Today we're excited to announce a new site called The Shopify Marketplace. The Marketplace allows people to quickly search over 2.7 million different products sold by every single Shopify store around the world.
Give The Shopify Marketplace a try by typing in a search term in the field below:
Give The Shopify Marketplace a try by typing in a search term in the field below:
The Shopify Marketplace automatically includes all products currently being sold by over 20,000 active Shopify stores. As Shopify merchants you don't need to do anything to have your products listed - it’s completely automatic!
The Marketplace is a great way for Shopify merchants to find inspiration and to buy products from their peers. In fact, the idea for this site came a couple months ago while we were decorating our office entirely with products sold through Shopify stores. We found there was no easy way to search through the millions of awesome products sold by merchants and decided there must be a better way.
The Shopify Marketplace was developed during one of our internal "Fed-Ex Day” events. Every three months we form small teams and take two days to come up with, build and launch a project. The only guidelines are by the end of the second day you need to "ship" your project - hence the name Fed-Ex.
Let us know what you think in the comments!
The Marketplace is a great way for Shopify merchants to find inspiration and to buy products from their peers. In fact, the idea for this site came a couple months ago while we were decorating our office entirely with products sold through Shopify stores. We found there was no easy way to search through the millions of awesome products sold by merchants and decided there must be a better way.
The Shopify Marketplace was developed during one of our internal "Fed-Ex Day” events. Every three months we form small teams and take two days to come up with, build and launch a project. The only guidelines are by the end of the second day you need to "ship" your project - hence the name Fed-Ex.
Let us know what you think in the comments!
Yesss!
This is awesome! Except less awesome for my wallet.
Great job folks!
That’s a great idea! I am wondering if there is going to be a designated web page or section of the site instead of the blog post? Because after a while, when you have more posts, this one will get lost.
Hey Roman,
Yeah – you can go here: marketplace.shopify.com/
Great work! Love the simplicity of the design!
I’d love to know more about your search algorithm and what we can do to increase the likelihood that someone searching for our products will find them.
THIS TOTALLY ROCKS !! I found my store’s items in the Market Place.
I Love you Shopify.
Wow impressive! will there be an API or affiliate program to go with this one day? It’s kinda cool. Nice work!
Any insight for us on how the search algorithm works? i.e. someone searches for ipad case and then does the search provide first results based upon sales numbers of ipad cases from to show what is most popular in terms of sales, is it based upon keyword density of descriptions, etc.
Kind of more curious than anything else but it would be helpful to know.
Mark, thanks for reply. I was so excited about the tool that I totally didn’t pay attention to the link you provided. I just started searching my little heart out. As I said, it’s an awesome idea, I also love the dynamic counter at the top, it’s pretty impressive to see that there is one new product almost every second… wow
Love it! Can’t wait to see some of the other shops and what they have!
I am curious to know will you being advertising this in some way to Google and the rest of the world?
Love it! Can’t wait to see some of the other shops and what they have!
I am curious to know will you being advertising this in some way to Google and the rest of the world?
You guys are AMAZING – always coming up with fabulous ideas to support store owners. Thank you very much!
That’s BOOMIN’ awesome!!!
This is great! Is there anyway you can set up a discount on our fees if we buy from a fellow Shopify merchant? It would all even out since Shopfiy makes $ on how much a Merchant sell. Or is that is phase 2? We all have to support each other!
So, can we add this search function to our website and get some affiliate money from these other companies if things are sold via a search from our site? Say 5% of the value of the item?
The search is case sensitve is there are way to fix this? When I type Les Paul and les paul I get 2 different results?
This is a wonderful idea!
and all these comment are great too-
Loving it :D
Cool feature! Are there types of stores that are being exempted? It doesn’t look like any of our products are visible no matter what keywords I type (tons of unrelated products but not ours which are pretty distinctive).
Great idea! Let’s support our fellow shopify store owners!
Now – that is amazing! You guys really do rock!
What a great idea! I just did a quick search for “organic cotton” hoping that my store will pop up. Sadly, it didn’t! Am I missing something? :(
BTW, I would LOVE to support the shopify community! I set up a discount code for you all… use “shopify” and save 20% on your order. Visit SPUN at ChooseSPUN.com
Any other deals out there?
Sara, what a great idea to offer other Shopify store owners a discount. (BTW: We’re another Seattle store, so it’s great to see you on here!)
LuxBox is offering a $25 gift card for your first purchase. Simply enter LuxBoxGC at checkout to redeem the gift card. You can find us at www.LuxBoxDecor.com.
Amazing guys! =) Let me know how Punchdrunk Panda can support.
We are very happy with this feature. Another good reason to expand our Shopify efforts. Thanks!
LOVE! Shopify rocks
I love that you keep adding features like that. It keeps us loyal :)
Great! Do I need to implement it somehow?
Great idea!
Awesome! I see a lot of our puppy coats on there! YAY!
The Affiliate Idea is great too – I would definitely add the search to my site.
Is there a way to disable products being listed? The products and prices from our private store are also showing up.
Stephan: If you password protect your store, then the products won’t show up on Marketplace.
Thanks for the suggestion Craig, but our shop already requires signing in. Adding a password does not make sense in our particular use case.
@Larry: The searches are case insensitive. So a search for “Les Paul” and “les paul” are equivalent. However, they get cached separately, so they show the results for different snapshots in time. Products frequently get added, updated, and removed, so the search results will change over time as this happens.
