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What TikTok’s new Shopify integration means for sellers

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By Stephanie Lennox.

Want to leverage the power of TikTok to skyrocket your sales? Look no further: selling just got easier with Shopify’s new UK integration.

The social media giant, known for its trendsetting power, has finally launched their integration with Shopify in the UK, allowing merchants to showcase and sell products directly through the TikTok app.

This integration, facilitated by the new “TikTok for Shopify” app, opens doors for small businesses, Tiktok dropshippers and side hustlers to tap into a highly engaged audience and potentially skyrocket their sales.

What’s all the fuss about?

Hashtags like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, #Squishmallows and Love and Pebble #Beautypops perfectly illustrate the platform’s influence on consumer behaviour, and just a few examples of brands are gaining massive popularity solely through user-generated content. It’s a breeding ground for new customers and trends!

TikTok Shop capitalises on this by offering businesses the ability to:

  • Create shoppable videos: showcase products directly within engaging video content.
  • Host live streams: interact with potential customers in real-time, answer questions, and promote products.
  • Sell directly through the app: eliminate the need for external website visits, creating a frictionless shopping experience.

This translates to a powerful combination of community, creativity, and commerce.

Brits: the prime audience for your TikTok shop

The UK presents a fertile ground for this integration. Now as a seller, the integration can provide you with a highly engaged audience and mobile-first commerce.

Brits happen to spend an exceptional amount of time on TikTok – a staggering 49 hours and 29 minutes per month on the Android app alone, according to Digital 2024: The United Kingdom report.

In addition to that, Brits hold the highest average monthly usage of TikTok globally, spending nearly 50 hours on the app. This translates to a massive potential customer base actively engaged with the platform.

TikTok also ranks first in mobile app spending in the UK, surpassing giants like Tinder and Disney+. Since consumers are increasingly comfortable shopping directly from their mobile devices, this integration allows businesses to tap into this trend and meet their audience where they already are.

How to make this work for you:

  • Identify your niche: the key to success lies in understanding your target audience and the type of content that resonates with them.
  • Embrace creativity: leverage the power of short-form video to showcase your products in an engaging and entertaining way. Tutorials, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and user-generated content are all effective strategies.
  • Focus on high-quality visuals: product demonstrations, unboxing videos, and lifestyle content are all effective ways to grab attention.
  • Utilise trending sounds and hashtags: ride the wave of popular trends whenever you can to increase your discoverability.
  • Run contests and giveaways: surprise and delight your fans by incentivising engagement, which also encourages user-generated content.
  • Offer exclusive deals and promotions: motivate viewers to take action and convert them into paying customers.
  • Partner with influencers: collaborate with relevant Tiktok creators to reach a wider audience and leverage their established communities.
  • Run targeted ads: utilise Tiktok’s advertising platform to target users based on demographics, interests, and behaviours.
  • Prioritise customer relationships: respond to comments, answer questions, and actively participate in the conversation to build trust and brand loyalty.
  • Use data & analytics: capitalize on insights provided by both Shopify and Tiktok to understand your audience’s preferences and optimize your business strategy accordingly.

Conclusion

The Shopify integration with TikTok Shop presents a unique opportunity for small businesses and side hustlers in the UK to streamline and simplify the user journey. By embracing creative content, and building an engaged community, you can leverage the power of TikTok to reach a wider audience and achieve significant sales growth.

By Stephanie Lennox

Stephanie Lennox is the resident funding & finance expert at Startups: A successful startup founder in her own right, 2x bestselling author and business strategist, she covers everything from business grants and loans to venture capital and angel investing. With over 14 years of hands-on experience in the startup industry, Stephanie is passionate about how business owners can not only survive but thrive in the face of turbulent financial times and economic crises. With a background in media, publishing, finance and sales psychology, and an education at Oxford University, Stephanie has been featured on all things ‘entrepreneur’ in such prominent media outlets as The Bookseller, The Guardian, TimeOut, The Southbank Centre and ITV News, as well as several other national publications.

Sourced from Startups.

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The 4 Marketing Strategies Your Shopify Store Needs to Drive Traffic

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By Eric Netsch

A successful Shopify store is built on a solid marketing strategy. Read on if you want to discover the secrets of Shopify marketing.

After taking the leap into the ecommerce world and launching your Shopify store, you’re probably looking for ways to attract new customers. Even with a great design and solid product offering, standing out in a crowded market can be challenging. Fortunately, you can take several practical strategies and actions to promote and drive traffic to your business. Depending on your needs and goals, these can include anything from social media marketing to paid advertising to email marketing campaigns.

Shopify is currently the leading platform for ecommerce brands, and it powers nearly two million businesses’ online stores. It goes without saying, but competition in the ecommerce world is fierce; retailers looking to remain relevant and stand out need to establish a solid marketing strategy that will actually move the mark.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your business to the next level, it’s essential to prioritize marketing and make it a crucial part of your overall ecommerce strategy. Doing so can lead to increased sales, greater brand recognition and the development of a loyal customer base.

1. Boost your search engine appeal

To draw more traffic and give potential customers the best chance of finding you when they search for similar products, it’s essential to prioritize Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This strategy requires patience, time and ongoing effort, but it’s worth the investment.

