Compliance. It's the 4PM Friday conference slot that clears the room faster than a fire alarm. But get the right person talking about it and suddenly it's actually kind of fascinating. Elena Tsacheva from ConsentMo is that person — she makes cookie banners and GDPR regulations genuinely watchable, and she's built one of the most sophisticated consent platforms in the Shopify ecosystem to back it up.

We get into why 20 US states now have their own privacy laws (and why that number keeps climbing), what's actually broken about the vibe-coded cookie banner approach, and why Shopify's built-in banner is fine right up until it isn't.

We also discuss

the Digital Omnibus directive
why compliance and AI are increasingly at odds with each other
why the future of consent might not involve cookie banners at all.

Outside the product, we hear about running team brainstorms in a toddler café, dressing for Paris Fashion Week at an e-commerce conference, and getting surprised with a birthday cake by the Zapier team in the middle of the Wide event.

We've put together a Compliance Playbook to go with this episode. Search for The Shopify App Show on Substack. And if you're not already subscribed, do the thing — like, subscribe, share, all of it.

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes — dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

Checkout Consentmo for your privacy compliance needs, and for Price Tracking compliance, check out one of my apps, Omnibus Owl.

And most importantly, we featured my daughter's cookie business, Sophies Cookies, on this episode.

YouTube Chapters:

00:00 — Introduction

01:29 — Making compliance content people actually watch

03:12 — What ConsentMo actually does (it's a lot)

06:56 — What drives the roadmap — and what gets a hard no

10:02 — Saying no: the art of not shipping everything

13:34 — Will merchants just vibe code their own cookie banner?

16:19 — Why hasn't Shopify just built all of this?

20:35 — Why human support still matters (especially in compliance)

21:32 — What's next: Germany's cancel law and the Digital Omnibus

25:16 — Will cookie banners eventually disappear?

27:00 — Martin's daughter's cookie website makes an appearance

27:38 — The Wide Paris event: fashion week for e-commerce

31:12 — Wrapping up