Our fave news from Shopify’s new semi-annual showcase
Move over Unite, the big announcements are now happening twice a year with Shopify Editions, Shopify’s new semi-annual showcase.
CEO Tobi says, “With Shopify Editions, we’re sharing our big bets and latest innovations in commerce so that those ambitious enough to try their hand at entrepreneurship can start and scale faster than ever before.”
There's a lot to explore, every time I revisit Editions, I find something I missed before. In this episode, we'll talk through the announcements we're most excited about.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
7/26/2022
Kurt Elster: So, how you feeling?
Paul Reda: I had COVID, so that was fun. I’m okay.
Kurt Elster: You’re okay? Family’s okay? Everybody’s okay?
Paul Reda: Yeah, I’m fine. I’m okay. My wife can’t really taste anything still but is otherwise fine and our daughter, who was going to get a vaccination, but that had to get canceled because she had COVID, so that sucked. Almost made it.
Kurt Elster: Slightly off on the timing there.
Paul Reda: Almost made it.
Kurt Elster: So close.
Paul Reda: She just had a fever for a day or two, which was of course very terrifying because we are young, first-time parents with our eight-month-old baby, and the baby’s sick, so daddy did not handle that well.
Kurt Elster: As a multi-child parent, you quickly realize that babies, if you just look at them wrong they get fevers.
Paul Reda: I hate that. Don’t say that to me.
Kurt Elster: They get fevers all the time.
Paul Reda: No, I don’t like that. No. She can never be sick. Nothing bad could ever happen to her.
Kurt Elster: That’s that immune system firing up, kicking in.
Paul Reda: I can’t handle that. And my wife, you know, my wife was an ICU nurse, so she only sees like, “Oh, yeah. That could escalate. Then you gotta cut all your feet off.” You’re just like, “Oh my God. What?” She’s just like, “Well, that’s only if it escalates. Come on.” She’ll tell you the worst absolute shit in the world and then when you freak out she’s just like, “Yeah, but we’re not gonna end up there. We’ll intervene beforehand.” I’m like, “Don’t tell me that shit.”
Kurt Elster: I like that you live with a medical professional, but it often doesn’t work out in your favor. You just end up spiraling about stuff.
Paul Reda: No, it is horrible, because there’s bad shit happens that you didn’t even know that that shit happened, and she’d just be like, “Yeah, that happens all the time. What are you talking about? That could just happen to you at any moment. You could just be dead right away. Yeah. What do you mean?” And you’re like, “What?”
Kurt Elster: I suppose when it comes to strange medical emergencies, maybe ignorance is bliss.
Paul Reda: Yeah. No, that’s the way I want to live.
Kurt Elster: But everyone’s okay, we’re all good?
Paul Reda: No, we’re all fine. We’re all fine. I was boosted in maybe October, so I’m cool. Got that Pfizer. I’m in the Pfizer party.
Kurt Elster: I got the mix and match.
Paul Reda: I know you did.
Kurt Elster: Pfizer-Moderna.
Paul Reda: I wasn’t able to get a Moderna any time.
Kurt Elster: But that was… I got boosted around the same time and I also got COVID last month.
Paul Reda: Yeah. You had COVID last month.
Kurt Elster: It’s going around.
Paul Reda: Joe’s got it.
Kurt Elster: The reason I bring up the COVID is we are late in covering the Shopify Editions announcements.
Paul Reda: And it kept getting pushed back because we had other guests and then I got COVID.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so we’re doing it. This is it. This is the Shopify Editions episode.
Paul Reda: Well, and Shopify Editions kind of replaces Shopify Unite.
Kurt Elster: But also Unite’s still a thing.
Paul Reda: And the last one got canceled because of COVID.
Kurt Elster: Two? Two times.
Paul Reda: Well, and they’re not having it anymore.
Kurt Elster: Well, now there’s Unite but it’s smaller events in multiple cities, which sounds like… They used to do Pursuit or a day with Shopify. I read it as similar to that, but I’ve not attended this thing, so I really shouldn’t just be guessing at it.
Paul Reda: I don’t know. I went to the Unite. I enjoyed one of the Unites I went to. No comment on the other one.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, I was gonna say, you’ve been more than one, but stopped myself. So, in the past Shopify would do this big conference event, Shopify Unite, once a year, and then they would drop here’s all the new features, just like nonstop, Harley’s up there telling us what’s going on, getting everybody fired up. It’s fun. Now, as far as our product announcements are concerned, we’re switching things up. We’re gonna hear them twice a year now and they’re calling it Shopify Editions, and it’s like a really nifty website, but it looks like a fancy publication, and you can go through and see all these features. And it catalogues, “Here’s everything we did. Here’s everything we’re doing. Here's where we’re going.”
