Behind The Tool: Shaan From Alia

Table of Contents

Last Updated:

May 9, 2025

Table of contents

Sometimes the best startup ideas are born out of simple, personal needs. For Shaan Arora, the lightbulb moment came while building an eCommerce store for his mom. That project sparked the idea for Alia, a popup tool laser-focused on helping DTC brands increase opt-ins and conversions, without the bloated features or distractions.

We caught up with Shaan to talk about why most popups aren’t working, what makes Alia different, and the underrated importance of A/B testing.

ALIA LINKEDIN

Alia

Alia is a popup that lets Shopify stores reward shoppers with discounts for learning more about their brand, story, and products through an engaging customer education experience.

Email & SMS

Let’s start with a quick one-liner — what is Alia in your own words?

It’s a popup tool that increases opt-ins for eCom brands :)

Where did the idea come from? What made you say, “I need to build this”?

I was building an eCom store for my mom and realized the popups NEED to be better.

And what’s the biggest thing brands tend to get wrong about popups?

That A/B testing the popup isn't super important.

So was your background in eCommerce before this? Or did you come from a different angle?

I actually studied Computer Science in college — that’s where it all started.

What’s the first “wow” moment new customers tend to have with Alia?

Our A/B testing reporting. That’s the feature they fall in love with first.

There are a lot of popup tools out there — how is Alia carving out its own lane?

All we do is popups.

Zooming out a bit — what’s a shift in the eComm or data space that you don’t think gets talked about enough?

Definitely the focus on zero party data.

And what about the founder journey — anything you had to learn the hard way?

Yes. That problems will always exist, no matter how much ARR you have.

If you had the chance to rewind back to day one, what’s one thing you’d do differently?