Shopify Integrates With YouTube’s Commerce Offerings

Shopify extended its long-standing partnership with Google to YouTube, enabling merchants on its commerce platform to integrate their online stores with the video platform and potentially reach its 2 billion-plus monthly logged-in users. Shopify explained in a blog post, “Today, every brand is focused on one thing: connecting with their audience. Meaningful engagement with consumers is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s a necessity. This shift has put content at the center of brand interactions and given rise to the creator economy, blurring the line between merchant and creator. Content creators are selling goods and building fully realized brands, and direct-to-consumer merchants are creating content as a way to find and connect with new customers.” Merchants across the globe on Shopify’s platform can now integrate their online stores with YouTube, and YouTube Shopping will enable them to sell their products via livestreams, a store tab and videos. Dominique Cosmetics CEO Christen Dominique said in the Spotify blog post, “Bringing my commerce platform and my most popular viewer engagement platform together will be a game changer for me. As an entrepreneur finding new ways to build my business, it's so important that I show up where my customers are shopping and, more and more, that's on YouTube. With the Shopify and YouTube integration, I can share new products from Dominique Cosmetics directly on my videos and lives and make it easy for viewers to purchase as they watch.” Merchants can tag and pin products at key points during their livestreams, and picture-in-picture playback lets shoppers continue watching while checking out. A Store tab will be added to merchant’s channels on YouTube post-integration, allowing them to feature their entire selection of products. And merchants can display a curated list of products in a product shelf below on-demand videos. Product details including image, name, pricing and shipping are seamlessly kept up-to-date across channels by Shopify, meaning that if a merchant’s product is sold out, it is automatically removed from YouTube. Performance of live and on-demand videos can be tracked via merchants’ Shopify admin, with a full view of multichannel sales. And for select eligible merchants in the U.S., shoppers can complete their purchase without leaving the YouTube platform via onsite check. YouTube vice president of shopping product David Katz said in the blog post, “For years, creators have built businesses around their YouTube content, often extending their entrepreneurship into building their own brands, but it hasn’t been as seamless to reach their audience with these products directly on YouTube. We’re excited to partner with Shopify to help creators easily bring their stores front and center for their communities on YouTube, who are increasingly turning to them to shop.” Shopify vp of product Kaz Nejatian added, "Commerce today is multichannel, and YouTube is one of the most influential channels on the planet. Shopify's new YouTube integration will fundamentally change what opportunity looks like for independent brands in the creator economy. We're thrilled to expand our long-term partnership with Google to push the boundaries of D2C commerce on YouTube."