There are several key steps to optimizing your Shopify store. These include optimizing your store’s architecture, conducting thorough keyword research to identify relevant keywords for your business, refining your on-page optimization over time and implementing an effective link-building strategy.

Remember that SEO is an ongoing process that requires continuous effort. Fortunately, Shopify offers built-in marketing tools, including SEO optimization features, to help you optimize for search engines. Moreover, you can enhance your SEO efforts and maintain a steady traffic flow by using various third-party SEO tools and Shopify apps.

If you prioritize SEO and take the essential measures to optimize your Shopify store for search engines, you can gradually attract a larger audience, increase your sales and expand your business.

2. Amplify your reach with digital ads

Investing in paid ads is a highly effective strategy, particularly if you’re just starting out or facing challenges in gaining visibility through organic search marketing. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, like Google Ads, can be an excellent option for driving more traffic to your site as ads appear at the top of search results. In a PPC campaign, you set a maximum bid and only pay when someone clicks on your link. A well-targeted and well-written PPC campaign can immediately bring traffic to your Shopify store. However, it’s worth noting that your competitors and the ads platform determine the amount you pay per visitor, even though you control your overall spending.

Another option for paid advertising is launching campaigns on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, the most common networks for paid advertising. To determine which platform works best for you, conduct different tests and analyse your ad’s performance.

Having attractive visual content and persuasive copywriting that appeals to potential customers is essential to creating successful ads. Be creative! Successful advertising campaigns need that creative appeal to capture the attention of shoppers.

Before launching your ads, consider the most relevant keywords for your business and target your ads to specific audiences to ensure your campaigns are effective. Paid advertising campaigns can inform potential customers about your Shopify brand and retarget previous site visitors, making it an effective tactic for attracting new customers and guiding shoppers back.

3. Utilize influencer marketing

In recent years, influencer marketing has gained immense popularity and has proven to be an effective way to market your Shopify store, especially for brands in the fashion, beauty and CPG industries. In essence, influencer marketing is a partnership between a brand and an influencer, and it is becoming an increasingly popular choice for brands’ marketing budgets. Finding an influencer whose niche audience aligns with your product or brand is crucial to begin with influencer marketing. You must also establish a relationship with the influencer, who will create their own content to help position your brand.

Influencer marketing is highly effective for ecommerce businesses. Seventy-one percent of marketers find that it generates better quality customers and traffic than other sources. Consumers trust influencer recommendations because they create a direct communication channel and leverage the credibility and trust of public figures. In fact, 64% of marketers agree that influencer marketing is an enhanced form of word-of-mouth marketing, which is the most effective form of marketing.

This personalized approach is particularly effective in today’s world, where so many brand choices inundate consumers. Influencer marketing is a highly reliable and direct marketing strategy, as recommendations from real people carry more weight than conventional paid advertisements.

4. Master your customer referral program

Referral programs can be an effective strategy where satisfied customers become brand advocates and receive rewards such as discounts or free products. You can reach a wider audience by incentivizing past customers to recommend your products to their network. This approach is particularly effective because people tend to trust recommendations from friends and family more than advertising. Word-of-mouth marketing is such a powerful tool that it can generate up to five times more sales than traditional paid advertising.

Unlike customer reviews, a referral program involves direct word-of-mouth marketing where people share their positive experiences with your products with those close to them, generating new leads that are highly likely to convert. Several platforms and tools are available to create a customer referral program, such as Talkable, which offers an in-app referral program to help find brand advocates.

To attract new customers to your Shopify store, you can use several strategies to promote your business and drive traffic, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid advertising, influencer marketing and customer referral programs. Implementing these tactics can attract more customers, increase sales and develop a loyal customer base. Remember to be creative and invest time and effort into continuously improving your marketing strategy to stay ahead in the competitive ecommerce industry.

By Eric Netsch

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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How Shopify’s investing strategy has evolved

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By Anna Hensel

This is the latest installment of the DTC Briefing, a weekly Modern Retail column about the biggest challenges and trends facing the volatile direct-to-consumer startup world. To receive it in your inbox every week, sign up here.

As Shopify’s app ecosystem has grown, so too has the number of startups the e-commerce giant has invested in.

Two-year-old attribution vendor Triple Whale was the latest startup to announce it had received financial backing from Shopify; the platform participated in Triple Whale’s $25 million series B. Triple Whale did not disclose, however, how big Shopify’s check was. Triple Whale’s round was led by NFX and Elephant.

Many of Shopify’s investments have been done in tandem with making those startups the recommended or exclusive vendor for certain segments of Shopify’s business. For example, Klaviyo, which received a $100 million investment from Shopify last year, is now the recommended email solution for Shopify Plus. In turn, many of the businesses that rely on Shopify’s platform argue that this makes it easier for merchants to cut through the noise what integrations to add to their Shopify store. It also has resulted in Shopify working more closely with the startups it has invested in developing features together.

