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Today our highest rated ecommerce platform of 2012, Shopify, announced a new free Apple iPad shopping app that lets anyone in the world explore and purchase all the products (5 million) selling on Shopify’s +35,000 online stores.
Catalog is a “smart iPad shopping app” and is engineered to learn your shopping preferences and tailor it’s search results to your interests.
Here’s a screenshot of Catalog’s homepage:
Shopify predicts that by Christmas 2013, 43% of all ecommerce purchases will be made on a tablet or smartphone – so this is their way of helping their merchants tap into mcommerce and all the potential customers shopping on their iPads.
This is an aggressive entrance into the world of online marketplaces, like Etsy, FAB, and Gilt. Shopify’s merchants will surly enjoy this new steam of customers, and I suspect other ecommerce platforms may consider opening their own marketplace.
At first glance, the shopping app looks really good. What do you think?
You can read their announcement here.
What do you think of Shopify’s new iPad shopping app? Do you think they’ll be able to compete with Etsy, FAB and Gilt? Let’s talk in the comments.
It’s a nice feature, I wonder if they will be able to extend the technology to individual stores at some point. Right now it sounds like all the stores are included in one giant marketplace but it would be great to pay a fee to buy an app that would allow you to do the same but only with your store.
GitanRobo: Totally – that would be a great feature to offer for each individual store. Good idea.
Hey GiantRobo and James,
This feature is already released with Shopify!
It’s an app called ShopPad – http://apps.shopify.com/shoppad
The best part, is that it’s free, so no need to pay
Alex: Thanks for reading. I didn’t know about ShopPad, what a great app.