Juphy’s Weekly E-Commerce News Express – 24-28 June 2024
Ceyda Duz
Welcome to this week’s dive into the intersection of e-commerce and AI! We’re spotlighting Shopify’s Summer ’24 Edition, including over 150 updates, alongside a groundbreaking partnership between Shopify and Target Plus aimed at U.S. merchants. Plus, explore the influence of TikTok Shop among Gen Z and Millennial consumers and new product updates from TikTok and Voggt. Stay tuned for the latest trends and highlights in online shopping, retail, and AI!
Shopify’s Summer ’24 Edition: The Unified E-Commerce Experience
According to Shopify, true craftsmanship in e-commerce lies in creating a seamless, unified experience. It’s not just about building new products and features but ensuring they work together harmoniously. This mindset can be seen in Shopify’s Summer ’24 Edition, which exemplifies this belief, introducing over 150 updates designed to enhance platform speed, resilience, and integration for merchants.
Key Highlights
Expand into New Markets:
Markets, previously a cross-border selling solution, has evolved into a comprehensive command center for growth and expansion. Merchants can now customize buyer experiences for international selling, B2B expansion, and in-person sales using Shopify POS, all from one central location. This simplifies the process, eliminating the need to navigate multiple stores or workflows.
AI Built for Commerce:
To save time and keep businesses on top of their games, Shopify has embedded AI across its platform.
- Media Editor: AI image generation has saved merchants over 1 million images. AI image editing is now extended to all areas in the admin where images are used, including the Online Store Editor and Email Editor, and is available on the Shopify mobile app for on-the-go professional edits.
- AI-Powered Product Creation: Magic instantly suggests personalized and intelligent recommendations for new products, assigning attributes like color, size, and style, minimizing listing errors, and ensuring easy discoverability.
- Suggested Replies: For stores using the Shopify Inbox, AI-generated responses to customer chats save time by providing quick, accurate answers based on store-specific information.
- Sidekick: This AI-powered commerce assistant, currently in early access, provides context and guidance for decision-making, task resolution, and feature utilization. Sidekick helps generate customer segments and offers insights in analytics.
Simplify Selling in Person:
New POS features include one-tap digital receipts for Shop Pay users and automatic detection of product return eligibility with context for staff.
Unified Analytics:
Shopify has rebuilt its analytics to be smarter, faster, and more intuitive, providing real-time insights.
The Summer ’24 Edition reflects Shopify’s belief that while not all unified software is great, all great software is unified. This simplicity allows merchants to expand into new markets without increasing costs and complexity.
Shopify Partners with Target Plus: A New Opportunity for U.S. Merchants
In a new development, Target announced its partnership with Shopify to expand the offerings on Target Plus, the retailer’s third-party online marketplace. This partnership allows U.S.-based Shopify merchants to apply to sell their products on Target Plus through Marketplace Connect, an app designed to streamline selling and order management from online marketplaces.
Retail brands, including True Classic and Caden Lane, will be among the first to join Target Plus as part of this collaboration. According to Target, with this move they will be the first mass retailer to work with Shopify to bring select merchants’ products into its physical stores, offering shoppers an even broader range of new brands to discover.
A Win-Win for Merchants and Shoppers
Target Plus invites consumers to explore a curated collection of products from trusted retailers, improving the overall shopping experience with thoughtfully designed and affordable items. This partnership with Shopify will significantly expand the range of brands available on Target’s platform and will help high-growth brands reach millions of new customers.
The partnership with Shopify signifies a significant step in expanding Target Plus’s reach and diversity, bringing in more U.S.-based merchants and enhancing the shopping experience for Target’s customers. This collaboration underscores Target’s commitment to offering new, on-trend, design-forward, and high-quality brands and products.
