The Promise of Shopify’s “Shop”

Shopify, the fastest growing tech stock you’ve never heard of made an interesting announcement the other day. They announced the launch of a B2C app — “Shop”. To understand why this is interesting, first you have to understand Shopify.

Shopify is the technology that powers a million online stores. Want to power up an eCommerce platform? Shopify is your destination of choice. Shop, their new app is directed purely at consumers.

From Techcrunch:

“While Shopify is best-known for powering the online stores of more than 1 million businesses, the company is launching a consumer shopping app of its own today, simply called Shop. The app is actually an update and rebrand of Arrive, an app for tracking packages from Shopify merchants and other retailers, which the company says has been used by 16 million consumers already. Shop includes those same package tracking capabilities, but it also allows consumers to browse a feed of recommended products, learn more about each brand and make purchases using the one-click Shop Pay checkout process.”

So what is a B2B platform, a behind the scenes company doing launching a B2C app? To understand the promise, we have to understand the problems of online shopping.

The “(de)friction” of online shopping

Online shopping has been built on two main pillars: convenience and selection. Amazon exemplifies both. For years, the internet provided buyers the ability to browse and find what they wanted. Thought convenience wasn’t always the strongest selling point, it’s been improving each and every year. By 2019, if you wanted just about anything in the world delivered to your front door, Amazon had the solution for you.

Ecommerce has been a story of removing friction. But it’s very success has increased the very same friction.

Abundance — a double edged sword.

Alas, Amazon also exemplifies the problem with online shopping. Today, when you go to the “Everything store” you can definitely find everything. But with that, there’s been an increase in “decision fatigue” associated with an everything store.

Want shoes? Just pick from all the shoes in the world — men’s hiking, men’s sports, men’s tennis.

Looking for a web cam? Here’s a selection. Oh, and here are some ads we put in and hoped you wouldn’t notice. I wonder why it’s a “best seller”…

Not to pick on Amazon. The experience is similar on Google. Unless you know exactly what you want, the shopping discovery journey has acquired a new problem. The abundance that once removed friction, now creates it. The fun, the magic of “window shopping” has disappeared among the abundance.

When I shop, I don’t want abundance, I want the abundance that’s right for me.

The power of curation

The reason that Google is one of the largest companies in the world today is because it understood the power of curation. Google’s search algorithm, took the abundance of the internet, and curated it for you. It took the abundance of links and knowledge out there and served you the best search results. It saved you time. It put what you wanted at your fingertips. It removed friction.

That is the promise of Shopify’s Shop: to be the destination for online shopping that is curated for you. To be your virtual window shopping app.

Who better to create a personal feed of brands you like, that you enjoy browsing through? Because of their broad scale, their virtual window has abundance. Because it’s based on what you’ve purchased, it’s curated.

The Shop playbook

Shop isn’t a B2C app in the classic sense. Shopify shouldn’t be looking to become better at acquiring customers than the merchants they power. That’s a losing game. That’s not where Shop shines.

Shop shines for the “power users”. For those who’ve made multiple purchases through Shopify’s platform.

Let’s think of the customer journey:

You purchases something on a merchant powered by Shopify. You download Shop to track your purchase. If this is your first purchase powered by Shopify, not much in the app yet. Not so interesting.

But over time, you purchase more things powered by Shopify, and the app becomes more interesting. Worried about retention? Don’t. It’s built in — you use it to track your packages each time you make a purchase.

Come for the tracking utility, stay for the curated window shopping.

Imagine your 5th or 6th shopping journey. By now, Shopify has a pretty good idea of what you like. Your feed is full of items from stores you’re interested in. Remember that Mara Stoneware mug you bought last year? Looks like they just came out with a tea pot, cool!

The power isn’t to provide you with the “all finding search bar” we find on Amazon or Google, but to do away with it from the beginning.

It’s easy to dismiss Shopify’s play as a B2B company making the classic mistake of attacking Russia in the winter (aka pivoting into B2C) — don’t. Shop is Shopify’s way of helping brands that have already done the heavy lifting of acquiring customers. Of providing a curated feed for those users to return to and enjoy, that those merchants could have never done themselves.

It’s doing what Shopify does best — building another tool of augmenting the customer journey for merchants. To ensure that “power users” re-discover brands they already know and love.