Pure Genius
But it thare should also should be a market place search engine marketed to the general public as well.
Whenever someone types in a shopping item parameter for a google or yahoo or Ask search – your Shopify logo should apear as an option to find that product. It would put your name out there every where, bringing in more potential shopkeepers, and of course bring in more retail shoppers.
Hi ladies and gents, I was the designer on marketplace. Glad it’s being received so well and hope it sees lots of use. :)
I’m going to try to help with some of the questions here. I love the idea of sharing your discount codes! I would love to integrate that into marketplace for v2 (it may be a ways off though, so many things happening here at Shopify HQ).
To those wondering why their products aren’t showing up, there are only a couple possible explanations:
- your shop is password protected
- the products you are attempting to find are set as hidden
- the keywords you are searching aren’t used in the product title, description, variant titles, or vendor names.
The important one for showing up in search results on marketplace is the third one. Pepper your product descriptions (better yet, titles) with keywords you think would be used by someone trying to find a product like yours. Doing this will also help with SEO on search sites like Google.
@will thanks for the kudos on the design! Hope the above helps you.
@louise We don’t have plans for a search specific API just yet, but I’m curious to know what you would like to do with this kind of thing. I’m assuming you’ve checked out api.shopify.com?
@Sharon I’m sure marketplace will be advertised at some point, especially if it takes off a little more so share with friends and fellow stores. :)
If you have any other questions, you can always hit me up on twitter: @warrendunlop
LOVE IT! – Like others keen to know how customers will find this feature and what advertising / marketing will be done. Also very happy to support the idea of discounts for other Shopify store owners, so if anyone needs to buy and boys clothes pop along to www.mykidbrother.co.uk and use discount code LOVE SHOPIFY and get 20% off any order.
Marketplace is also entirely responsive, so you can use it on your other mobile devices as well. :)
http://cl.ly/1H2b1k2V042e3W2f2Q44
Warren, I am also would be interested in API for the marketplace.
We have an app that is currently plugged in to amazon to search their product database. our app looks for products on the picture that users share. and then we allow their friends to potentially purchase the product from amazon. We were thinking to make an app that would allow each shopify retailer to plug in and be searchable, but its not as attractive. If you could provide api for the marketplace, that would be much more attractive for developers like me because now we have access to 2+mm of products and not 50 at a time.
Great idea, it’s nice to see what ideas other people have. It helps build inspiration if you’re having a mental block, or it’s just a great way to think of new ideas yourself and build from there! :)
Great Job, Shopify guys! And great idea! Now let’s all support each other and tell people to search for what they’re looking to buy on Shopify Marketplace!
Jill :)
Great idea, lets hope it takes off! Will be interested to see if traffic numbers increase.
I’m not buying that. Having had all that product data in your database all these years and not having this idea until you wanted to decorate the office? Come on! It’s a natural and a logical step, though I’m not sure if the world needs another eBay. My understanding was that Shopify has always been about style. Are you sure 100% of store owners will like the idea of displaying their items out of context of their design? Anyway, extremely interesting to see what comes out of it.
Brilliant! Typed in a product from my store and there it was. I hope it leads to more sales…
Super Sweet!!!!! I like to support others involved with Shopify and this makes it easy to find them.
@Ilya: Technically “search.shopify.com” has existed for years but it was extremely broken. It defaulted to $0 products, didn’t filter out trial or dev shops, and was pretty visually un-appealing. I wouldn’t compare Shopify Marketplace to eBay or amazon as you aren’t buying through us directly, it’s simply a catalog. Products are always sold through the original shop, so branding still plays a role in finalizing the sale. Marketplace is just an extra outlet for Shopify stores to increase sales and exposure, and not intended to be the primary one. Hope this helps!
Very awesome indeed. I would like to request/suggest a “Home Decor” category. You have “Home & Kitchen” but no further “Decor” category. Home decor is a big category in every major directory and search engine across the web. You also might want to include a “Arts & Crafts” category.
Awesome Idea guys, shopify takes marketing to the next level!!
www.canvaselite.com
Fun idea, with one problem. Those of us with the LockDown App will find that our locked products are now available to public view, though not purchase. Please fix this, there is a reason we bought the app…
Mark & Shopify Team, I wish there would be an easier way to link up with other related/similar stores, like a built-in blogroll but for Shopify stotres. It would help customers with store discovery, help with store cross promotion and SEO.
http://shopping.lk
Great! Looking forward to the further features to get us more traffic!
This is a really great release! Shopify just keeps thinking of more and more new ides to drive traffic for their users!
@FulfillRite
I love the Marketplace and hope it does well for merchants.
To second Jonathan though, there needs to be a way to keep products out of the marketplace on an individual or store basis. One of our stores is invitation only and the fewer places those products are leaked to, the better.
Great Job!Congratulation ….to all the members this great Project.I agree with Kai we do need “Home Decor” category. You also might want to include a “Arts & Crafts” category….Just a newbie to Shopify…but it is a great experience….
Thanks!!!
@jonathan and @james: We’ve recently released an app to give our merchants greater control over the visibility of their products and collections within Shopify Marketplace and Catalog (our new iPad app). Check it out here: http://apps.shopify.com/shopify-catalog-manager
If you’ve never heard of Catalog, be sure to check it out as well: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/catalog-by-shopify/id565838078?mt=8
Cheers