I really liked it. I don’t know if it’s because it’s the first one, or they’re all gonna be this good, but it really… I kept revisiting it and finding stuff I missed.
Paul Reda: And also, it’s like their way of versioning Shopify it feels like, because when you log into the backend right now, it says like, “Shopify Summer 2022 edition,” or whatever.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, which I think is cool.
Paul Reda: Eh.
Kurt Elster: I like it. Especially if you consider a lot of merchants are in fashion, and so they’ve got like, “Oh, this is this season’s version of Shopify.”
Paul Reda: Yeah. But that only makes sense-
Kurt Elster: And then when you see screenshots, you know when it came from.
Paul Reda: That only makes sense if there could be people on old versions. That’s the point of versioning is to differentiate between the different ones.
Kurt Elster: Okay, also true. It’s for screencasts and screenshots?
Paul Reda: If everyone is just gonna be on Winter 2022 version in six months, who cares? Everyone’s just getting-
Kurt Elster: It’s fun and I like it. We can have it just because it’s fun.
Paul Reda: I don’t like things that are fun.
Kurt Elster: That’s not true.
Paul Reda: How about that?
Kurt Elster: Okay, so that was June 22nd. We’re like abysmally late in covering it. We apologize. Blame COVID, not us.
Paul Reda: I had a sick baby. How dare you blame me for that? What kind of monster are you?
Kurt Elster: You’re right. I’m sorry.
Paul Reda: I’m talking to the audience who’s blaming us, not you.
Kurt Elster: No one was mad about it. They were cool about it. So, twice a year we get product announcements. We’re calling it Shopify Editions. The first one, over 100 items are in there, updates and launches, and the highlights… I mean, there’s tons of stuff, but the things they were clearly highlighting were new wholesale channel for B2B replaces the old one, tokengated commerce if you’re into that. Partnering with Google to help consumers shop local. Twitter shopping. Launching tap to pay on iPhone. And then stuff keeps coming out. After the fact, YouTube shopping showed up last week. Super cool. Very exciting.
So, there’s over 100-plus features in here. I’m not gonna just rattle them all off to you. You can go check out the Shopify Editions site. I encourage you to. It’s really cool. It has two modes, the end user version and the developer version, which I loved that little trick that it does. So, we went through, we picked out these are like the common, or our favorites. The big ones. Color commentary on that. Does that sound good? Will that work for you?
Paul Reda: Yes.
Kurt Elster: Thank you. Good. Excellent. Try not to cough on that mic. I should have prepared COVID jokes in advance.
Paul Reda: I had a big lunch, so I’m a little semi-barfy right now.
Kurt Elster: He’s digesting.
Paul Reda: I have not eaten a lot in the last week and now I had a lunch that was way too big and I’m like… I’m semi gonna ralph.
Kurt Elster: Oh, boy. You know what? Let’s leave that in. Sorry, so the one I’m leading with here, simple, straightforward, often requested, they call it discount combinations. It’s stackable coupon codes. In the past, if a customer applied a coupon code in checkout, they could apply one and that’s it, and it also would not combine with automatic discounts, which… That was usually where the annoyance came in. They have since changed this. You can stack or combine discounts now and rolling out to all merchants, all plans over the next several weeks.
Paul Reda: And there’s a way to put a governor on that, I’m assuming?
Kurt Elster: Well, you still have all your coupon options.
Paul Reda: Because I’m just worried about like Honey and all those apps, people figure out a way to chain discounts.
Kurt Elster: Well, that’s why I would… All right, that’s a good point. The-
Paul Reda: And by the way, you’ve now sold this $100 product for like 10 bucks.
Kurt Elster: So, I’ve not set up a stackable discount yet on my own, so I’ve not seen how, like what those options are, but ideally you avoid this problem separate of stackable discounts by just using one-time-use coupon codes as much as possible, so that they don’t end up in Honey, the delightful Chrome extension that I’m not supposed to say I have. I love that thing.
Paul Reda: I know you do. Every time it comes up, you go, “I love that thing.”
Kurt Elster: Not that I know anything about it. Shopify Audiences got… We’ve heard about this before, but this was one of the wrapped up announcements that got in here. Still Plus only. Available now. It is you can-
Paul Reda: I like Shopify Audiences.
Kurt Elster: I love it. I love the concept. I think over time it will get progressively more performant.
Paul Reda: Is that a word?
Kurt Elster: Performant?
Paul Reda: Yeah. You say it a lot.
