A few weeks ago, we invited 80+ brands from our brand community to our annual Shopify Geekmeet. Leaders from their Solutions, Collabs and Partnerships teams gave attendees a deep-dive insight into new and upcoming tools from Shopify. This exclusive event has become an annual opportunity for growing brands to better understand how to get the most out of Shopify.
Piper has long been an advocate of Shopify; the majority of our portfolio is on the platform. Our relationship with their team has developed over years, sharing our expertise with them and contributing to their annual retail trends insights report.
Millions of brands use Shopify, including some of the biggest – from The Economist to Nestlé to Kylie Cosmetics – but one of the true benefits we see is that brands of all sizes can migrate onto their platform. Shopify will grow with them from several thousand pounds of revenue well into the nine figures. Of the brands attending, 50% used Shopify and 50% used Shopify Plus. During the session, Shopify were able to answer specific queries.
The session was packed full of new tools and tricks for the brands to go away and utilise, but we wanted to share a few insights that are relevant for all ecommerce brands, not just those using Shopify.
- Ecommerce is always evolving, so make sure your tech never becomes a bottleneck, choose tools that are changing with the times and don’t mean you’re always playing catch up.
- Retail and B2B should be part of the ecommerce journey. Shopify can be used across all three; your tech should do the same. Your customer journey should be on brand and an incredible experience no matter the touch point.
- Make your POS part of your ecommerce, allowing you to track omnichannel customer journeys. Benefits of this include retail staff being able to make personalised recommendations, staff attribution, discounts taken from D2C to retail, customer-specific pricing, and better conversion as you’re monitoring all channels.
- The modern B2B buyer is seeking DTC-style experiences. Business buyers respond well to the familiar, accessible and automated features they’re accustomed to from their personal internet shopping and being treated like a brand customer rather than a contract. Channel expansion through Shopify’s B2B product creates that experience while managing all workflows from a familiar backend for your operations.
- International growth and localisation go hand in hand. Shopify are rolling out many new localisation features, including centralised systems for multiple geographies and omnichannel and a customisable storefront for any geography, suggesting increased importance on making your brand specific to the place you are selling in. Beyond copy and imagery, look at categorisation, featured items and what your local competitors are doing.
- Shipping is getting sophisticated and Shopify is introducing split shipping where customers can optimise shipping to get urgent items faster, then the rest of the order on a slower cheaper shipping option, but kept all in the same transaction. We find shipping is very often a drop-off point in transactions when customers are faced with delivery options that don’t work for them.
- With Shopify Collabs, they are also providing tools for influencer marketing with in-depth tracking of conversions to ensure payments are accurate to actual customer sales, allowing you to pull out high performers and create bespoke strategies based on data. Are your teams still managing a roster of creators on a spreadsheet?
While this may read like an affiliate article for Shopify, it’s not. We’re platform agnostic and encourage our portfolio to use whatever system works best for them. What’s true is that Shopify is leading the way in ecommerce, so even if you don’t use them, their new tools and insights should guide your ecommerce strategy.
If you’d like an intro to Shopify, whether you’re already a customer and want some advice or not a customer and want to learn more, please get in touch.