eCommerce businesses across the globe always look for ways to improve communication with their customers. Better customer interaction results in increased sales and enhanced customer experience. Shopify Ping is one such tool that companies use to achieve this goal. Shopify Inbox, formerly known as Shopify Ping and Shopify Chat, offers numerous features that help businesses effectively interact with their customers.

This article will provide a comprehensive understanding of Shopify and Shopify Inbox. The article will also mention the key advantages of using Shopify Inbox to converse with customers.‍

Introduction to Shopify‍

Shopify is the world’s most used content management system (CMS) that companies use to build, manage, and operate online retail stores. It is a Software as a Service-based solution that helps customers create websites to sell their products in a digital environment. Unlike other content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, Shopify specializes in building websites for businesses operating in the eCommerce industry. 

It is a multi-channel CMS platform focused on small and medium-sized businesses to scale up their operations. With Shopify, users can build, host, optimize, and manage aesthetic-looking websites that can also be viewed on smartphones. Shopify provides various tools and features that enable users to effectively carry out their sales, marketing, customer engagement, and customer support tasks. According to the company, users witnessed an average annual growth rate of around 30% while using this subscription-based platform to run their businesses. 

Shopify’s services can be used by eCommerce businesses to manage all their shipping and payment needs. Users get access to thousands of pre-built website templates that they can customize according to their niche and requirements. Shopify allows companies to advertise and market their products across multiple channels, including Facebook and Instagram. It helps them reach out to a larger audience for accelerating sales figures and increasing online visibility. It also comes with numerous search engine optimization tools for enabling companies to improve their ranking on popular search engines.

Canada-based software firm Shopify was founded by Scott Lake, Daniel Weinand, and Tobias Lutke in 2004. Since its launch, Shopify has gained the trust of customers by providing best-in-class features. Many industry-leading companies, including Bajaao, Raymond, FitBit, Penguin Books, John Jacobs, KKW Beauty, Hyatt Hotel Corp, and RedBull, use Shopify to meet their eCommerce business needs. To date, Shopify has cracked twelve acquisitions deals and has raised a total of $122 million over four funding rounds from investors like Insight Partners and OMERS Ventures. Some of the notable acquired companies by Shopify include Oberlo, Handshake, and Boultmade.  

4 Key Features of Shopify

Shopify, the world’s most popular CMS platform, provides multiple features and services that help businesses operate efficiently across the globe. Below are a few useful features of Shopify.

1. Shopify Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a retail business model that eliminates the need for maintaining an operational warehouse to store listed products. Through dropshipping, companies can connect to wholesalers and list third-party products on eCommerce websites. Once customers make an order, the shipping details get forwarded to the wholesaler, and the third-party supplier delivers the desired product to customers on behalf of the eCommerce company. Shopify App Store features numerous dropshipping applications like Oberlo, AutoDC, Printful, Spreader, and many more to help companies drop ship products globally. 

2. Shopify POS

Shopify Point Of Sale (POS) is a feature that enables companies to sell their products in real-world locations like pop-up stores. This feature is very useful when businesses plan to sell their products in the offline market. All the product inventory is connected to the Shopify database, thereby companies need not maintain separate sales records for online and offline purchases. 

The Shopify POS application is compatible with Apple devices, including iPods and iPhones. The POS application allows users to customize orders, view customer purchase history, add discount offers, and many more handy options to effectively manage sales operations. Shopify provides this feature in two options, Shopify POS Lite and Shopify POS Pro. 

3. Shopify Analytics

Shopify offers numerous analytics tools that help companies to understand and analyze their online store’s performance. Shopify analytics generates critical insights, including customer activity, customer demographics, total sales, and displays them on user dashboards. These key metrics help users analyze their customer base to increase sales and provide a better customer experience. 

It also comes with out-of-the-box support for Google Analytics integration that allows companies to have access to the best analytics tools. Shopify supports many third-party integrations for increasing its analytics capabilities. Users can easily customize their analytics dashboard according to their requirements. 

4. Enhanced Security and Reliability

Shopify provides 256-bits SSL certification to online stores and is level-1 PCI compliant, ensuring the security of critical customer data like payment details, address, mobile number, etc. This feature minimizes the chances of possible data breaches. The security parameters help companies in increasing customer loyalty and brand value. ‍

Understanding Shopify Ping

In today’s dynamic market, it is crucial for businesses operating in the eCommerce sector to stay connected with their customers round the clock. Considering that users might not always have access to PCs or laptops to manage their businesses, Shopify’s app development team came up with a handy solution — Shopify Ping. 