Kurt Elster: I’m gonna go with yes.
Paul Reda: Sure.
Kurt Elster: You know what? Let’s try this. Hey, Siri. Define performant.
Siri: Performance means-
Paul Reda: Oh, performance!
Kurt Elster: Maybe I invented a word.
Paul Reda: Uh, we’re in agreeance on that.
Kurt Elster: All right, performant is a word. Functioning well or as expected.
Paul Reda: Oh, wow. It’s gonna become more functioning as expected. Great. Just what the people want.
Kurt Elster: Thank you, human. No, so Shopify Audiences, a pool of custom audiences that you can use inside Facebook, and-
Paul Reda: Yeah, so what it does is you have your audience… Facebook had a thing where you could give it your email list and it would then spit out what is known as a lookalike audience, which is these are people that look like the people that have already bought from you, probably in terms of like demographics, age, location, income, that sort of stuff. But you know, it was still only working off of your client base, so maybe if you didn’t have a big client base, or you were just getting started, you were really flying blind.
So, what Shopify Audiences does is it combines… I guess Shopify figures out stores that have common user bases?
Kurt Elster: You opt into it and it’s a pool of them. Now, how it segments it-
Paul Reda: I think it makes… I assume it would have to make pools of like, “You know, this is all dudes in their 20s, are only into-“
Kurt Elster: This is the broski audience?
Paul Reda: This is a bro audience that are all into BMX bikes and listening to Joe Rogan, and these are suburban moms that won’t get their kids vaccinated and are worried about people kidnapping them in the Target parking lot, and you know, that sort of stuff, and it just-
Kurt Elster: That’s the Karen audience.
Paul Reda: Yeah. It splits those out and then you get to share those audiences and make lookalike audiences from that much bigger pool, and the lookalike audience will look better.
Kurt Elster: Yes, actually. I think that’s quite an accurate description of this thing. Now, the catch with Shopify Audiences is you don’t know if it’s gonna work for you until you try it. I think that is true of all marketing advertising. It’s like it’s an investment and therefore a risk, so it’s one of those things where you just gotta try it. If it doesn’t work for you, I’d say, “Hey, maybe revisit it in six to 12 months,” because I bet with more data, if it didn’t work for you it gets better over time.
Paul Reda: Well, it’s hard because you know, maybe the audience was great, but you ended up making a crappy ad.
Kurt Elster: And then you blame the audience.
Paul Reda: And then you blame the audience because you had a crappy ad, but you’ve never done it before, so you don’t know it’s a crappy ad. There’s a lot of…
Kurt Elster: Well, this one’s a Plus exclusive, so hopefully you’ve done it before.
Paul Reda: Hopefully you know what you’re doing a little bit.
Kurt Elster: But no guarantee. The other one, it’s another Plus only. I swear there’s tons of stuff in here that’s not Plus only, but there was a lot of exciting Plus stuff in here.
Paul Reda: But the good ones, it was only for Plus people.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Sorry. B2B and wholesale. In the past, Shopify… For a while, Shopify has had a wholesale channel in Shopify Plus, but it was really opinionated in its approach. It was like they’re gonna order in this one specific way and you’re gonna set up price lists in this one way, and so if you didn’t, if you wanted to work within the way it wanted and so did your wholesale customers, you were set. If you wanted to work any other way, you really… You just didn’t use the wholesale channel. You had to figure out something else.
And so, they have completely rethought this wholesale channel. I have seen it. Seen the demo. And it is so much more configurable and customizable and nicer, and I love it, so if you were considering adding, “Hey, I want a dedicated wholesale channel in my Plus store,” certainly at least try or check out this new wholesale channel in Shopify. It is very nice.
Paul Reda: Shopify Markets. I have no idea what that is.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so I forgot what it was, as well, because it’s been a month. Where did I put this?
Paul Reda: Again, I had a glassy eyed sick baby. How dare you blame me for us being late?
Kurt Elster: I blamed your baby, specifically.
Paul Reda: I know.
Kurt Elster: All right, Shopify Markets, a cross-border commerce hub that makes global selling the default for our merchants. Let’s just-
Paul Reda: So, it’s just like changed currency switcher?
Kurt Elster: Let’s take a moment and I’ll go look up what this is. Okay, so this, Shopify Markets is their full internationalization suite. Again, a Plus exclusive. Being you’re going to be selling into multiple countries, this very much may… This feature for sure makes sense to be Plus only. We’re not gonna argue that one. But you define pricing and language by market all within Shopify and it switches it based on the domain name.
Paul Reda: Oh, so you can set up different prices depending on what country it is. Can you add different content?
