Following the announcements that YouTube and IGTV were taking steps towards upping their eCommerce game, TikTok has announced a partnership with eCommerce platform Shopify in order to help merchants make their products more available to purchase from TikTok. Hold onto your wallets.
Shopify have said that the new partnership will allow TikTok users to buy product directly from shoppable ads on TikTok, in that you click an ad to purchase product, and are taken to Shopify’s platform. This differs to the IGTV and YouTube offerings, as their priorities seem to include facilitating transactions directly on the platforms and keeping clicks, credit cards and users on their site instead of sending them elsewhere. Shopify, however, is a widely known and trusted transaction platform, so users might feel more comfortable parting with their credit card information there than on a social platform itself. But who’s to say, it’s 2020, there are no rules anymore.
TikTok reaches over 100million users and Shopify has over 1 million merchants, so the shopportunities (sorry) should be pretty broad. The two platforms have both confirmed that they’ll be experimenting with other shopping technology over the next coming months, but as the whole point of a partnership is that both partners benefit equally, a move to hosting direct sales on TikTok rather than on Shopify seems unlikely at this point. Merchants will probably be interested in the full blog post from TikTok here.
Meanwhile, a hearing will take place in the USA on November 4th to decide whether the U.S government will bar transactions with TikTok, effectively banning its use in the States. Today, October 28, sees the start of the bosses from Facebook, Twitter and Google being questioned by the US Senate over their ability to spread misinformation. It’s all happening.