Shopify Ping is a mobile application that brings customer interaction and marketing workflow under a single platform to aid companies in seamlessly running their operations from anywhere at any time. Shopify Ping allows users to manage customer conversations across multiple channels, including Facebook Messenger, SMS, website, etc. Shopify Ping comes in handy because customers who chat with a brand are nearly three times as likely to complete a purchase.

Here are a few key features of Shopify Ping:

• Shopify Ping allows you to save time by managing conversations from different devices with a single tap.
• With Shopify Ping, you can save discounts, products, and new orders from your Shopify store directly inside conversations with just a single tap.
• Shopify Ping allows you to support your customers effortlessly and turn conversations into sales.
• You can also set hours of availability and manage automated messages while you are away or available with Shopify Ping.
• Recently Shopify Ping platform was integrated with Shopify Chat to launch its all-new solution named Shopify Index. 
  

Advantages of Shopify Inbox

Shopify Inbox allows users to save automated messages that get sent when customers visit their websites or shoot a query. The new platform analyzes chat data and generates impactful insights that display the performance of automated chats and helps users improve them to increase the conversion rate of customers. Shopify Index can be accessed from both iOS and Android devices. It is a platform available at no extra cost to Shopify users to help them centralize their business communication. 

Arpan Podduturi, head of products for retail and apps at Shopify, said, “the biggest update to Shopify’s conversational commerce products in over a year,” while talking about Shopify Inbox. Shopify is currently working on a feature that would automatically classify chats based on conversion possibilities to help customer support teams prioritize conversations with customers most likely to make a purchase. 

As Shopify integrated Shopify Ping and Shopify Chat platforms to launch Shopify Inbox, it comes with numerous beneficial features that aid companies to effectively run their businesses from any part of the world using multiple devices. Below are a few notable advantages that users have while working with Shopify Inbox. 

1. Enhanced Management

Shopify has provided a virtual assistant named Kit with Shopify Inbox that helps users effectively manage and carry out various marketing and customer service operations. The virtual assistant is capable of performing multiple tasks like running social media marketing campaigns, managing social media advertisements, email marketing, and many others. 

Shopify is continuously improving the platform to enable it to perform several more complicated tasks on behalf of users. According to Shopify, it has been working in the research and development process of Kit since 2016. 

2. Improved Team Conversation

Shopify Inbox allows team members to send messages and images to other team members from the Team Conversation section. This feature makes the internal communication process a lot smoother. No additional app permission is required to enjoy the benefits of this feature. 

The total number of team members that can be added to Shopify Inbox depends on the type of Shopify subscription businesses choose. Users get the option of sending email invitation links to team members to ask them to join Shopify Inbox to start conversations. To start a new conversation, users need to visit the Shopify Inbox section and click on the Team option. Then users need to click on New Message, select desired team members, and click on Send button. 

3. Improved Conversation Analytics

Shopify Inbox generates insightful analytics about the conversations users have with their customers on their online stores. It displays critical metrics, including the number of new conversations, number of conversations with a reply, first response time, number of conversations that resulted in sales within seven days, and many others. 

Shopify compares this data against the numbers from the last 30 days and displays them on Shopify Inbox Dashboard. These analytics tools help users to better understand the customers and make informed business decisions for increasing sales figures. Shopify automatically updates these metrics every 48 hours. 

4. Improved Customer Conversation

Shopify Inbox not only allows users to read customer messages but also lets them send customized texts, discount codes, images, and offers that help to provide a personalized customer experience. Shopify Inbox automates the task of sending greeting and follow-up messages to customers for increasing customer engagement and reducing response times. 

Users also have the option of customizing chat buttons on their online stores according to the theme of their websites that adds a touch of finesse to the overall browsing and buying experience. If customers mention their email address while online store conversations, users can use that to send direct replies to customers’ mail IDs to shorten the response time. Customers also get access to a FAQ section where they can resolve their queries in a short time. 

Conclusion

Shopify Inbox offers many powerful tools to enable companies to improve both internal interaction and customer communication. With Shopify Inbox, the company aims to help merchants with workflow automation and effective communication. Companies that opt to use Shopify Inbox to meet their business needs will have the upper hand in this competitive market. This article also talks about the different aspects of Shopify Ping and how Shopify Ping and Shopify Chat were combined to make Shopify Inbox.