Kurt Elster: That is coming soon.
Paul Reda: Cool.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so storefront content by market they have listed as one of the features. Offering different products per catalogue per country is listed here as a coming soon. And same with global inventory locations. So, really this will be once you have all six of those features, now suddenly this is like a best in class internationalization solution.
Paul Reda: Yeah. International selling.
Kurt Elster: Because yeah, you could sell internationally. It also adds quite an order of complexity.
Paul Reda: Well, you were selling internationally, but it was just like your store and then you used some app to translate it into German-
Kurt Elster: As if they can’t use Google Translate themselves.
Paul Reda: And then you have another app that just changes the prices into euros, just straight whatever the conversion rate is for that day, and so it really wasn’t like a different store, and you couldn’t charge different values.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And so, now we have more native features and solutions to do these things, and then more coming. I like the idea of being able to like, “These products are only available in these countries,” and this content swaps out. That makes a lot of sense. Let’s see here. Okay, built for Shopify. This one we experienced-
Paul Reda: Personally.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Personally.
Paul Reda: Much to our chagrin.
Kurt Elster: So, Built for Shopify is a label I don’t know that anyone is really ever going to see or realize.
Paul Reda: It’s not gonna be like a little badge on the app page?
Kurt Elster: Well, all right. This is what it is. Built for Shopify really refers to their new more in-depth app review process. So, the apps in the Shopify app store always got reviewed, but now it is more intensive with more requirements, and based on that testing the app store listing will get little badges, so at a glance you can tell how this app is going to implement before you ever have to mess with the darn thing.
And so, it’ll say like, “Speed tested, low impact to your store.” We earned that one. There’s one, like you’ll have an app integration, you click it, and it loads up a new window and logs you into the website.
Paul Reda: Hate that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I hate that. And I guess other people do too, because if you just keep everything within the Shopify admin, there’s a badge for that too.
Paul Reda: Ooh.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And then there’s… I think that one’s like, “Easy to use,” something to that effect. I forgot what it was.
Paul Reda: That doesn’t explain it good.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, it says like, “Right in your admin.” And then there’s a third one… I don’t know if there’s others, but the third one, and this is the one I’m working on getting now, is it’s like, “Works with the latest themes,” and that means it uses all the online store 2.0 features.
Paul Reda: So, app blocks. App blocks that can be placed using the customize theme GUI tools.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, either app embed, which replaces script tags, or app block, or both. And so, I love it, because if you’re on an online store 2.0 theme, this is a much easier, better way to manage apps, because it gets you out of that issue where it’s like, “Oh, my app no longer works,” or, “I don’t want to use this app anymore. I gotta uninstall it. But now it left code behind.” Those issues go away with this.
Paul Reda: Well, and all the stuff where it’s like, “Well, the widget injects itself here below the price, but I actually want it to be below the add to cart button, so someone go into the theme and find is that a snippet? Is it a piece of JavaScript? Should we even change that?” Figuring out how to manipulate where the app is showing up, which is real hit or miss, now when they’re just separate app blocks you just move the block around.
Kurt Elster: And what’s cool with the app embed is it has a toggle switch, so you can turn… And app embed really meaning just like this app is being allowed to load JavaScript into your theme. You could turn those on and off individually on the go without having to uninstall the app.
Paul Reda: Delete the app. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, it’s like, “Well, this is an app I use one week out of the month,” but you don’t want it slowing the store down the rest of the time, you could turn it off. And so, I really like this suite of features. To take advantage of it, you gotta have an online store 2.0 theme. But like for sure we’re at the point now where if you’re not yet on an online store 2.0 theme, and you’re even thinking about upgrading, yeah, go for it. The ecosystem has caught up where now we’re really seeing all these features get used nicely.
Paul Reda: Is every app getting re-reviewed?
Kurt Elster: So, I don’t know how it works. We have four apps. One, Crowdfunder, that has the most installs, that immediately ended up in the review process. They were thorough, and helpful, and provided a screencast. I have no complaints and we worked through it with them. But the other three have not been reviewed yet, but also have much fewer installs. So, I don’t know if there’s a threshold for it. Certainly, if you’re submitting a new app-
Paul Reda: Yeah. They gotta.
Kurt Elster: They have to go through it. But my guess is like, hey, there’s a lot of apps. Let’s just prioritize.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Well, I mean I was just thinking like, you know, I’m sure that there’s a lot of crappy apps in the app store that are abandonware, pretty much, and if they get poked by the review team, I could see there being a lot of apps that just don’t even bother replying, and then maybe end up getting delisted?