But Shopify’s investment activity also raises questions about just how heavy of a role it plays in picking favorites among the 8,000 businesses that have a solution within the Shopify app store. And, whether Shopify’s investments in some of these businesses are coming at a moment when these apps are already the default integration among merchants. Or, if Shopify is giving an early advantage to nascent startups, to the detriment of other companies that also rely on the Shopify app store.

How the e-commerce world has reacted to Shopify taking a heavier hand in startup investing shows just how differently the company is viewed compared to other tech behemoths with app stores, like Google and Apple. Shopify’s app ecosystem is made up of a number of different players: brands, business-to-business companies that build integrations for Shopify’s app store and agencies  that help brands build Shopify websites using some of those B-to-B solutions. If Shopify can convince brands and agencies that investing more in these B-to-B startups creates a better app store experience for them, the company can keep the discontent from some of the competitors of Shopify’s investments at bay.

As Patrick Johnson, CEO of development agency Progress Labs, put it: oftentimes, Shopify merchants come to developers or agencies wanting to know which one of, say, 15 different customer service integrations are best. When Shopify has invested in one startup over others, “there’s an assumption there that they maybe in the future are gonna have better access to stuff — maybe they get a fast lane, or maybe they make the development integrations more seamless.”

Shopify: the venture capitalist
Shopify has not disclosed how many startups it has invested in in total. The company declined to make an executive available for a phone interview about its investment strategy.

But a tally by Insider estimated that Shopify made seven startup investments in 2021, and nine the following year.

As the Triple Whale investment shows, many of Shopify’s startup investments aim to tackle some of the big endemic challenges that prevent more merchants from starting and growing on Shopify. These include high customer acquisition costs and difficulties adapting to the new privacy-focused digital marketing landscape.

Many of these partnerships are born out of the work these startups do for specific business segments that Shopify is looking to grow, ranging from the company’s enterprise-focused Shopify Plus offering, to its cross-border commerce tool Shopify markets.

For example, one of the co-founders of Sanity, an API-based content platform, wrote that his company’s partnership with Shopify began in 2021, “when they asked us to create the content application for a new developer ecosystem they were building.” In turn, Shopify made Sanity the only CMS integration on the app store for Hydrogen, its new headless framework, when it launched in 2022. That same year, Shopify invested an undisclosed amount in Sanity.

Oftentimes, the exact size of Shopify’s stake is only disclosed when those startups go public. Shopify took a roughly 8% stake in buy now, pay later provider Affirm after it made Affirm the exclusive buy now, pay later provider for its Shop Pay checkout service. Shopify and Affirm announced an undisclosed multi-year “extension” of their partnership last year.

And while Shopify still offers support for other buy now, pay later providers like Afterpay and Sezzle, the tradeoff is that it’s less seamless than using Shop Pay installments. If a user is on a Shopify site and wants to pay for an order using Afterpay, they are redirected to Afterpay’s site to complete the transaction.

What happens after Shopify places its bets
One of Shopify’s biggest, publicly-disclosed startup investments to date is the $100 million it invested last August in marketing automation startup Klaviyo. As part of the investment, Shopify also said it would give Klaviyo early access to certain Shopify features that are in development.

It’s worth noting that Shopify’s investment in Klaviyo came after another marketing automation startup, Mailchimp, has had a rocky relationship with Shopify over the years. Mailchimp pulled its Shopify integration in 2019, after squabbling over how to share customer data between the two platforms. Then, two years later, the two platforms made up.

Jake Cohen, who is the Head of Shopify at Klaviyo, said that Shopify’s investment in Klaviyo was “a token of the larger relationship” that already existed between Shopify and Klaviyo. Cohen was previously Klaviyo’s vice president of content, but following the investment became the point person for all things Shopify.

Essentially, Cohen says, Shopify’s investment in Klaviyo allows the two to work more closely together, for the benefit of Shopify merchants. The way Cohen sees it, there’s two buckets of work that Shopify and Klaviyo do together. One involves supporting merchants who already use Shopify and Klaviyo.

“[Shopify’s] merchant success team and our customer success team talk to each other,” Cohen said. “We do internal presentations to each other to make sure everyone understands what’s possible, we swap notes on trends that we think could benefit merchants in certain verticals.”  Cohen also said that Shopify and Klaviyo “will be doing a lot of events, educating [merchants] on what else they can be doing in the two platforms to basically improve their performance.”

The second bucket, Cohen said, involves trying to recruit merchants that aren’t yet using Shopify or Klaviyo, by pitching them on how seamless the ecosystem is because of how closely Shopify works together with startups like Klaviyo. For example, Klaviyo published a case study on its website about why footwear brand Kuru decided to switch from Magento to Shopify Plus – and, by extension, from Listrak to Klaviyo.

In essence, what Shopify is doing is using the fact that it invests in many of the businesses in its app store as a selling point over other e-commerce platforms.

How beneficial this approach is depends upon who in the Shopify ecosystem you ask. The way Shopify – and the companies it has invested in — see it, working together more closely can only make it easier for the brands and retailers that rely on Shopify to run their websites.

“What we believe… is that if you can pick providers that have very deep and rich integrations, and have a very clear emphasis on investing in user experience, as a merchant, you can get more things live, more quickly, with less resources and less cost,” Klaviyo’s Cohen said.

