Ottawa-based e-commerce company Shopify has launched Shop, a consumer-facing mobile assistant shopping app designed to create a more intuitive online shopping experience. The app is currently available for download on iOS and Android devices.
Shopify’s hope for the app is to fill a growing market need, as online ordering has exploded due to COVID-19.
Shop was created to offer users the ability to discover local businesses, receive relevant product recommendations from brands, check out, and track all of their online orders. Shopify leveraged some of its features from Shop Pay, an accelerated checkout offering, in addition to Arrive, an app that tracks online orders, with the aim to make purchasing and order tracking frictionless for consumers.
A Shopify spokesperson told BetaKit that Arrive was Shopify’s first consumer-facing product, adding that the package tracking app is now available as the Shop app.
“Shopify has focused the last decade on solving complex problems for entrepreneurs by making commerce seamless and accessible,” said Carl Rivera, general manager of Shop. “Now, we want to do the same for customers. We set out to solve the common pain points in the customer’s shopping journey today, while developing specific features, like local business discovery, that will be relevant today and in the future.”
One of the key features of Shopify’s new app is the local filter, which allows Shop users to locate nearby merchants to support local businesses. The app also identifies businesses currently offering shipping, pick-up, and highlights return policies.
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Shop also provides recommendations that are personalized to each user, so they can discover new releases and deal from brands they are already interested in. Shopify’s hope for the app is to fill a growing market need, as online ordering has sky-rocketed due to social distancing and stay-at-home measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The best news: 16 million of you already have it installed and can use it right away
— Tobi Lutke ???? (@tobi) April 28, 2020
COVID-19 is having a marked impact on the retail industry and global shopping trends, with a study from PYMNTS finding that consumers are 30.6 percent more likely to make their purchases online in 2020 than they were in 2019. A report from Deloitte on retail and COVID-19 forecasted a big jump in demand for e-commerce and demand for home delivery this year.
Shopify is responding to the crisis with more support for its small business partners, as well as additional commitments to Shopify Capital and a challenge for its partners to develop an app that addresses e-commerce pain points.
Image courtesy Shopify