News - TikTok announces ability to shop directly from video, in Shopify partnership

October 27th, 2020. Shopify, a member of our ecommerce platform shortlist, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing social media network, to enable shopping directly from videos posted on its service through a "TikTok For Business" account. The feature will work by directing TikTok users to a Shopify checkout experience when shoppable links are clicked in a video posted as an advert to the TikTok platform. More information is available at the Shopify developer website.

TikTok, known as Douyin in its native China, was launched in 2016, is owned by ByteDance and as of August 2020 had over 100m monthly active users (MAU) (50m daily active users) in the US and 689m globally. It is available in 150 countries and 39 languages. This compares to 2.7bn MAU for Facebook globally as of June 2020. The TikTok App was downloaded 738m times in 2019 and 1.5bn times since launch.

Comment

This is more of a news announcement than a solid platform feature announcement. The news release states the two companies will "test new commerce features over the coming months".

This article was updated on March 2, 2021

M Ryan

M Ryan is an ecommerce consultant with twenty years experience working with retailers, consumer brand manufacturers and other consumer-facing businesses helping them to develop their ecommerce strategy, implement ecommerce technology and improve their ecommerce operations. He works extensively throughout US and Europe, with clients including global brands, large retailers and household names in consumer goods.