For some of the developers that work with Shopify, they argue that Shopify’s approach to investing in certain startups make it easier for the brands and retailers that rely on the e-commerce platform to spend less time worrying about which integrations are right for their business. And, they argue that at least Shopify isn’t trying to kneecap the companies that rely on its app store by building these integrations in-house themselves.

By contrast, Apple has been quietly pushing new ad products, and reportedly seeking to build out a demand-side platform after its iOS 14 update limited how much data platforms like Meta and Snap could collect on users, in turn hurting their advertising business.

“It makes part of our job easier, because we don’t have to write so much custom code. We can advise clients more on like a strategic level, and a system with integrations instead of having to write everything from scratch,” Mark William Lewis, founder of agency Netalico Commerce said.

Progress Labs’ Johnson said that as a developer, he would like more information on how Shopify chooses which startups to back, acknowledging that “it does play a role” in determining which integrations to recommend to clients. “Are they picking a winner? Or are they doing it because that’s the most promising one in the space?” he added.

Feature Image Credit: Ivy Liu 

By Anna Hensel

Sourced from Modern Retail

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Want To Grow Your Ecommerce Brand? Take Advice From This Industry Expert.

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Sourced from Entrepreneur

The Ultimate Guide To Shopify has all the tools you need to start and grow your own online business.

The Ultimate Guide To Shopify by Jason R. Rich from Entrepreneur Press offers all the tools and guidance you need to start and run your own ecommerce business. With proven marketing strategies that will boost sales, tactics to differentiate your website and advice from industry experts, The Ultimate Guide To Shopify sets you up for success when starting an online business. Read on for an excerpted interview from the book with ecommerce veteran Bob Herman, co-founder of Luv To Laugh. Herman discusses the process of building his business and how it evolved and ultimately thrived using Shopify to expand his brand.

Luv To Laugh is a Shopify-based ecommerce website that sells T-shirts and other apparel printed with graphic designs created by Herman’s brother and business partner Scott. Most of the company’s orders are created and fulfilled by print-on-demand services.

In this interview, you’ll learn more about Herman’s experience creating and managing Luv To Laugh using Shopify.

Q: How did the concept for Luv To Laugh evolve into an ecommerce website?

My brother and I wanted to create something to honor the memory of our grandmother, who we called Bubby. She always loved to laugh, and the graphic designs featured on our apparel are based on her adventures. Once we determined what our goals would be for the company, we conducted research to learn about the ecommerce platforms that could best meet our needs. We wound up choosing Shopify because we felt that the admin console for managing the site was the most intuitive and the third-party apps that can be incorporated into the site to add functionality are expansive. The cost to operate an ecommerce business using Shopify is also very affordable, especially considering that website hosting is included. By providing us with the technological tools needed to easily create and manage the website, this allowed us to focus more on creating the products we wanted to launch.

Q: Part of your company’s brand and philosophy includes supporting the charity Feed the Hungry, and you donate 5 percent of your net profits to this organization. What made you decide to do this?

There are many charities out there that support causes around feeding people who are hungry. As we were first coming up with ideas for Luv To Laugh, we knew that we wanted to support some type of charity. We chose a charity that we believed was important to the world and that our bubby would also have supported and believed in. Ultimately, as we learned about Feed the Hungry, we decided that this was a great cause that we wanted to support.

Q: Why did you decide to use a print-on-demand service to imprint your products?

We actually work with several different print-on-demand services, and we love the fact that they integrate seamlessly with Shopify. Choosing to use a print-on-demand service to create our products and fulfill our orders was purely a financial decision. We simply could not afford to initially create and maintain an inventory. As we grow, we plan to begin having our products manufactured in bulk and carrying our own inventory, because ultimately this would allow us to earn higher profits from each sale.

Q: What was the biggest misconception you initially had about starting an ecommerce business?

We had inaccurate expectations for sales volume. When we were telling our friends and family about the business idea, everyone was incredibly supportive, so we thought that quickly getting a bunch of orders would be easy because everyone would just love the idea once they discovered our website. We did not have the initial marketing budget to generate the traffic and sales we initially expected.

Q: What would you say are some of the key skills someone needs to create and manage a successful ecommerce business?

While much of the Shopify platform relies on an intuitive user interface, there’s still an overall learning curve when it comes to understanding how ecommerce, as well as online sales and marketing, actually works. People need to understand the Shopify platform and learn how to use it before they launch their business on the platform. It’s important to understand how everything works and understand things like shipping rates and how the various online ad platforms work. Most of our paid advertising is done through social media and email marketing, and it’s important to learn how to do this properly, or you can easily wind up misspending your money.

Q: From the time you and your brother came up with the idea for Luv To Laugh to the time your website was launched, how long did the process take?

We spent about six months putting everything together, creating the designs for our products, and developing a business plan we were comfortable with. Initially, we chose to launch the business with a specific number of designs, with the plan to continuously launch new designs. We did not want to provide customers with too many choices initially, so the goal was to create four distinct collections, and then have about 10 different products in each collection.

Q: How did the brand for your business evolve?