Kurt Elster: For sure, they get-
Paul Reda: I mean, just be great to increase the overall quality of the store.
Kurt Elster: What was communicated to us was, “Hey, you’ll get pushed to the end of the list.” Whoever meets the search query and has all the app highlights goes to the top of the search results, or like the collection page, so now this is a ranking factor. But they’re being very transparent about it and using it as like, “All right, here’s the reward.” And the stick is, “Well, you’re gonna go to the back of the line and no one’s ever gonna see your stuff.”
Paul Reda: Yeah. If you don’t play ball.
Kurt Elster: And I would assume if they find larger issues they’ll just delist the app for you. Well, we’ll help you out so you can work on it. We don’t want you troubled with new installs. We’ll just go ahead and delist that for you.
Paul Reda: Till you get it fixed.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And then come back to us. And so, I think that, based on my experience, yeah.
Paul Reda: I think that’s gonna happen. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Checkout extensions. Plus only. I’m sorry, being able to edit the checkout has always been a Plus feature. We now have a much more formal way of doing it called checkout extensions. This is target release date is September, this year. Certainly, I’ve seen people on Twitter working through beta apps that use this.
Paul Reda: So, these are apps. What they are is it’s an app you could download. It’s an app you can install that goes in your checkout and does things inside the checkout.
Kurt Elster: Yes. Without breaking the checkout.
Paul Reda: Without breaking the checkout. Yeah. I mean, there were apps that did stuff with the checkout before, but they would hijack the checkout and do crazy shit, and anytime Shopify updated the checkout they would break.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Then you’d have to go through that whole update process.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: They communicated it well, but it was still twice a year or whatever you’re like, “Oh, boy. Here we go.” But yeah, it’s customize their checkout using apps. Add branding, loyalty programs, recommended products and more. Secure, fast, and upgrade safe.
So, looking deeper into it, you could also use it to change the appearance of the checkout, so I think this one is gonna be nice. The initial one is like, “Hey, cross sells, upsells, let’s use this to increase average order value.” But I think over time this checkout extensions thing as more stuff becomes available is going to be super valuable.
Similar sounding in scope to checkout extensions is Shopify Functions. So, Shopify Functions, this sounds like a bigger, better, faster version of Shopify Scripts, and it definitely sounds like it will replace some apps. And unlike Scripts, you could distribute a function, a Shopify Function, like an app. And their example, the description was, “Extend or replace key parts of Shopify’s backend with custom logic.” And the example use case was create a new type of discount that’s offered in the cart and at checkout. Currently in developer preview.
So, what this thing-
Paul Reda: Yeah. What the hell is this? I don’t… You’re just throwing buzzwords out.
Kurt Elster: Just yelling words at you?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, Shopify Scripts will let you write a ruby script that executes in Shopify in their backend, so it’s fast, we’re not going to a separate server like an app has to, and modify the checkout, change prices, change shipping rates, and hide payment gateways. So, it’s a really nice, powerful tool for some of your more edge case customizations that we have to do.
Shopify Functions sounds like, all right, let’s take that idea where logic that normally an app would have to execute or JavaScript would have to execute elsewhere, let’s have Shopify servers do that. And so, we get rid of the latency, and so we really get some of these things can run much faster without having to use a whole bunch of kludgy apps stuck together.
I think-
Paul Reda: What do they do?
Kurt Elster: The initial one accesses the discount API. So, it’s like Shopify Functions becomes this super powerful discount engine that you can use for more complex discount promotions. So, again, it sounds like line item scripts.
Paul Reda: So, it’s a Scripts replacement? Shopify Scripts replacement?
Kurt Elster: It sounds like it would replace some of what Shopify Scripts does.
Paul Reda: How do you write a function?
Kurt Elster: It didn’t use Ruby. It didn’t use JavaScript. They said it was like some specific language that was chosen for its speed.
Paul Reda: This seems very developery to me and not end usery.
Kurt Elster: Well, that’s why… So, Scripts has that problem. Shopify Functions being able-
Paul Reda: Yeah. Shopify Scripts is pretty much like, “Hope you know Ruby.”
Kurt Elster: Yes. And I love Shopify Scripts. I use them all the time. But the fact that Shopify Functions can be… They say it can be packaged like an app, means someone could build it and then give it to a merchant to easily install without having to screw around with the code. This also says Shopify Functions are part of the checkout extensibility developer preview. So, this goes along with checkout extensibility, and the initial version of it is discount logic that lives inside of checkout. So, this really does sound like a replacement for line item scripting.
Paul Reda: Good.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. All right, you’re right. This is one of those things it’s like it is technical and ambiguous.
