TikTok Launches a New Shopify Shop Tab for Approved Merchant Profiles

TikTok is broadening its partnership with Shopify to give Shopify merchants more methods to promote their products directly to their audience in the app.

TikTok has launched a new shop tab expansion for Shopify merchant accounts recently, which, as the name implies, will introduce a new product display showcase to your in-app presence.

According to Shopify:

"Shopify merchants with a TikTok For Business account will soon be able to add a shopping tab to their TikTok profiles and sync their product catalogues to create a mini-storefront that links directly to their online store for checkout."

As a result, users are redirected to the merchant's Shopify store for purchase, rather than direct, in-stream shopping. However, it is another significant step forward in TikTok's bigger eCommerce drive, allowing direct product advertising within a dedicated storefront space, comparable to Instagram's in-app Shops option.

Which is also connected with Shopify, and Shopify has already built direct connections with TikTok and Pinterest for product advertising. Overall, the true victors are Shopify merchants, who now have an additional method to directly market their items within another social platform - but for TikTok, it's another advancement that will help it optimize its business potential and give users more ways to directly monetize their TikTok presence.

This is an indispensable step for the app. Vine died because it couldn't figure out a clear route to long-term monetization for short-form video, and if TikTok can't enable a direct link between video clips and money for creators, they'll inevitably follow in the footsteps of Vine stars and move over to YouTube and Instagram, where they can make huge sums.

As such, the greater the degree to which users can attribute TikTok video views to actual purchases made, the better, and while this new feature will not enable direct purchases in the app, it will link in-app activity to purchase behavior, delivering more insight into that performance.

This is a significant step forward, and you can expect TikTok to continue introducing similar interfaces and technologies to assist direct selling, as well as expand the same to influencer partnerships to help the platform's big stars make more money with their videos.

This is where the Chinese version of TikTok, known as 'Douyin,' has achieved significant success, with eCommerce transactions accounting for the majority of its revenue. Matter of fact, according to sources, e-commerce transactions in Douyin tripled in the last year, showing both the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing move toward online buying.

Douyin is the model for where TikTok is going, utilizing lessons learned in the Chinese market, where Douyin has 600 million users, and then simplifying its tactics in other places.

That's also why TikTok has been able to progress so quickly, as many of its additional features aren't new experiments or testing like they would be in other start-up apps. TikTok already has a good basis and a solid understanding of what would likely garner the highest response. Since they already have, in some ways, a market with hundreds of millions of users that serves as a testing ground for TikTok upgrades.

And, as previously stated, Douyin is far ahead of much of its Western competition in terms of eCommerce. As a result, comparable advancements can be expected in the future.

The new Shopify shop tab pilot program is currently accessible to Shopify merchants in the US and UK who have a TikTok for Business account, with a small selection of Canadian merchants also eligible to join in the initial release. Using Shopify's TikTok channel, merchants can ask for early access to the TikTok Shopping pilot program.