We wanted to establish our brand first, before ever launching the website. We came up with the business name and Luv To Laugh brand knowing we wanted something that could have a broad focus and that would allow us to expand in the future. A name like Bubby’s Adventures would have been too narrow a focus. After brainstorming the name, we didn’t finalize it till we knew we could get the domain name and had a logo that could be trademarked. The company name and brand project exactly the message we want to convey. I believe it’s important to establish a brand for a company at the very beginning, and the brand should represent something you’re very passionate about that has a definable and reachable target audience—not too broad or too niche.

Q: What type of research did you do about the competition you’d encounter?

We thought a lot about the competition as we were developing the concept for and focus of the business. When creating our products, we were very careful not to create something that would have to compete directly in the already-crowded marketplace for low-priced T-shirts with imprinted funny sayings. Our focus was on creating unique artwork, for which we hoped people would be willing to pay a premium. It’s very tricky coming up with a price for your products that allows you to earn a profit yet stay in line with the competition. A lot depends on what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, and the perceived value you can create for your products. Creating a premium brand that sells higher-quality products and then differentiating your products from the competition are strategies that allow a company like ours to charge higher prices.

Q: On your website, what are some of the strategies you use to quickly establish your company as a premium-priced brand?

We promote that our products are all custom-made using premium-quality materials, inks, and fabrics, and that we use a higher-quality printing process than most of our competitors. Our printing process does not peel or fade over time. We use our product descriptions to communicate this information to the prospective buyer. When creating product titles and descriptions, it’s important to provide a lot of information in a very concise manner. For example, you want to keep your product titles to 65 characters in length or shorter, especially if you’re integrating your website with advertising platforms. You also want to incorporate SEO-appropriate keywords and phrases into your product titles and descriptions. Of course, you absolutely need to proofread everything before publishing it.

Q: Once you decided to use the Shopify platform, how did you choose the theme for your website?

We had a vision in mind for what we wanted the website to look like. We ultimately chose a free theme called Debut, but now that the website is established, we’re looking at changing the theme. Applying a theme and previewing what your entire site will look like is very easy with Shopify. Choosing the right theme for your business is important. Some themes are only appropriate for specific types of businesses. Regardless of which theme you choose, make sure you understand how to customize it. Otherwise, you need to be willing to hire someone to help you with the customization process.

Q: Between you and your brother, you have professional and creative skills that are very conducive to creating and managing an ecommerce business. As you were getting started, did you need to hire any experts to help you accomplish specific tasks?

We have hired a professional photographer on a freelance basis to help us with product photography, although several print-on-demand services we work with provide us with high-quality mock-ups of the products that can be used online. Keep in mind, the photographer you hire should be able and willing to edit the photos as needed, so they can be incorporated directly onto your website in the appropriate file format and size.

Q: You mentioned that you use social media as an advertising and marketing tool. Which social media services have proved most successful for you?

For us, Facebook has worked well. We have a Facebook page for the company, and we use Facebook advertising as well. Right from Day One, get all your friends and family involved with your company’s social media presence, and get those people to invite their online friends to your company’s Facebook page. I have found that paid Facebook advertising works well for us. Shopify makes it easy to use Facebook advertising in an effective and affordable way. When it comes to online advertising, always start off small and perform tests before investing lots of money. Also try experimenting with different target audiences for your ads. With Facebook, you can get very granular in how you target people. Doing this will allow you to see how your products resonate with various niche audiences. One thing I have learned firsthand is that it’s going to take more online advertising dollars than you think to get your brand out there, build momentum, and drive a steady flow of traffic to your site. One marketing strategy we’re currently looking at is how we can attract social media influencers to help promote our products through paid endorsements. I believe this is something that could work well for us, but it has not yet been within our marketing budget. Cameo is a great service for finding affordable B-list celebrities to record short promotional videos for your brand that can be featured on your website and on social media, for example. The approach you take with your product listings, photography, and videography will depend on what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, and what story you want to communicate with the people who visit your website.

The Ultimate Guide To Shopify offers dozens of resources and experts like Herman who have cracked the code to excel in the ecommerce world. The book teaches you how to get started, the different methods of selling, how to promote your brand and ultimately how to thrive and run your own ecommerce business. Read a free preview of the book here, get your copy of The Ultimate Guide to Shopify from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Earn Passive Income for Your Business with Shopify

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Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

Build a Shopify Store on a budget.

E-commerce boomed during the pandemic and as people have become more comfortable with shopping online, there’s good reason to believe the upward trend will only continue. For savvy entrepreneurs, this presents an outstanding opportunity, especially since platforms like Shopify are so easy to leverage.

That said, you may need a little help getting started in your passive income venture. Get your feet off the ground with The 2021 Shopify Drop Shipping & Private Label Bundle. It’s just $19.99 (reg. $796) for a limited time.

This four-course bundle gives you 14 hours of training to help you set up a Shopify store and start scaling it. You’ll learn the rules for choosing what to sell with a dropshipping model and understand how to discover suppliers for quick dropshipping. Additionally, you’ll understand how to save money with suppliers and even set up your site to automatically accept credit card payments to fully automate your selling.

You’ll also learn a step-by-step process to opening up new sales channels for your private label products and discover how to use targeted paid ad campaigns and promotions to market your store and products. Further your store’s reach by performing keyword research effectively and discovering SEO secrets both on- and off-page to amplify your store’s place in the marketplace.

Finally, there’s a crash course designed to help you build a T-shirt selling business as a practice round. You’ll get started with Printful, create graphics with low-cost tools, create products, and add them to Shopify to start selling fast.

Start earning some passive income or launch a side venture for your business. With the e-commerce boom here to stay, it’s an opportunity for all entrepreneurs to earn a little extra. Right now, you can get The 2021 Shopify Drop Shipping & Private Label Bundle for just $19.99 for a limited time.

Feature Image Credit: Roberto Cortese/Unsplash

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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Behind Shopify’s move to embed payments on Facebook and Instagram

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By Rimal Farrukh

  • Shopify landed a partnership with Facebook to expand seller checkout through Shop Pay on Facebook and Instagram.
  • According to Shopify, 28 percent of young online shoppers made purchases through social media.

Shopify announced a partnership with Facebook to expand its online checkout platform Shop Pay to all Shopify merchants selling across Facebook and Instagram. The expansion will enable Shop Pay as a payment option on Facebook Pay for consumers on Facebook and Instagram.

Currently the feature is available in the U.S on Facebook Pay for Shopify merchants using checkout on Instagram. In the coming weeks, it will be accessible to Shopify sellers in the U.S using checkout on Facebook.

“Facebook continues to be one of our most popular sales and marketing channels for our merchants,” said Carl Rivera, general manager at Shopify and head of product at Shop Pay.

“For example, at the start of the pandemic from March through April, marketing on Facebook and Instagram via Shopify’s channel integration saw 36 percent growth in monthly active users — a trend that continues to rise — paving the way for the very natural expansion of Shop Pay onto these platforms.”

According to Rivera, Shopify sees social shopping as a growing area of commerce driven largely by a younger demographic who are more likely to use social media to discover new brands and shop.

Shopify’s Future of Commerce report states that 28 percent of younger online shoppers said they purchased via social media, compared to 20 percent of middle aged online shoppers and 8 percent of older consumers. It also demonstrates that 54 percent of younger consumers who purchase from independent retailers discover brands through social media compared to 43 percent of middle aged consumers aged between 35 and 54 and 25 percent of consumers older than 55.

“Social commerce is a very effective tool for e-commerce that has only just begun gaining momentum and widespread usage,” said Alexander M. Kehoe, the co-founder of digital marketing and strategy agency Caveni Digital Solutions. “Listing your products on every channel available is fairly standard for most e-commerce sellers. The inclusion of even more easily accessible channels to place products on means that e-commerce providers are positioned to benefit significantly.”

In addition to its social media expansion, Shop Pay allows users to track orders and see the carbon emissions offset from the deliveries of their purchases. According to Shopify, Shop Pay has offset 75,000 tons of carbon emissions, which is the equivalent of 85 million trees protected in the Peruvian rainforest.

“With 53 percent of consumers saying they prefer green or sustainable products, we’re now making it possible for more consumers who check out on Facebook and Instagram to shop sustainably,” said Rivera.

In 2020. Shop Pay processed more than 137 million orders and by the end of the year and has facilitated nearly $20 billion in cumulative GMV since its launch in 2017. A Shopify study found that checkout on Shop Pay is 70 percent faster than a typical checkout, with a 1.72x higher conversion rate.

According to Joe Sinkwitz, CEO of influencer marketing network Intellifluence, Shop Pay’s social media expansion will open up significant business opportunities for social media influencers. Through increased monetary incentives, influencers will be in the position to market Shopify enabled products which will ultimately encourage more purchases.

“From an influencer perspective, we’re seeing a lot of excitement surrounding the Shopify integrations into Instagram and Facebook, as that will give creators a sizable increase in monetization capacity, and will be great for those brands hosted on Shopify to have the additional sales channel,” said Sinkwitz. “We expect the integration will in time be a primary driver of influencer marketing requests, in terms of activating Instagram as a more direct sales channel.”

By Rimal Farrukh

Sourced from TEARSHEET 

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With a new Shopify partnership, DTC brands are bullish on TikTok once again

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By Anna Hensel.

Now that the threat of a potential TikTok ban has all but subsided, e-commerce startups are ready to give their advertising dollars to TikTok. And TikTok wants to make it easier for them to do so.

TikTok and Shopify announced that Shopify merchants can now create and run TikTok campaigns from directly within the Shopify dashboard, thanks to a new TikTok channel within the Shopify app store.

Shopify has similar partnerships with the other digital advertising channels, including Snapchat, Facebook and Pinterest. But the new Shopify partnership signals that TikTok — and e-commerce companies’ interest in it — is here to stay. Modern Retail spoke with leaders of four digital advertising agencies, two of whom said they have seen an increase in e-commerce clients eager to test out advertising on TikTok since the threat of TikTok getting banned seems to have subsided. They say that the interest in TikTok is largely driven by companies’ eagerness to find cheaper advertising alternatives to Facebook, and to reach a consumer that skews younger than the typical Facebook user. At the end of September, President Donald Trump, said he gave his “blessing” to a deal in which Oracle and Walmart would each get a stake in a newly-formed entity that would own TikTok, but the deal has yet to be finalized.