Paul Reda: No. I mean, the end results are good. Having more powerful, easier to use scripts would be nice.
Kurt Elster: I think similar.
Paul Reda: All I have is a bullet point that says, “More powerful and easier to use scripts.” And then I’ve not been given any further information. So, my reply is… Good.
Kurt Elster: 12 months from now you’re gonna be like, “Damn, how did I live without this thing?” I think the potential-
Paul Reda: I certainly hope.
Kurt Elster: … and power for this thing is big. I know people aren’t excited about it. They’re more like, “Yeah, we can stack discounts.” Because that was a pain we experienced and that’s available. Whereas like Shopify Functions, we have to wait for it to roll out. We have to wait for people to use it, see how they use it, and those apps to get distributed, but I think like 12 months from now this thing’s gonna be awesome. I think it’s gonna solve a lot of problems. I think it’s gonna replace a lot of janky apps.
Paul Reda: I don’t know why you’re being so defensive. I’m just asking questions.
Kurt Elster: I’m just asking the question.
Paul Reda: I’m just asking questions.
Kurt Elster: All right, Joe Rogan. You gonna tell me the moon landing was fake next? How many Joe Rogan references can we stick in one episode?
Paul Reda: I love NewsRadio. NewsRadio, such a good show. Great show.
Kurt Elster: Classic Dave Foley. Stephen Root.
Paul Reda: Stephen Root, who’s like… He’s like 78. He’s an insanely old number that I never… had no idea.
Kurt Elster: He’s a septuagenarian?
Paul Reda: He’s in his seventies.
Kurt Elster: All right, so some other miscellaneous updates I pulled out here. Shopify Flow, now on all plans. I love Shopify Flow. It’s great. Automation tool. Online store 2.0 updates continue, namely through continuous improvements to native metafields. Oh, we love those metafields. Shop Pay added free fraud protection only if you’re in the U.S. Sorry, Canadians. There’s a Shopify Twitter integration now, so if you’re active on Twitter, why not?
Selling plans API, preorder apps are gonna work better, and Shopify rolled out Planet by Shopify, carbon neutral shipping. So, if you used Cloverly, Shopify has their own version of this that is worth a look if you’re already using Cloverly. There’s another one I saw. I don’t know if this is true. I saw a Facebook comment that was like, “Yeah, it loads faster. It’s cheaper.”
And the other one that came out after this, YouTube Shopping.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Which, I like that a lot.
Kurt Elster: YouTube Shopping looks sweet. I have… After we record this episode, I’m getting a demo of YouTube Shopping that I’m looking forward to.
Paul Reda: So, what YouTube Shopping is is when you have your YouTube videos, those annoying popups that everyone hates that pops up in the middle of the video that you can click on for more information, you could have those, what, just directly link to products on your Shopify store?
Kurt Elster: I heard it described as a sidebar.
Paul Reda: Because what stopped you from putting in a URL to a product already?
Kurt Elster: Well, you couldn’t pull in…
Paul Reda: It pulls in the data maybe?
Kurt Elster: This is… Yeah. It’s like it pulls in your catalogue.
Paul Reda: There’s almost like a product listing.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: On the video.
Kurt Elster: And like when you click through to buy, the video keeps playing. It’s like picture in picture was how it was described. I’m curious to see how it works and we have a client with a big YouTube audience who is very interested in implementing this, so we’ll see how that goes.
Paul Reda: We’ll have more info later. But yeah, I think this is a great idea. I think that could be some fat money for people that are content creators.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And that’s the catch here. I saw it like some people, some Facebook comments in our group, little salty over the fact that your YouTube channel had to be eligible for monetization to use this, meaning you gotta have 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 hours watch time. And people were upset about this because FOMO, like, “Hey, there’s a new feature and I’m not allowed to use it.” At the same time, if you were not eligible for monetization, what? You didn’t have an audience.
Paul Reda: Yeah. What, you were gonna have product listings that no one clicked on? On your videos that no one’s watching?
Kurt Elster: I got a video with 70 views.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And I’m like, “Oh, I’m gonna go through all this effort?” Don’t do it. They’re doing you the favor, saying like, “Yeah, don’t mess with that.”
And this is available now and it’s through the Google sales channel in Shopify. You can set this up. Start playing with it today. It’s pretty cool.
All right, so those were my favorites. There’s a ton of others in here. One of the other big ones, tokengated commerce. All right, in the press release, you want to hear the first line? Everyone’s talking about NFTs these days.
Paul Reda: Yeah, about how they cratered.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Check the Google trends on that one.
