Tuesday morning began with a tour of the main venue, the Beanfield Centre, during which people could network and have Shopify Unite T-shirts printed. We got to know Bold, Octane ai, Shoelace, Printful, and Space Squirrel, which is known from Covet.pics. We heard the latest news from the developers of these apps and talked about the future.
For the rest of the day we split up and went to two separate locations. Mikko headed for Facebook’s Toronto office, while Tero and Petteri went to the Shopify head office to hear about the visual design of DTC brands. After these sessions, we checked out the local Shopify merchants’ brick-and-mortar stores.
The visit to the Facebook office, high among the clouds, was memorable. Every last seat in the session was occupied. The presentation, which lasted a few hours, was full of material, but Bobby Hennessey’s words were particularly impressive. He focused on barriers to consumer’s purchasing decision and on how impatient the modern consumer is online. They have to have everything at once and feel uncomfortable when they have to wait.
At the end of his session he discussed the cooperation between Facebook and Shopify. This year such things as dynamic product advertising are set to be refreshed. The innovations will particularly affect Instagram, and it seems that the technical opportunities of retargeting are also due to be updated. The new releases we’ve become used to in advertising forms are also in the offing. In addition, merchants were encouraged to keep producing more vertical videos.
The visit continued with a panel discussion which included representation from the famous online stores Endy Sleep and Vitaly Design. To finish, Martin Barthel, responsible for the North American Marketplace solutions, entertained the audience.
Shopify head office – visual design of DTC brands
A broad panel discussion on design took place at the Shopify head office. The concept of adding features for money, and the conversation about what should be invested in and why, were particularly memorable. If you copy individual features from other stores, there are a few things you should always think about.
Firstly, you should think about why you are adopting this feature. Secondly, you should think about what makes this feature so superb that you have to adopt it. On the one hand a single design stunt rarely affects the entire brand’s sales, but on the other hand you need to stand out from the crowd somehow, without forgetting about your brand voice.
The design side is starting to focus more and more on monthly subscription models. The monthly nature of this model brings new design challenges. However, this can be an opportunity, as this business model requires a clear design and consistency, for example in order confirmations.
First visit to Shopify merchants’ stores
To finish the day, we visited the local Shopify merchants’ brick-and-mortar stores. All of these merchants are long-term Shopify clients and praise the platform’s ease of use. The stores also use the Shopify-supported PoS solutions. See below for the best parts of the store visits.
