Shopify Inc has announced a partnership with Alphabet Inc’s YouTube to allow merchants to sell through the video streaming platform. The Canadian company looks to tap into the growing number of content creators launching their e-commerce stores. Merchants can effortlessly integrate their online store with one of the world’s biggest entertainment platforms, YouTube, reaching over two billion logged-in users.
The new partnership will give merchants and creators a powerful new way to connect to consumers to build their businesses and share their stories.
Shopify merchants have the option of selling their full range of products to YouTube users in three ways:
- Live streams: Merchants can tag and pin products at key points during a livestream, and picture-in-picture playback, a method that allows the users to watch a video in a floating window with playback video controls.
- Videos: Merchants can exhibit a curated list of products in a product shelf beneath sought-after videos.
- Store tab: A new tab will be added to a merchant’s YouTube channel, featuring their complete selection of products.
Shopify’s Director of product, marketplaces and creators, Amir Kabbara, said the partnership with YouTube would help enhance conversion rate and in turn the gross merchandise volume, a strategic success metric for the business.
Merchants can tag and pin products during live streams, exhibit a curated list of products in a product shelf below on-demand videos and add a store tab under their YouTube channel to feature their products.
Shopify realized orders positioned across such partner integrations quadrupled in Q1-22
Shopify, which has also partnered with Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms stated that it realized orders positioned across such partner integrations quadrupled in the first quarter of 2022.
Commerce today is multichannel, and YouTube is one of the most influential channels on the planet, stated Kaz Nejatian, VP of Product at Shopify. Shopify’s new YouTube integration will profoundly change what opportunity looks like for independent brands in the creator economy. The company is thrilled to expand its long-term partnership with Google to drive the boundaries of D2C commerce on YouTube.
The Vice-President of Shopping Product at YouTube, David Katz, stated that for a long time now, creators have built businesses around their YouTube content. Creators have extended their entrepreneurship into organising their own brands, but only a small, unified number have been able to reach their audience with these products directly on YouTube. He further added that the company is excited to partner with Shopify to help creators easily bring their stores front and centre for their communities on YouTube, who are increasingly turning to them to shop.
The new partnership comes at a time when huge tech businesses are progressively focusing on building commerce across their platforms. Meta-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram had earlier announced that it would allow shoppers in the United States to pay for products directly via messages.