Shopify Wants to Help Small Business with Showrooming on Their Ecommerce Sites

Ecommerce company Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) is launching a new ‘Buy Online for Shopify POS’ feature, enabling consumers to save an in-person purchase.

Buy Online for Shopify POS

This new feature allows retailers using Shopify POS to give in-person shoppers the ability to buy a product online later after they’ve tried it out in your store. And the best part is that they can purchase it from your online store.

Here’s how it works:

A shopper in your store is there checking out a product you have for sale (and loaded into your Shopify POS inventory). They’re not sure if they want to buy it right away and they’re going to go home and check it out online.

It’s at that point where your store has the chance to lose out on a sale to another business. That’s despite the fact that a customer tried the product out at your expense. That’s showrooming. Showrooming can be an obstacle for many retailers, particularly small brick and mortar retail businesses.

With Buy Online for Shopify POS, retailers like you can now email a link to the product that shopper is trying out in your store. The link will take them right to your online store, where they can complete the purchase.

The ‘Buy Online for Shopify POS’ means that any Shopify merchant can provide a quality in-person experience alongside the convenience of selling products online. Shopify’s new feature means merchants can empower their customers to purchase goods wherever and whenever they want using a mobile device and with a link to their product carts.

The ‘Buy Online for Shopify POS’ feature helps to overcome challenges for small retailers as it provides customers with the freedom and flexibility of saving an in-person purchase and buying it later online.

Rahul Kulkarni, Product Manager for Retail at Shopify, explained in a release on the new service: “Buy Online for Shopify POS helps businesses bridge the offline and online purchase experience by offering shoppers a convenient way to try in-person, and buy online entirely through a single retailer. Now in-store, retail buying experiences can be as easy and seamless as an online purchase.”

Retailers harnessing the power of the ‘Buy Online for Shopify POS’ feature can apply a discount to the Buy Online link to equal a competitor’s price online, meaning they are less likely to miss out to a competitor.

Image: Shopify

This article, "Shopify Wants to Help Small Business with Showrooming on Their Ecommerce Sites" was first published on Small Business Trends