YouTube Partners With Shopify To Launch New Shopping Features

Video sharing company, YouTube has announced the launch of new shopping features that will be available for both viewers and creators.

In the announcement made today, YouTube says it would be partnering with E-Commerce Company, Shopify to allow creators and merchants feature their products and contents on their channels. The new partnership will allow eligible creators link their Shopify store to their YouTube channel.

The new YouTube-Spotify alliance will allow creators who can link their stores the opportunity to display their products across their channels, while also leveraging on the real-time inventory syncing of Shopify. Creators domiciled in the United States will be able to enable the onsite checkout feature that allows viewers to initiate and complete their purchases without having to leave YouTube.

As such, creators can start to enjoy the benefit of the alliance by visiting the ‘Shopping’ tab in YouTube Studio.

YouTube is also launching a new shopping destination in Explore for viewers in the United States, India and Brazil, and will feature relevant shoppable content for viewers in these countries. More countries are expected to benefit from the shopping destination later in the year.

In today’s announcement, eligible creators will now be able to access live shopping features, like the ability to tag products to a live stream directly from the Live Control Room.

YouTube also announced the introduction of new tools within YouTube Studio’s “Shopping” tab that helps creators easily manage how their products are tagged and appear across their channel.

Taking cognizance of the fact that creators spend a lot of time developing their products, YouTube says the new tools would make it easier for them to manage their stores on YouTube and bring their products directly to their audience.

YouTube has in recent times been working on transforming its platform to more of shopping destination and this is evident in product launches like shoppable ads and the option of shopping directly from creator-hosted livestreams. It is therefore no surprise that the Google-owned company has introduced these new features to align with this narrative.

The company had just recently teased upcoming features it says would allow viewers to seamlessly discover and buy from brands, with one of the new features programmed to allow two creators to go live at the same time to co-host a single live shopping stream, in the process doubling the draw for the event, as it would allow each creator to bring its followers to the stream.