Announcing New Shopify Sales Channels: Kik and Wish!
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Shopify is branching out this year, significantly boosting the number of sales channels you have available as merchants. Basically, sales channels are all the places you sell. That includes your direct store, through a mobile app, through other conglomerates like Amazon, in a retail store or through social selling such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
With more sales channels available, you can reach new audiences and target different customers. You can also check on your Shopify Reports to find out where you're selling the most to learn more about what your next marketing strategy should be.
Shopify's introduced two new sales channel integrations: The popular shopping bot, Kik, who will place your product as a recommendation to their 300 million users, and Wish, a marketplace with 5+ million daily shoppers who receive curated product lists.
What is Kik?
GiftGuru is a feature on Kik that guides users to find perfect gifts for friends, family and even for themselves.
It uses a one-on-one conversation to help narrow down the product catalogue, and asks users simple questions to find the most relevant gifts. You can also use Kik to simply browse a broad selection of products easily. It comes complete with a mobile checkout or normal cart.
You can also use the Kik platform to share things you've recently purchased with your friends, or make recommendations for people you know.
Who uses Kik?
The biggest demographic using Kik is teens and young adults (16-24 year olds) in the US. Kik bots let brands engage with their young audiences in new and creative ways. Partners can share cool products and ideas directly with their customers, and developers can use the Kik Toolkit to optimise how they sell.
The new Kik sales channel lets Shopify merchants seamlessly put their products on Kik, meaning you'll have a cutting edge service help promote your products without needing to do any extra work.
What is Wish?
Wish is a huge global marketplace that lets users shop for online easily. Shopify users that turn on the Wish sales channel can gain exposure and sales through Wish with no monthly, listing or promotional fees. This is pretty cool, as some sales channels require business accounts you have to pay for (such as Amazon).
Who uses Wish?
Boasting 200+ million shoppers globally, Wish is the top mobile shopping app in the US and Europe, and is growing at 250,000 new users everyday.
Simply turn on the Wish sales channel, upload your products that you want to sell through Wish (or your entire collection) and manage them directly through your Shopify admin. After products have been approved, customers can then purchase through the mobile Wish app on their phones and tablets.
How do I add a new sales channel?
1. Install the Kik or Wish integration to your Shopify account
2. From your admin, click Sales Channels and hit the + symbol
3. On the Add sales channel dialog, find the sales channel you want and click Add channel
Keep an eye out on your Shopify reports to see how each channel is doing
What if I have an idea for a different sales channel?
There are a lot of sales channel integrations developed by third parties available to all Shopify merchants. These range anywhere from Houzz to Wanelo and more. If you know your shoppers are using certain websites and a sales channel isn't available, you can consider developing your own sales channel using the Shopify Sales Channel Software Development Kit. This gives you full flexibility to reach out pretty much anywhere on the internet and sell directly onto new websites.
Alternatively, you can consider building the Shopify Buy Button onto a particular website you know your audience is also viewing. Both of these features are available as part of the Shopify Plus membership.
What’s Next?
Shopify keeps expanding the ways you can sell online. For more information on integrating with Shopify, or adding new sales channels contact Elkfox today.
Images via Kik and Wish respectively.