Get TikTok Shop to Boost Your Shopify Store Sales
Unpacking the TikTok Shop Phenomenon
TikTok Shop is an exciting feature introduced on the TikTok social media app. Merchants now can directly sell products to TikTok users, all purchasing processes occur within the TikTok app, eliminating the need to navigate to external websites.
TikTok Shop creates an avenue for businesses and creators to display and sell their products directly to the extensive user community on TikTok. Through TikTok Shop, LIVE shopping streams become a focal point, making it possible to present and sell products in real time within the app.
Currently, TikTok Shop has extended its services to a select number of regions, including the United States, which launched by this year in May 2023, and the United Kingdom, which launched in 2022. Additionally, the service is available in 6 regions in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia (by Aug 2023).
In this post, I'll introduce the steps Shopify merchants can take to extend their sales to TikTok Shop.
Why Expand Your Business to TikTok Shop?
TikTok, with its vast and diverse user base, is a goldmine of marketing potential. It is no longer just a platform for entertainment; it has evolved into a powerful marketing and e-commerce tool that businesses cannot afford to ignore. By bridging the gap between entertainment and e-commerce, TikTok Shop presents a new valuable sales channel for e-commerce merchants, which probably is a great opportunity for merchants to boost their sales volume.
In a year marked by economic challenges, embracing the TikTok Shop opportunity is not just an option, but a necessity. Leveraging this platform, particularly for Shopify merchants, could be the difference between thriving and merely surviving. Now is the time to seize this chance, adapt to the evolving market, and set your brand apart.
Here's why you should consider expanding your business to TikTok Shop:
1. Access to a Massive, Engaged User Base
With hundreds of millions of active users worldwide, TikTok offers an enormous audience for your products. Furthermore, TikTok users are notably engaged, spending an average of 52 minutes daily on the app. By setting up a shop on TikTok, you can tap into this active user base to increase your brand's visibility.
2. Enhanced Shopping Experience
TikTok Shop provides a seamless shopping experience. The app's unique combination of short, engaging videos and integrated shopping features keeps users entertained while subtly encouraging them to make purchases.
3. Influencer Marketing Opportunities
TikTok's influencer culture presents significant opportunities for businesses. By collaborating with influencers, you can increase your brand exposure and reach a larger audience. In turn, influencers can link their product recommendations directly to your TikTok Shop, facilitating instant purchases and boosting your sales.
4. In-app Purchases
TikTok Shop enables in-app purchases, providing a smooth and convenient shopping experience for users. Customers can browse, choose, and purchase products without ever leaving the app, helping to reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase conversions.
Now that you understand the benefits of expanding your business to TikTok Shop, let's explore how you can do it.
The Difference of TikTok Shop and Shopify
It's important to note that TikTok Shop and Shopify are fundamentally different platforms designed to serve specific purposes.
TikTok Shop is a feature integrated within the TikTok app, aimed at providing users the convenience of discovering and purchasing products via live selling, without having to exit the app. Its focus lies in providing businesses and creators a platform to sell products to TikTok's global user base.
Shopify, in contrast, is a standalone e-commerce platform that equips businesses with the necessary tools to create, customize, and manage their online stores, including inventory management, payment processing, and shipping logistics.
In a nutshell, TikTok Shop is focused on offering a seamless in-app shopping experience, while Shopify is a comprehensive e-commerce platform designed for managing online businesses.
Start your Tiktok Shop business
The following sections will introduce how to run your business on TikTok Shop.
- Get Started with TikTok Shop
- Sync products to TikTok Shop
- Sell your products on TikTok Shop
- The way customers buy your Products on TikTok Shop
- Manage Orders in TikTok Shop Seller Center
Get Started with TikTok Shop
First, signup for a TikTok Shop account (or use your existing TikTok business account). As mentioned above, TikTok shop divides service by region, if you are a US seller, go to the US signup page, if UK seller, go to the UK signup page instead. Also, you can switch your region before inputting your information on the signup page.
And submit your business information and relevant documents.
Expect a 2-3-day waiting period for the approval of your application review. Once approved, you can link your bank account and begin the process of uploading your products to start selling.
Sync products to TikTok Shop
Upon successful registration as a Seller, as the TikTok Shop introduction, your product information can be uploaded to the Seller Center. And the products uploaded comply with TikTok Shop product qualifications and your region's regulations, as unsupported products will be rejected.
Wait, you already selling products on Shopify (or other platforms), Do I need to maintain the tons of products in 2 places? Don't worry too much about this, as there are already some apps that help us synchronize products. We suggest using a TikTok Shop management software names Feed, which is powered by AfterShip, as it has more exceptional stability and quality assurance than other apps in the market, also their custom service is more professional because their engineers will also participate in customer service. It is free of charge to sync products from Shopify to TikTok shop.
You also can find the app called AfterShip Feed for Shopify in the Apps & Service section of the TikTok Shop Seller Center
After sync, you can see the products in the TikTok Shop Seller Center:
Sell your products on TikTok Shop
From the TikTok Seller Academy, you can sell your products by following these steps:
- You can collaborate with creators to promote products through the TikTok Shop Affiliate program.
- Utilize tools such as LIVE streaming, Shoppable Videos, and product showcases.
- Review insights on products and sales performance within the seller center, including analytics, dashboard, and reviews.
Additionally, you can also refer to the rankings of top-selling shops, and search their shop on the TikTok app to see how they achieve their success.
The way customers buy your Products on TikTok Shop
After you successfully sync your products to TikTok Shop and active them, customers can see and buy your products by following:
- Customers can purchase through LIVE shopping streams, in-feed Shoppable Videos, and product showcase tabs.
- They can click on the product, add it to the basket, and manage orders, tracking, shipping, returns, and payment methods, all within the app.
Manage Orders in TikTok Shop Seller Center
There is already a guide to order management in TikTok Shop Academy
But, as you are also selling products in your online store, we will need to synchronize product inventory and orders to handle shipping uniformly. It is difficult to sync orders manually in 2 places. If we maintain order in 2 places, it will consume a significant amount of manpower; if mishandled, there's a risk of complaints, all because your inventory wasn't synchronized in time, resulting in the sale of products that were not in stock.
Luckily for this issue, The app AfterShip Feed helps us automatically handle this tedious, repetitive, and error-prone work of syncing orders, which is a very strong selling point of Feed. Be careful to choose an app, as this syncing work is very complicated and easy to get wrong if the software engineering quality is not good enough. AfterShip Feed sets itself apart from other similar apps with superior stability and quality assurance.
That is all, wish you can develop a broader sales channel! This blog post is your ultimate guide to understanding how you can scale your Shopify business with TikTok Shop. Stay tuned for more insights and strategies on how to leverage popular social media platforms for your e-commerce business.
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