Paul Reda: I forgot what I saw. It was some game that they were selling like the deluxe edition, and it had some skins or whatever, some digital good inside that came with it. And when they were announcing it they were very clear that they were like, “These are not NFTs. This is a digital good you are getting with the product that cannot be resold. It’s not an NFT. It’s just a thing you get. Don’t think it’s an NFT.”
Kurt Elster: It’s a digital collectible.
Paul Reda: Yeah. It’s like, “Oh, are we running away from NFTs all of a sudden?”
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I’ve seen some people trying to rebrand NFT. Call it digital collectible.
Paul Reda: Oh, well that’s different.
Kurt Elster: No, so-
Paul Reda: Are they fungible? Can you hit them with a fungo bat? So, what the hell is tokengated commerce? There’s a token, and a gate, and then there’s commerce? Is it one word? Is it three words?
Kurt Elster: Two words. Tokengated is one.
Paul Reda: Tokengated. That’s a word.
Kurt Elster: I would have hyphened. I would have hyphenated token-gated.
Paul Reda: Well, you know what? You gotta tokengate something in order to make sure it’s performant.
Kurt Elster: I’m never saying performant ever again. We have beat it out of my vocabulary.
Paul Reda: I love it when I win.
Kurt Elster: Let’s say… All right, do you want to take money from crypto bros?
Paul Reda: No.
Kurt Elster: You don’t?
Paul Reda: No.
Kurt Elster: You don’t want to fleece crypto bros.
Paul Reda: No. Well, okay, I would like to fleece the crypto bros. Yes.
Kurt Elster: So, we see where… All right, so it’s pretty clear we’re not big crypto people.
Paul Reda: If Elon wants to give me a bunch of the Bitcoin he sold in order to-
Kurt Elster: The 930 million?
Paul Reda: In order to make it look like Tesla had positive cashflow this quarter, I’ll take it.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. When that earning report came out, the stock went up, and the next day the stock’s still up, so that scam totally worked.
Paul Reda: Yeah. That scam totally worked where they sold a ton of crypto at a loss, but they were like, “Look at this money we made by selling this shit at a huge loss. Positive cashflow.”
Kurt Elster: I’m a shareholder. Oh, God. So, essentially it’s-
Paul Reda: I have a thing I want to sell but I only want cool people to buy it.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so it’s the person… You have things in the store, and I don’t know what it’s eligible for, but it said products, perks, and experiences, so let’s say we have products that are unpublished on the page, or maybe on the store, and discounted products, other exclusive products. Stuff that is not available to the public web.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And normally-
Paul Reda: Limited edition Robocop sneakers.
Kurt Elster: Oh, I need to lie down at the thought. Wow. I want those. All right, so I want those real bad. I want these limited edition Robocop sneakers and they say, “The only way you can get them, you have to buy our Detroit Rules board Robocop.”
Paul Reda: It’s an OCP token.
Kurt Elster: Yes. Token. I go and buy the token.
Paul Reda: To show you’re in the Robocop club.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. To show I’m in the club.
Paul Reda: All right.
Kurt Elster: I can then… My Shopify store can then validate that Kurt Elster, the customer, has possession of this token. It will then allow me to view my Robocop sneakers and I can purchase them. At which point now my Robocop NFT goes back for sale on OpenSea.
Paul Reda: Or no, don’t you want to hold on to your Robocop NFT for more limited Robocop drops in the future?
Kurt Elster: You know, I don’t have diamond hands. I may… I might rebuy later. I don’t know. I haven’t decided what I’m gonna do with my OCP Robocop NFT.
Paul Reda: Okay.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: All right, so-
Kurt Elster: Someone email Peter Weller. Get him on this.
Paul Reda: Paul Verhoeven. So, that is tokengated commerce. There’s a gate that if you show a token you could go through the gate and then engage in commerce. All right, so here’s my question. What did that accomplish that user accounts didn’t?
Kurt Elster: It’s just trendy. It’s cool. Or it’s like, “Hey, we think that’s gonna be a big deal later so let’s get in now.”
Paul Reda: But Shopify’s telling us it’s a big deal now that they’ve implemented shitty user accounts.
Kurt Elster: I don’t know that this is… I think you still have to have a user account.
Paul Reda: So, it’s like a double user account?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Two factor. The blockchain.
Paul Reda: It’s a two-factor user account to make it extra hard for people to buy stuff.
Kurt Elster: Well, they’re exclusives.
Paul Reda: But why not just make them sign up for a user account?
Kurt Elster: Uh, because this is web 3.0.
Paul Reda: Because they had to buy the NFT that you were selling?