TikTok Shop Gains Momentum
TikTok’s rapid rise in the e-commerce space has been noteworthy. Despite its recent launch, the platform has quickly caught up with established competitors like Instagram. A report by Morning Consult, which surveyed around 3,200 U.S. teens and adults in December, found that TikTok Shop is a preferred platform for purchases among adult Gen Z consumers (ages 18-23). In this age group, TikTok tied with Instagram for the highest number of reported purchases, followed by YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
Millennials: A Key Opportunity
While TikTok Shop is a hit with Gen Z, it faces more rigid competition among millennials. More millennials reported making purchases on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram compared to TikTok. However, millennials still represent a significant opportunity for TikTok Shop. Among those surveyed, 18% of millennials said they had made between two and five purchases on TikTok Shop, indicating strong potential for repeat business. The platform’s recommendation algorithm, which tailors content to user preferences, is likely a driving factor behind these repeat purchases.
Retention and Growth Strategies
TikTok’s ability to retain customers is notable. Data from Earnest Analytics shows that about 27% of TikTok Shop customers returned to make another purchase within five months of their first, outperforming other e-commerce sites like Temu, Shein, and Etsy and second only to Amazon. This retention is important as TikTok Shop continues to grow its user base and solidify its position in the e-commerce market.
Future Prospects
TikTok Shop’s early momentum indicates a promising future, especially as it continues to attract and retain younger shoppers. The platform’s ability to drive repeat purchases through its recommendation algorithm and strategic investments highlights its potential to become a dominant force in social commerce. As TikTok Shop further refines its offerings and leverages its unique social engagement capabilities, it could very well see increased adoption among millennials and other age groups, strengthening its position in e-commerce.
TikTok Enhances Local Shopping Experience
TikTok has upgraded its location pages for select U.S. cities, including Boston, New York, and Texas, to enhance the local shopping experience. The new design goes beyond displaying videos tagged with specific areas, organizing content into categories like “shopping” and “food & drink”. This makes it easier for users to find relevant videos tailored to their interests. Additionally, a new “explore more places” button integrates with Apple Maps, providing users with detailed views of nearby businesses, including addresses and prices, thereby offering a more comprehensive local discovery tool.
Voggt Enhances Live Shopping Experience
The live-shopping platform Voggt, known for merging live video and e-commerce, has integrated Amazon Interactive Video Service (IVS), leveraging the same advanced streaming technology as Twitch. This integration has significantly reduced Voggt’s average latency from 12 seconds to just 60 milliseconds, enhancing the real-time shopping experience. With this upgrade, Voggt now averages 7,000 auctions and 300 shows per day, totaling approximately 30,000 live-stream broadcast hours each month on Amazon IVS.
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Key Takeaways
Shopify’s Summer ’24 Edition: Shopify introduces over 150 updates to enhance platform speed, resilience, and integration, emphasizing a seamless, unified e-commerce experience. Key highlights include expanding into new markets, AI-driven tools for commerce, new POS features, and smarter analytics.
Shopify Partners with Target Plus: Shopify teams up with Target to allow U.S.-based Shopify merchants to sell on Target Plus, Target’s third-party online marketplace. This partnership expands the range of brands available on Target’s platform and enhances the shopping experience for customers by bringing new, high-quality brands to both online and physical stores.
TikTok Shop Gains Momentum: TikTok Shop has quickly risen in popularity among Gen Z consumers, tying with Instagram for the highest number of purchases in this demographic. While facing more competition among millennials, TikTok Shop shows strong potential for repeat business due to its effective recommendation algorithm.
TikTok Enhances Local Shopping Experience: TikTok upgrades its location pages for cities like Boston, New York, and Texas, organizing content into categories such as “shopping” and “food & drink.” The new “explore more places” button integrates with Apple Maps, offering detailed views of nearby businesses.
Voggt Enhances Live Shopping Experience: Live-shopping platform Voggt integrates Amazon IVS, reducing average latency from 12 seconds to just 60 milliseconds. This upgrade boosts the real-time shopping experience, allowing Voggt to average 7,000 auctions and 300 shows per day, totaling about 30,000 live-stream broadcast hours monthly.