On this week’s episode of Talk’n Shopify with Zyber, Leo and Waldo were joined by our resident guest, Julian Bartram, Shopify’s Senior Community Manager for NZ and APAC to discuss the latest Shopify news. It’s his third time on the show, and our Shopify experts love chatting to Julian because he’s also been using Shopify as a merchant himself since 2012 with his costume makeup retail store Body FX.
As a merchant, Julian has faced many challenges himself such as the pandemic affecting his retail store and a recent transition to Online Store 2.0. We absolutely love Julian’s positive, entrepreneurial outlook to learn from challenges and keep looking for continuous improvement, and he shares some valuable insights in this week’s episode.
Watch or listen to this episode as we discuss the latest news from Shopify with Julian:
With in-person events and festivals being impacted by COVID-19, sales at Body FX have been down. We discuss the importance of including digital products in a business model. For example, at BodyFX, they have created The Face Paint Club, a digital product designed to offer tutorials and expertise to their customers. Digital products not only provide a contingency during the current pandemic, they also allow you to scale globally and trial what works well.
We discuss with Julian the importance of merchants understanding that moving to OS 2.0 is similar to a new build, and they need to be prepared for it. Julian shares his learnings such as making sure you check your index with Google directly. Find out more about updating your themes and apps here.
27% of eCommerce traffic is coming from global markets, so we are super excited that Shopify Markets are now available. We discuss how the product feeds feature is a great advantage, allowing merchants to trial new markets with lower barriers to entry. For example, you could include Marmite in your product feed in a New Zealand market, and Vegemite in your Australian feed. Shopify Markets also allows merchants to tap into nuanced local gateways and helps to increase efficiencies. Markes can also reduce frustration with streamlining local currency duty and tax payments. Find out more here.
The Shopify Flow automations are traditionally only available in Shopify Plus, however they will be available in Shopify soon. The interface has changed, which makes it easier to use and seconally, it include a wider range of apps that are available for integration. Check out this video on the new Flow interface.
People spend a whopping 15% of their life on social media. Why are we finding it harder to sell on Facebook? The growth of eCommerce means there are lots more people and experienced people to target and additionally compete with. Therfore, merchants need to get more creative to stand out with their advertising, as there are also more channels to compete with.
We covered a lot in this episode, so you can also keep up with Shopify news through these amazing resources:
