Starting Noibu before Black Friday: how A-DIY did it in minutes
Worried that a trial before Black Friday will cost time and developer hours? A-DIY's co-founder installed Noibu's Shopify app himself in minutes, with no developer and no theme change, while the site was frozen for a rebuild. Data was flowing six days before the first call, and onboarding took one 30-minute call.
to install, with no developer and no theme change
onboarding call to connect Claude and schedule the agents
faster page load within five weeks (3.3s to 1.99s)
At a glance
Why do ecommerce teams put off a trial before Black Friday?
Because the weeks before Black Friday are when teams protect their sites and their time. Code is frozen, developers are booked, and anything new feels like risk. The usual objection is not that a tool won't help. It is that the evaluation itself will take too long and pull people off work that matters more right now. A-DIY had the same worry in a different season, and the way it played out is the answer to it.
About A-DIY
A-DIY sells pre-engineered DIY deck kits on Shopify. A homeowner picks a wood or composite deck, and the kit arrives with everything included and 3D assembly instructions. The team is small: a conversion lead, a CTO, an operations manager and remote developers. A deck is a considered purchase, so a slow page or a broken step on the way to checkout costs real money.
What was A-DIY's situation when it started with Noibu?
In summer 2026, A-DIY was rebuilding its site. The old theme was all but frozen, the team was putting its time into the new one, and nobody wanted a tooling project on top of a rebuild. That is the same position most stores are in before Black Friday. Meanwhile the live store was loading in about 3.3 seconds, and add-to-cart and checkout rates had slipped in early July without an obvious cause. Co-Founder Hamza Iqbal's hesitation was the familiar one: how much work it would take to get running.
How much work did it take A-DIY to start?
Almost none. On June 17, Hamza installed the Noibu app from the Shopify App Store himself, in minutes. No developer was involved, no theme file was edited, and nothing changed for shoppers. Noibu's records show sessions arriving the same morning.
A-DIY's first call with Noibu came six days later, and there was already almost a week of store data to look at. Connecting Noibu to Claude through the Noibu MCP and putting the agents on a schedule took one 30-minute onboarding call, and A-DIY's conversion lead had most of it in place before the call started.
“I was worried this was going to take a long time. It was the opposite. I installed the app and that was it. It took no time at all.”
— Hamza Iqbal, Co-Founder, A-DIY
What did A-DIY get from it?
Noibu's Performance agent, which finds what is slowing a store down and recommends the change, gave the team page-level performance data in Claude. Working from it, A-DIY's CTO took page load from 3.3 seconds to 1.99 seconds on the old theme within five weeks of the install.
Noibu's Bug Resolution agent, which finds errors hurting shoppers and traces each one to its cause, surfaced a broken button on the path to checkout and errors on landing pages the team was paying to send traffic to. An abandoned-cart analysis on the onboarding call found sessions where a shopper's card had been declined, customers the team could call back that day.
“We've dramatically improved site speed, fixed issues we didn't even know existed, and found errors sitting on landing pages where we were sending a meaningful amount of traffic. That alone was a big eye opener.”
— Hamza Iqbal, Co-Founder, A-DIY
When A-DIY relaunched its rebuilt site at the end of August, Noibu was already watching. The new site's mobile performance score was 39 on launch day; within a few days the team had it into the 70s. Every change along the way came to the team as a recommendation or a GitHub pull request, and A-DIY's developers decided what shipped.
“On launch day, our mobile performance score was 39. Within a few days, we got it into the 70s, and now we're working through optimizing every page individually.”
— Hamza Iqbal, Co-Founder, A-DIY
What were the results?
Page load time, old A-DIY theme
Source: A-DIY and Noibu onboarding review, July 2026.
- Started in minutes: one app install by the co-founder, no developer, no theme change.
- 30 minutes of onboarding: Claude connected and the agents scheduled on a single call.
- 40% faster pages: 3.3 to 1.99 seconds on the old theme within five weeks.
- A cleaner relaunch: mobile performance score from 39 into the 70s within days of going live.
In A-DIY's public review of Noibu on the Shopify App Store, Hamza wrote: “In about two weeks, we were able to improve site speed across multiple pages. Anyone who has worked on Shopify knows that kind of improvement usually takes a lot more time, testing, and back and forth.”
No revenue figure is claimed here. The speed numbers come from A-DIY's own measurement on the old theme, and the mobile score is the team's reading on the new site.
Can you start with Noibu during a Black Friday code freeze?
Yes, and A-DIY shows why it is a small ask. On Shopify and BigCommerce, Noibu is an app install, not a theme change: no storefront code is edited and nothing shoppers see is altered. On Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce and custom stores, it is a single script, usually added through a tag manager, and Noibu's team walks through it live. Installing before Black Friday means the store is recorded through its busiest days, so the team has a record of what slowed down or broke to work from once the freeze lifts. The 30-minute onboarding can wait until after Cyber Monday. Nothing changes on the live site without a person approving it.
“Plenty of them sound great in a demo. Very few become tools the team actually relies on. Noibu has become one of those tools for us.”
— Hamza Iqbal, Co-Founder, A-DIY
Frequently asked questions
Can we start a Noibu trial during a Black Friday code freeze?
Yes. On Shopify and BigCommerce, Noibu is an app install, not a theme change, so no storefront code is edited and nothing shoppers see changes. On other platforms it is a single script, usually added through a tag manager. Check your own freeze rules, but many teams still add apps and tags in the weeks before Black Friday.
How much developer time does it take to start with Noibu?
For A-DIY, none. The co-founder installed the Shopify app himself in minutes, with no developer involved. Developers only come in later, to review the changes Noibu's agents recommend.
How long does Noibu onboarding take?
A-DIY's onboarding was one 30-minute call, where Claude was connected and the agents were scheduled. It can be booked for after Cyber Monday, while the app records the store through peak season.
Does Noibu work on platforms other than Shopify?
Yes. Noibu runs on Shopify, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce and custom-built stores. Shopify and BigCommerce stores install an app; other platforms add a single script, usually through a tag manager, and Noibu's team walks through it live on a call.
What do Noibu's other AI agents do?
A-DIY started with the Performance agent, which finds what is slowing a store down, and the Bug Resolution agent, which finds errors hurting shoppers and traces each to its cause. Noibu also has a CRO agent that finds where shoppers drop off and recommends changes, an A/B Testing agent that builds and runs tests, a ROAS agent that looks at how paid traffic converts once it lands, and an Accessibility agent that finds accessibility issues and drafts changes. Every agent hands its work back for a person to approve. See them all on the AI agents page.
Do Noibu's AI agents change the site on their own?
No. Noibu's agents find problems and draft the change, usually as a GitHub pull request. A person on the customer's team reviews it and decides what ships.
Try it on your store
See how Noibu's Performance agent finds what is slowing a store down, or get a free website audit to see what the agents find on your store before Black Friday.
About Noibu
Noibu is AI for ecommerce operations, the always-on optimization system that keeps online stores running at their best. A team of supervised AI agents finds what's broken, slow, or leaking revenue, does the work, and hands results back for human approval. Trusted by retailers like Free People, Guess, Liquid I.V., and Ariat.
