Online merchants typically think about customer acquisition and meeting customers in a range of marketing channels. Search engines, social media and events offer excellent opportunities to reach customers.
Why not start selling in these channels instead of just marketing?
With Shopify, an online merchant can open countless sales channels in minutes. And you can manage all of them easily via your store’s admin settings. So, you can offer your customers the chance on social media, sell your products at events, or make your product available to buy on any other external site.
The orders arrive in your order admin as normal, no matter where the purchase originated: your store, Facebook or Instagram.
No one can deny the significance of Facebook as a sales and customer acquisition channel. Could you, too, sell your product on Facebook? If the answer is no, it’s time to critically assess how well your online store platform is functioning.
With Shopify, you can list the products you want to sell on your Facebook page in the Store section. Later, you can create posts in which you tag certain products and guide your customers to buy them directly on your online store.
When marketing brand products, mood pictures tagged with a product for sale either generate immediate sales or at least create a strong impression in the mind of whoever sees the post.
Shopify announced Instagram as its sales channel in spring 2018. This amazing addition enables customers to buy products directly from Instagram posts, just like on Facebook. Your customer clicks or taps on the shopping basket icon in your post and, on mobile, is directed within the Instagram app to your Shopify store to complete their purchase.
When you combine Instagram with mobile payment, you can build a really fast, powerful purchasing channel. Instagram, a favourite among younger consumers, is also an excellent place to build your brand and share visually impressive content.
Buy Button
One of the most interesting but as yet less known Shopify sales channels is the Buy Button tool. You can use it to embed the purchase of any product or product group on an external site.
It’s super-easy to set up. You use the tool to choose the product you want, and then use the editor tool to make the buy view look the way you want. You then copy the HTML created by Shopify and embed it in another site.
One of our clients, who sells sport equipment to clubs, is an excellent example of how the Buy Button can be used. They embedded a custom buy view on over ten sport clubs’ websites, allowing club members to buy their equipment directly from these websites. All the orders go directly to your Shopify admin, so there’s no extra work for you. If you need to, you can track your sales per sales channel and generate reports on them for the partners whose sites the Buy Button is embedded on.
Do you cooperate with bloggers or discussion forums? What if, instead of sharing a traditional hyperlink, you started embedding Buy Buttons for your products on these sites?
Amazon
Amazon is fast approaching the Nordic countries. Shopify already offers an out-of-the-box Amazon sales channel feature. You can transfer the products in your Shopify store to be sold on Amazon.
Unfortunately, this feature is currently only available to stores trading in US dollars. We’re still watching this space with interest to see if the feature becomes available to merchants trading in euro.
Sales channels are one of Shopify’s best strengths
People often ask us about Shopify’s advantages over other platforms. The range of sales channels is definitely one big Shopify strength.
You can use these sales channels to quickly and easily enable purchases on social media, in physical stores, at events and through Buy Buttons embedded on external sites. All orders come straight to your Shopify store, but you’ll reach more customers in their preferred channels and provide them with the opportunity to buy your products right there and then.
Interested in expanding your sales channels? Contact us and we’ll analyse your situation together!
Teemu Tolonen, Woolman