Brandon Doyle, founder of Wallaroo Media, estimated that about 25% of his clients are now running ads on TikTok, up from 15% a few months ago. “A vast majority is because the uncertainty [around TikTok’s future] is now gone,” said Doyle, whose clients include Cotopaxi and Rhone. Freelance media buyer Savannah Sanchez said that she’s had some clients who paused TikTok advertising while they were still waiting to see what happened with the app. They’ve since reached back out in recent weeks to solidify TikTok budgets for November and December; “Whereas before they were kind of on the fence whether they were going to use it for their fourth quarter strategy.”

“The majority of Shopify merchants are preparing for a busy online holiday shopping season,” Satish Kanwar, VP of Product at Shopify said via email in response to a question about whether or not Shopify has seen an uptick in the number of its merchants who are interested in advertising on TikTok. “We believe empowering merchants to connect with new audiences using content that feels authentic and genuine to the TikTok experience will be pivotal as they head into the holiday season.”

“Shopify is a leader in the commerce industry and with over a million merchants leveraging the platform to build their businesses, we see an incredible opportunity to connect the TikTok community with merchants of diverse backgrounds to explore and discover products they love,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a request for comment on the Shopify partnership.

In search of digital advertising alternatives
Katya Constantine, founder of Digishopgirl Media, said that she’s also seen an uptick in clients interested in advertising on TikTok, but attributes it more to the fact that TikTok has added more sophisticated features for advertisers in recent months, including rolling out a self-service advertising platform. Constantine, whose clients include Caraa and Dolls Kill, also added that what is ultimately driving the interest in TikTok “was them wanting to diversify from Facebook.”

However, brands by and large still aren’t spending as much money on TikTok as they are on Facebook — or even Snapchat. “I don’t know if we have any clients that are thinking about putting more than 20% of their budget on TikTok ads,” said Doyle.

And what’s keeping brands from investing more in TikTok is the fact that compared to other digital advertising platforms, TikTok has less sophisticated tools for advertisers that can help them track how their ads are performing. As part of the Shopify partnership, Shopify merchants will be able to install the TikTok tracking pixel with one click, whereas before they may have had to use a developer to install it.

“The pixel integration is great — but [the pixel] still needs to get better at tracking. It’s still a ways behind Snapchat and Facebook’s pixel,” said Doyle. Namely, TikTok can only track a purchase if a person clicks on an ad in TikTok and then makes the purchase right away. Facebook and Snapchat’s tracking pixel, by comparison, can still determine whether or not a person made a purchase after clicking on an ad even if the user visits multiple other sites before making the purchase.

How the Washington Post is creating impact through socially minded branded content

Jason Wong, managing partner at brand incubator Wonghaus, said that he’s currently spending about $15,000 per month on TikTok ads for one of his brands, Doe Lashes. But because TikTok’s ad platform is still young, he sees TikTok more as a “discovery channel,” to introduce the brand to new customers, rather than to drive direct sales.

“A lot of the data [TikTok] has is on watch time — what type of content gets watched, what type of people engage, what type of people comment,” he said. Whereas Facebook, he said has more data on “what type of people want to buy, what type of people are more likely to add to cart,” and can then target ads to those group of people.

Right now, one of the biggest benefits of TikTok for e-commerce advertisers is the fact that it’s typically cheaper to reach ads on Facebook. Sanchez estimated that the CPMs on TikTok for her clients are around five times cheaper than they are on Facebook, while Constantine estimated advertising costs on TikTok are 80% cheaper for her clients.

All of the advertisers Modern Retail spoke with, however, said that they feel TikTok’s biggest drawbacks are due to the fact that its advertising platform is still young — and they expect the company to continue to add better features for e-commerce advertisers over time. A TikTok spokesperson said that the company plans to partner more with Shopify, and “plans to start testing new in-app features that will make it easier for users to discover Shopify merchants and their products.”

“I know that they are working on a lot of stuff,” said Doyle

By Anna Hensel

Sourced from DIGIDAY

This article was reported on — and first published by — Digiday sibling Modern Retail

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Shopify launches machine learning powered network for US merchants

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Shopify Fulfilment Network is expected to lower shipping costs and improve delivery times for SMBs.

This week, Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify launched its brand new Shopify Fulfilment Network for US-based merchants. The new network uses Shopify’s machine learning-driven smart inventory allocation technology to determine the closest and most efficient fulfilment centres for your business.

Why we should care

For SMBs being edged out by giants like Amazon, accessibility to an inventory fulfilment network — and the integrated technologies — could play a key role in helping small businesses stay competitive and allow them to grow.

According to Shopify, the new system does not require advanced technical skills. Thanks to this, the system can be used by busy digital marketers operating with limited resources to market products and drive e-commerce sales.

More on the news

  • Shopify is working with fulfilment partners in Nevada, California, Texas, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
  • Shopify also announced upgrades to its Shopify Plus experience.
  • Shopify is also launching a new Shopify point-of-sale system.

