Shopify and mobile stories - what you need to know

Here at StorifyMe we are always focused on helping our clients convey their brand through well-crafted story content. While anyone can use StorifyMe to create the stories that they want, it is usually businesses that take story content seriously enough to invest in it. And seeing that there is a natural connection between eCommerce stores and web stories, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that we've partnered up with Shopify to help you manage your marketing with ease. With this in mind, we will use this article to help you explain the connection between Shopify and mobile stories and how you can make the most of it.

Shopify in a nutshell

For the few of you that are unaware, we will give a quick rundown of what Shopify is all about. Namely, Shopify is a multinational company that runs a well-known eCommerce platform. Through their platform, you can easily set up an e-commerce store, as Shopify gives you easy solutions for payments, shipping, marketing and overall customer engagement. As it is now, Shopify serves over 1.7 million businesses in 175 countries. This allowed it to become the largest Canadian publicly-traded company by market capitalization in 2021.

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Shopify and mobile stories

Now, while all of that is well understood, it may not be obvious how businesses that use Shopify can benefit from mobile stories. After all, among all the different ways of marketing your business, why should you opt for story content? Well, as it turns out, there is a natural connection between mobile stories and e-commerce. Furthermore, once you understand the content creation tools and the current situation in online marketing, you'll wonder why you haven't started using story content sooner.

Being mobile-friendly with eCommerce

In 2016 there were 1.66 billion digital buyers in the world. As technology progressed, and world events forced us to stay at home, this number increased to 2.14 billion in 2021. And it is safe to say that 2022 will see even more digital buyers. This, as you can imagine is an enormous market, that entails the whole of the globe. So, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that more and more businesses are turning towards it as their primary point of sale. With new technologies, it is easier than ever to present your products online and convince your customers to purchase them. And much of that technological innovation comes through phones.

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While it can be difficult to determine how many people use phones as their primary platform for online shopping, most statistics put the numbers above 50%. Even if it is lower, it is safe to say that phones are a big part of online shopping and that not optimizing your online presence for them is a needless self-hindrance. This is especially true if most of your buyers are casual buyers that don't do much research before purchasing a product. In that case, they are even more likely to resort to using their phones, as they are quick, intuitive and easy to personalize.

Story content on mobile platforms

Another important aspect in regards to mobile platforms is the story content. Namely, ever since they became widely used, web stories found their place on mobile platforms. Visual-heavy design with a relatively small amount of written content is excellent for phones. The compact screens can convey the necessary information without much issue. And the fact that phones are often used for leisurely activities, such as surfing social media platforms, makes them ideal for commercial marketing. With only a swipe or two you can easily go from viewing a story to buying something in a store. And if the store owner understands the customer's journey, they can easily optimize it to lead to quick and easy conversions.

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Now, the main drawback of web stories was that they were relatively limited when it comes to the type of content that you can use. For instance, if you opted for Instagram stories, you could only use the elements that they provide. And, even if you designed a satisfactory story, it would only last for 24 hours. To further complicate things, you weren't the owner of your Instagram stories. Instagram was. So, if you wanted to place them somewhere else, you were heavily limited.

Creating stories through StorifyMe

Overcoming these limitations imposed by the social media platforms is one of the main reasons why we founded StorifyMe. As an all-in-one story creation platform, StorifyMe allows you to create the story content that you want. These can include:

• Images
• Animations
• Video and audio content
• Written content
• Interactive content

Any many other elements that can help you engage your audience. The best thing about using StorifyMe is that you, and you alone, are the owner of your stories. So, if you want to host them on your website, or on your eCommerce shop, you can easily do so. No time limitations. No format constraints.

Final thoughts

When considering the utility of partnership between Shopify and StorifyMe it is important to note that time is of the essence. While even now plenty of brands like PrettyLittleThing use story content for marketing, the competition is relatively low. Before long, online stores will wise up to how important story content is for marketing. And once they do, it is safe to assume that web story marketing will become far more competitive. So, it is our wholehearted advice to start using web stories as soon as possible. That way you can reap the benefits while they are easy to come by.