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: It’s like a PSL. It’s like a personal seat license. Like you know, if you want to get cool Bears season tickets, you first gotta pay the Bears like 10 grand for the rights to then pay the Bears and buy season tickets. It’s a fucking PSL for Robocop sneakers.
Kurt Elster: In our scenario, yes.
Paul Reda: Burn these stores down.
Kurt Elster: So, I’m saying you don’t own any crypto?
Paul Reda: No, I don’t.
Kurt Elster: All right, but we talked through it, and I think that’s the most anyone can hope out of us. Other features, all right, so tap to pay on iPhone, let’s say you sell at farmer’s markets, flea markets, local places, not unusual.
Paul Reda: Oh, I was wondering what that was. So, you’re selling physically.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. You’re selling physically in a local-
Paul Reda: In a location. Or-
Kurt Elster: All right, so the trendy thing, you’re in your local popup store. Yeah. I like flea market, so I like the flea market example. And you go, and customers have to pay you. They’re probably gonna pay you with a credit card. Normally, in the past you’d have to have a credit card reader with you, one of those ones that sticks to your phone. I guess on new iPhones with the Shopify app, they just tap their phone to your phone running the Shopify app, the point of sale app.
Paul Reda: Oh, so you’re tapping phones.
Kurt Elster: Phones are tapping.
Paul Reda: You’re not tapping cards.
Kurt Elster: No. No. Phones are tapping.
Paul Reda: What protocol is that?
Kurt Elster: NFC?
Paul Reda: NFC.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: Near field communication. Way better than NFT.
Kurt Elster: Those are not related things.
Paul Reda: They’re two-thirds the same.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Two-thirds. 66% identical technology.
Paul Reda: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: Just less hardware to be able to accept credit card payments with just the phone you already have.
Paul Reda: Yeah, so they got Apple Pay on the phone and you’re running the Shopify app on your phone, and you boop your phones, and now they’re married, and they just bought stuff from each other.
Kurt Elster: Yes. Yeah, the advantage here is no extra hardware so there’s nothing extra for me to buy or carry. You have just lowered the barrier of entry for me to just be able to accept payments at a farmer’s market on my phone. That’s great. Make that… That’s like my local entrepreneurship app, right there. I love it.
And then local inventory. This is the last one, then we’ll wrap it up. Local inventory on Google. It’s kind of cool. Through that Shopify Google channel the inventory in your store can sync to Google shopping, and since it also knows your store’s physical location if you’ve got this set up, now in Google shopping… I don’t know if you’ve tried this, but you can do a search term and say, “Show me only in stock local.” And it’ll be like, “Oh, Office Depot has that scanner you’re looking for.” This is a real thing I did recently. I needed a scanner.
And I tried this thing and sure enough, it was like, “Go to your local Office Depot. They got it.” Shopify stores can now do this too.
Paul Reda: So, this is only if you have multiple physical locations that you’re selling from, or customers could do pick ups from.
Kurt Elster: Well, I have one… I just need one retail location and then I can sync that. My inventory live syncs to Google. So, if someone’s searching for the thing I have locally, it’ll be like, “Hey, this store has it in stock right now.” And then in theory they could then click through the website. I have in-store pickup setup. They could pay for it, just come get it.
I think that’s pretty cool. Yeah. That was stuff in the past, like two years ago, it would be hard to conceive of a world where I could do that when that was the domain of Best Buy and these big box stores.
Paul Reda: Sounds to me like Shopify is an end-to-end commerce solution for all sizes of retailers.
Kurt Elster: I prefer they’re democratizing entrepreneurship.
Paul Reda: Whoa.
Kurt Elster: They’re lowering the barrier.
Paul Reda: They really are.
Kurt Elster: I love it.
Paul Reda: You get that check from Tobi, right? Oh, okay. Yeah, they are. Yeah, yeah. They’re so good.
Kurt Elster: Thanks, buddy. All right. Anything else you would like to add or share, Mr. Reda?
Paul Reda: Don’t get COVID.
Kurt Elster: And how would one go about that? Because it seems like everybody’s getting it.
Paul Reda: I guess it’s like live inside a hermetically sealed box, so you might get it, so-
Kurt Elster: But if you have to punch air holes in the box, the COVID’s gonna get in.
Paul Reda: Oh, good point. I don’t know. I’m tired.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, but at least you made it through the episode without throwing up.
Paul Reda: I know. No, that passed. I don’t have to barf anymore.
Kurt Elster: I think we’ll wrap it up there, because you gotta go lie down. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Please, join our Facebook group, the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders, and talk to us. That’s the only way you’re gonna get your questions answered in our next AMA episode.