By 

Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media’s Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Sourced from Marketing Land

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Shopify expands native ad options for online marketing

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By Meagan Simpson

Shopify will soon be adding new native ad-buying functions for Facebook and Snapchat, as it looks to make it easier for merchants to access marketing campaigns through their online stores.

As of today Shopify’s online merchants now have the ability to create Facebook dynamic ads, and over the next few weeks, the company is also rolling out Story Ads on Snapchat. This expands Shopify’s existing marketing integrations, which include carousel ads on Facebook and Google Smart shopping campaigns.

The new marketing section was originally launched in October, with the tech giant stating it understands that marketing is extremely important to direct-to-customer brands. Shopify noted that it wanted to make it easier for those merchants to access marketing, therefore decided to centralize marketing integrations. It made the integrations available to access alongside online store, inventory, and sales management.

Along with new features for its online customers, Shopify is also putting emphasis on brick-and-mortar retailers. Last week, the company finally launched its Tap & Chip Reader, allowing in-store retailers to service payments quickly and securely, through payment-enabled phones, as well as debit and credit cards. The announcement marked the first launch of the Reader since it was originally announced in early 2018. It was made available to merchants along with a retail kit, that includes a Dock for the reader, and retail Stand for iPads.

While still primarily an ecommerce company, Shopify has been expanding its in-store retail offerings over the past few years.

“We want to make sure that we take all of the years of work we’ve been doing for [Shopify Plus] customers and make sure we deliver it to them in a way that makes sense and helps them with their unique problems. Shopify Plus did that for the enterprise and Shopify Retail will do that for the physical region,” Satish Kanwar, VP of product at Shopify, told BetaKit earlier this year.

He noted that often, Shopify’s customers are not one specific type, with some brick-and-mortar retailers moving online and vice versa. He said the Ottawa-based company is looking to meet its customers at whatever point they interact with Shopify, looking to create a cohesive experience between online and in-store features.

In terms of today’s announcement, Shopify noted that when it comes to its online businesses it “know[s] that marketing is extremely important” and is hoping to make ad buying and content creation as easy and simple as possible. Shopify also expressed that more features for its new marketing section will become available later this year.

By Meagan Simpson

Meagan is the Associate Editor for BetaKit. A tech writer that is super proud to showcase the Canadian tech scene. Background in almost every type of journalism from sports to politics. Podcast and Harry Potter nerd, photographer and crazy cat lady.

Sourced from Betakit

 

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‘Building the digital factory’: 3D printing comes to Shopify

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By Michael Bodley

It used to take almost a month for the owner of It’s The Island Life, a small, Texas-based direct-to-consumer business selling on Shopify, to receive its 3D-printed cookie cutters. Now, it’ll take less than a week.

It’s The Island Life is one of a few brands piloting a new 3D printing program with Voodoo Manufacturing, a Brooklyn-based company that aims to lend its 3D printing production services to small businesses. Today, the company is launching a design app for 3D printing on Shopify, the $17 billion e-commerce platform that has become the go-to e-commerce platform for DTC startups.

Voodoo wants to open up previously pricey 3D printing capabilities for small businesses. Traditional, large 3D-printing corporations employ expensive machines — ranging from $50,000 to $1 million a piece — that pump out millions of products, everything from car parts to baby bottles. Voodoo uses 200 low-end machines that cost less than $5,000 in an effort to provide a production scale without increasing costs.

(Voodoo is not the only app on Shopify: Shapeways, a competitor, recently launched a Shopify app of its own.)

“Our vision is building a digital factory that can produce a large number of the products that people buy in the world,” said Voodoo co-founder and chief product officer Jonathan Schwartz. “It would be impossible for new brands and products to be created and be successful if they needed to invest a lot of time and money in launching large products. That’s something a large company could do, but not a small one.”

Inside Voodoo’s 2,000-square-foot facility, its printers heat plastic to 230 degrees Celsius and squeeze the material through a hot glue gun-like nozzle, spraying one thin image on a plate at a time, line by line.

The company is looking to capitalize on the growing 3D-printing industry, expected to be worth more than $7 billion by 2024, according to Market Research Engine. Unlike traditional machines, Voodoo’s printers require no molds.

Thanks to the typical upfront cost associated with the manufacturing model, 3D printing has been most often associated with brands with deep pockets. Nike, Adidas and New Balance are all competing to make 3D-printed shoes mainstream, while HP this month announced it was building a 3D printer to help companies produce metal.

Lucy Hutcheson, owner of It’s The Island Life, sells six different cookie cutters designed with the app. The one week it takes Voodoo to turnaround an order compares to the month it used to take other 3D printing companies Hutcheson used before.

The app’s one-week turnaround time outpaces the month it used to take other companies Hutcheson did business with to deliver her products. Many large 3D-printing manufacturers are based in China. At Voodoo, some goods may take up to six hours for a printer to spit out, and the company theoretically could create 200 unique items at a time with each of its 200 printers.

“Our app is going to let people come up and create products that no one else in the world is selling that can be incredibly unique and niche to their customer base, and yet not have to make any investment up-front,” Schwartz said.

By Michael Bodley

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

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