Shopify launches multiple new tools, focusing on AI to attract small brands

It is learned that on July 26, Shopify held its biannual Editions event and released a series of new product tools. It is reported that Shopify's focus this time is on AI tools, which are designed to simplify the merchant operation process, and it has also launched many other product tools that mainly serve small and medium-sized brands. It is not difficult to see that Shopify's update this time is mainly aimed at attracting small brand merchants to settle in.

At the Editions conference, Shopify announced its AI product tool series called "ShopifyMagic", which includes a variety of AI tools that can perform tasks including generating customized blog posts for merchants, automatically responding to merchants' simple questions, developing AI-based email marketing campaigns, and writing product descriptions.

The Sidekick tool provides merchants with a function similar to ChatGPT, answering a series of questions from merchants, including holiday sales discount suggestions and reasons for reduced sales. This function is designed to help Shopify shorten the time it takes to reply to sellers while reducing labor costs, especially as the number of sellers on the platform increases, the cost of manual customer service continues to rise.

However, this feature may not significantly help sellers increase their sales, but for independent site sellers, they have more details to handle themselves than platform sellers, and AI tools can indeed help reduce repetitive work.

In fact, Shopify’s president revealed that the theme of this product launch is centered on AI tools, and many of the products released this year focus on helping brands simplify operational processes. Currently, the Shopify Magic series has been in Beta testing for two months.

Other new tools Shopify announced at the event included Marketplace Connect, Shopify Collective, and Shopify Credit.

The first is MarketplaceConnect, a tool designed to make it easier for Shopify merchants to sell on other platforms, including Walmart and Amazon. When merchants sell on other platforms through this tool, the first 50 orders are commission-free, and subsequent orders will be charged a 1% sales commission, but not more than $99 per month.

Shopify previously launched a feature that allowed merchants to sell their listings on Amazon and other platforms simultaneously, but it was shut down a few years ago. The relaunch now means that Shopify has begun to realize the importance of Amazon to merchants. You know, the two companies have been competing secretly. However, most Shopify merchants have already opened stores on Amazon.

Let’s talk about the Shopify Collective feature.

It is reported that Shopify Collective allows merchants to sell other Shopify merchants' products on their website, and then the merchants will extract commissions from the sales. This means that merchants do not need to purchase additional inventory and act as middlemen. All goods will be shipped directly from the sellers to the buyers, similar to B2B business.

The tool has been proven to work. Earlier this month, DrakeRelated, the official shopping website of Canadian rapper Drake, used its Collective tool. On July 6, DrakeRelated launched five products in collaboration with other Shopify brands such as Funboy, ElderStatesman and Krink. Of the sales from this new product collaboration, 72% came from first-time buyers.

Finally, there is the ShopifyCredit feature. This feature is designed to provide credit functions for small and medium-sized merchants. For small merchants, it is difficult to obtain funds from banks. Shopify will evaluate the loan amount based on the merchant's business performance rather than credit score, which will help sellers solve funding problems.

Additionally, Shopify continues to work on improving its checkout process, adding new customization features to the checkout editor, such as pickup points and delivery dates.

It is not difficult to see that Shopify's product focus this year seems to be on its traditional business, which is to help small business brands achieve scale. The various functions it has launched are more valued by small brands than other large merchants. For Shopify, in order to attract more small brand merchants to join and increase market activity, it needs to better meet the needs of merchants, and new product tools are one of its means.

Editor✎ Ashley/

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