Shopify partners with YouTube for video-based shopping

Retailers on the Shopify platform have a major new digital channel to sell their products.

Canadian e-commerce technology company Shopify is now enabling retailers that use its platform to integrate their online stores with YouTube, which has more than 2 billion monthly logged-in users across the globe. Shopify’s YouTube shopping feature allows retailers to sell their full range of products via YouTube in three ways: livestreams, videos, and store tabs.

Shopify retailers can tag and pin products at key points during a YouTube livestream, with a picture-in-picture playback feature enabling consumers to watch while they check out. Retailers can also show a curated list of products in a product shelf below on-demand YouTube videos, and a new tab will be added to a retailer’s YouTube channel, featuring their entire selection of products..

Because the hosted Shopify platform acts as a retailer’s e-commerce operating system, product details including names, images, pricing, and shipping are seamlessly kept up-to-date across channels. If a product sells out, it’s automatically removed from YouTube.

Retailers can also track performance of live and on-demand videos directly from their Shopify administrative dashboard, with a full view of multichannel sales. And select eligible retailers in the U.S. can offer onsite checkout on YouTube, enabling customers to purchase their products without leaving the video platform.

"Commerce today is multichannel, and YouTube is one of the most influential channels on the planet," said Kaz Nejatian, VP of product at Shopify. "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."

“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,” said David Katz, VP of shopping product at 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.” 

YouTube shopping is available now to Shopify retailers globally.

YouTube leads in product discovery
According to a recent global consumer survey from direct-to-consumer e-commerce company ESW, YouTube ranked as the dominant social media channel used for new product discovery across all demographic groups, with the exception of baby boomers. Among Gen Z survey respondents, 55% indicated that YouTube is a primary discovery channel (tied with Instagram), as did 53% of millennials and 47% of gen X respondents.

However, a leading 36% of baby boomer respondents use Facebook for social product discovery, followed by YouTube with 34%. For Gen Z respondents, TikTok places third for social product discovery at 41%. For millennials, Facebook ranks second to YouTube as a source of product discovery (47%), followed closely by Instagram at 46%.