One of Shopify’s core value propositions from its early days was to lower the barriers for anyone to set up shop online. Those words are somewhat literal as it’s all about democratizing online shopping capability for any merchant. And part of that involves the atomic unit of the internet: websites.
In other words, Shopify’s value proposition has always been to not only commerce-enable merchants (payment processing, logistics), but to provide web-builder tools for the online store itself. This is the primary place where sales happen, with all marketing roads leading back to that web presence.
But as merchants – and the broader world of online commerce that they occupy – continue to mature, there are other consumer touchpoints emerging. We’re talking shopping-forward social channels like TikTok, and video channels like YouTube. This is the shoppability trend we often write about.
Taking all of this to heart, Shopify today announced a slate of new offerings for merchants who want to similarly make this move beyond the website. This includes some of the alternate and emerging shopping channels mentioned above, as well as a selection of early-adopter formats like NFTs.
eCommerce Buffet
Known as Shopify Editions, these updates from the eCommerce giant include 100 new formats and features. With this breadth, the company likens it to a Vegas-style buffet where merchants can grab and apply functionality that applies to them. This also makes it sounds like an app or widget store.
The full list is too extensive to cover in one article, so here are a few highlights that jumped out at us.
Local: With this function, locally-available Shopify inventory appears in Google local searches. The way this plays out is that consumers searching for a specific product will see Shopify product listings in local results, with an indication of nearby availability for in-store pickup.
Twitter: Twitter will launch a merchant-facing app that lets them onboard themselves to Twitter’s Shopping Manager and integrate their Shopify store. Once integrated, they can then do things like easily tweet product-specific promotions and shoppable social posts.
B2B: This is a framework for merchants to market and sell products to other businesses. It includes purpose-built features for B2B product sales such as bulk and batch ordering, as well as other dynamics that are endemic to B2B commerce.
iPhone POS: For online merchants that have physical sales, Shopify is adding the ability to accept tap-to-pay payments with an iPhone. Apple has already launched this functionality, but now Shopify makes it easier to integrate it with an existing Shopify store. This could help some online merchants easily expand to pop-up shops or farmers’ markets.
Functions: This is a toolkit for more advanced merchants to gain “headless” commerce functionality. That’s a fancy way of saying they can add customized options (think of it like WordPress plugins) for things like bulk discounts and other eCommerce add-ons.
NFTs: A tech-world announcement isn’t buzzy enough these days without NFTs. So Shopify is jumping on the bandwagon. This involves giving merchants the ability to create, process, and sell NFTs. This may be more about getting headlines than actual merchant adoption… but that’s okay.
Formalize and Federate
To clarify, Shopify has already been quite active in providing its merchants additional channels, such as social partnerships for amplification in TikTok and Instagram. These channels also notably include Walmart. Today’s move is essentially to formalize and federate those channels… and add several more.
Some of those additions seem more gimmicky or headline-grabbing than practical (e.g. crypto and NFT marketplaces). Most SMBs aren’t ready for NFTs, or even know what they are. But we won’t slam Shopify for providing additional optionality for merchants, nor for future-proofing its slate of offerings.
Finally, back “shoppability” Shopify Editions is well aligned with this broader trend. eCommerce is happening everywhere – from Instagram Stories to YouTube how-to videos. Giving Shopify merchants a way to amplify their presence in all those channels is a logical and timely move.
Speaking of eCommerce that happens through video channels, we’ll circle back later this week for the latest evidence of that trend, including new Shoppability features in Roku. Stay tuned for that.
