; the texts are examples to replace.
  • Blocks are also in the template gallery (tab **Blocks**): choose the page and position, or create a new page with the block. Your storefront is backed up first.
  • **Let the AI adapt the texts to my store**: when you add a block, the AI can replace the example texts with texts that fit your offer.
  • Templates: take over only single pages of a storefront template instead of the whole template. They are added next to your own pages; products they refer to come along as drafts.
  • Before you publish, the builder asks if example texts from a block are still on a page.
  • More layouts in the builder: columns as cards, plain or numbered steps, a call-to-action band with text and a text block in the “Statement” style.
  • AI assistant in the free trial: once you have confirmed your email address, every trial account gets an AI allowance for the whole trial, enough to have the AI build your storefront and to try it out.
  • Free fee calculator: compare what you pay per sale on Merchavio and other platforms.
  • Feature pages with step-by-step guides for every area of the dashboard.
  • Notifications: the bell in the dashboard shows important notices, what’s new and reminders such as confirming your email address.
  • The AI assistant can change product prices and crossed-out prices; in Manual mode you confirm the change first. Existing subscriptions keep their price.
  • This changelog: every week a summary of what has changed.
  • E-books can have a subtitle (editor, cover, product page, marketplace).
  • Label AI-generated images: a checkbox under every image in the page builder and under the product image shows a small “AI-generated” label in your store. Images whose file data says they were made with AI (for example ChatGPT, Gemini, Firefly, Midjourney) are labelled automatically when you upload them.
  • Guest authors: experts can apply and write articles for the Merchavio guides.

Changed

  • When the AI builds your storefront from your brief, it now uses the ready-made blocks and builds the complete page step by step, visibly in the builder.
  • After each message to the AI assistant there is a short pause of a few seconds before the next one; the send button shows a countdown.
  • The AI assistant answers via a new, faster language model (gpt-oss-120b via Groq); your AI allowance now covers considerably more requests.
  • The partner program is now called Shopspotting and has its own page with a commission calculator; commission is calculated on the amount paid minus the VAT shown.

Fixed

  • Building the storefront from your brief sometimes stopped with “The assistant is busy right now”. When the AI is briefly at capacity, it now waits and carries on.
  • The AI assistant no longer opens the storefront brief a second time if you have already filled it in.
  • The AI assistant names its language model correctly when asked, no longer adds unnecessary buttons to greetings and short answers, and politely declines requests outside your store.