With a new partnership with Shopify, YouTube is taking its
next steps towards eCommerce integration. The video viewing platform is enabling
Shopify merchants to showcase their products via their YouTube channels.
Merchants can activate YouTube shopping by connecting their
YouTube channels via the Google Channel app within the Shopify add-on tools.
As stated by YouTube, “Creators who link their stores can
display their products across their channel and benefit from Shopify’s
real-time inventory syncing.” YouTube further announced that onsite checkout is
available for US users specifically, hence allowing the viewers to complete
their purchases without leaving YouTube.
YouTube has highlighted three ways in which merchants can choose to display their products: Livestreams, Videos, and Store Tabs. In a livestream, merchants can tag and pin their products at key points to showcase them. Moreover, customers will be able to make purchases while watching the livestreams, thanks to the picture-in-picture playback. In regular videos, merchants can create curated lists of products in a product shelf. Lastly, the Store tab will be exclusively added to merchants’ YouTube channels, where they can easily display their selection of products.
in addition to this, merchants must meet the required
criteria to enable YouTube shopping. This includes having at least 1,000
subscribers, following YouTube’s community guidelines, and other requirements
around appropriate content and channel strikes.
In the past few months, online shopping has become a popular
social media activity, therefore YouTube’s initiative towards it is a smart
one, and shall be beneficial to businesses. The platform is also working on
other eCommerce tools, such as live shopping, new options within the ‘Shopping’
tab in YouTube Studio, and a new shopping destination in the Explore tab.
