Your Competitors Are Winning AI Search

The numbers are not subtle

We ran a recent GEO audit on a mid-sized Australian Shopify Plus retailer. Strong brand, healthy traffic, a respected name in their category. Their results read like a wake-up call:

• Their GEO score: 44/100.
• Closest competitor: 68/100.
• Second competitor: 62/100.
• AI citation rate across 50 buying-intent queries — them: 12%. Top competitor: 47%.

One competitor was being cited nearly four times more often in AI-generated answers. Not because they had a bigger SEO budget. Not because they had more traffic. Because they had spent six to nine months structuring their site for the AI era while everyone else was still chasing Google rankings.

Why the gap is widening — not closing

AI search rewards compounding signals. Every additional citation, every additional structured-data block, every additional trusted mention makes an AI engine more confident recommending you. The brands that started 12 months ago aren’t just ahead — they’re being reinforced by the engines themselves every time they get cited.

Three forces are widening the GEO and LLM visibility gap right now:

1. Schema depth is becoming non-negotiable

AI engines extract product data, prices, ratings and FAQs directly from structured data. If you don’t have Product, FAQPage, BlogPosting, Organization and BreadcrumbList schema in place — and most Shopify stores don’t, beyond the bare minimum — you’re invisible in the very query types that drive purchase intent.

2. llms.txt is the new robots.txt

Top brands are publishing /llms.txt — a simple but powerful file that tells AI engines exactly what content to read and how to interpret it. It’s a small file with a disproportionately large impact, and almost no Shopify stores have it.

3. Citation reinforcement loops

Once an AI engine starts citing a brand, it cites it more often. Once it stops citing yours, the gap grows quietly in the background. This is the compounding nature of AI search — and the reason waiting six months is so expensive.

The real revenue picture

In the audit referenced above, we estimated the brand was leaking $127,000+ in annual revenue to better-optimised competitors. That figure is conservative — it counts only the queries in which their competitors were being cited and they weren’t, modelled against typical AI-influenced conversion rates.

For a mid-sized Shopify Plus store with category authority, AI-driven discovery is one of the highest-converting traffic types we see. Buyers using ChatGPT or Perplexity for product research are already in a comparison mindset. They’ve narrowed the field. A citation in that moment is closer to a referral than a click.

Lose those, and you don’t see them in your analytics — you simply don’t see them at all.

What the Search.ai GEO Audit actually reveals

Every Search.ai Advanced GEO Audit ($895 AUD, 48-hour turnaround) is an editorial document of 30–45 pages. It is built for a single purpose: to show you precisely where your brand sits in the AI search era, what the gap to your competitors looks like, and the sequenced moves that close it.

The report includes:

• Named competitor benchmark — up to five competitors of your choice, compared on GEO score, schema depth, llms.txt presence and AI citation frequency.
• Live prompt testing — 20–40 real buying-intent queries run across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. We show you the actual AI answers, with the brands cited, in plain language.
• AI share of voice analysis — what percentage of category queries cite you versus each competitor.
• Six-month sequenced playbook — quick wins in weeks 1–4, structural work in months 2–4, strategic authority-building in months 4–6.
• Schema and llms.txt blocks ready to paste into your Shopify theme.
• 30-day and 90-day action plans commercially weighted by ROI and implementation effort.

Built by Alinga — Shopify Premier Partner

Search.ai was built by the team at Alinga, a Shopify Premier Partner that has been doing serious eCommerce work since 2018. Every Advanced audit is reviewed personally by Adrian, Alinga’s CEO, before it goes out. This is not a templated PDF dressed up as a report. It’s a piece of strategic work, written for your store, your category and your competitors.

If you’d rather not implement the playbook yourself, Alinga’s dedicated GEO and Agentic Optimisation services can deploy the entire roadmap on your behalf — schema rollout, llms.txt, FAQPage strategy, citation campaigns, ongoing measurement, and editorial content tuned for AI extractability.

100% discount for selected merchants — limited and intentional

Because we’re still in the early phase of building out the Australian GEO benchmark dataset, we’re offering a 100% discount on the Advanced GEO Audit for a small number of selected Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants. If you’d like to be considered, get in touch — we’ll have a 10-minute conversation about your store, your category and your competitors, and let you know honestly whether you fit the profile.

The cost of waiting

Every quarter you defer this, two things happen. Your competitors compound their AI authority. And the cost of catching up grows — because you’re no longer playing on the empty pitch they got first.

This is not a problem that solves itself. It is also not a problem you need to fix everywhere at once. The right next move is to know exactly where you stand. The audit answers that question in 48 hours.

Summary

• In every Australian eCommerce category audited, three to five brands dominate AI recommendations — the rest are quietly invisible.
• The gap is widening because AI engines reward compounding authority signals: citations beget citations.
• A representative mid-sized Shopify Plus store was leaking $127K+ annually to better-optimised competitors.
• The Search.ai Advanced GEO Audit ($895 AUD, 48-hour turnaround) gives you a precise picture of where you sit and the sequenced moves that close the gap.
• Built and reviewed by Alinga, a Shopify Premier Partner.
• A complimentary audit is available for a small number of selected merchants — reach out if you’d like to be considered.

Search.ai is a product by Alinga — Shopify Premier Partner. Helping serious eCommerce brands win the next era of search.

The post Your Competitors Are Winning AI Search appeared first on Alinga.

The Sydney-based mum started working as a designer for sock brand MADMIA around 2013, before taking full ownership of the company in 2016.

Since then, Filipovska has grown MADMIA into a global business with warehouses on three continents and a 30-strong staff base around the world. These staff include designers, accountants, licensing managers, production staff and more.

So how did she do it? Simple: Filipovska never said no.

“There isn’t the word ‘no’ in a dictionary for me,” Filipovska tells SmartCompany.

“I have to win no matter what. Even if they say no, I will knock on their door maybe two hundred times until they say yes.”

With the company projected to grow another 67% in the next year alone—taking the annual revenue figures to $25 million—it’s clear that Filipovska knows the strength of avoiding ‘no’.

A silent gift

“I was doing everything from my kitchen table. That’s where I started working in the business initially, because back in the days we didn’t have the budget to even have an office,” she says about looking back on her days as a MADMIA employee.

Filipovska was actually the only employee of MADMIA from day dot, with a silent investor backing the company and hiring her as the creative director following her years of working as a fashion stylist and designer in both Bulgaria and Australia.

Asking herself what the best way to design a pair of socks that are “something different, and something that has never been done before”, Filipovska started implementing shoelaces onto the socks.

“I saw that people love the 3D effects on the socks, so I started adding ears and tutus and frills and hats and whatnot.

“At the beginning, it was really, really hard. I remember the days where we were selling one pair of socks a day, but I was still so happy, because I was like, there’s one person in the world [who] believes in what I do.”

The initial owner of the company, a silent investor who Filipovska will only describe as a “very powerful and well-known investor” who has invested in “many successful startup businesses”, ended up giving his only employee 49% of company shares in 2015.

He wasn’t interested in running the business long-term, after all. So in 2016, Filipovska offered to buy him out.

“He always said from the start: ‘Tanja, this is your baby. One day, hopefully it’s going to be yours’. So I asked to buy the rest of the 51% shares and take over the business myself,” she says.

“I thought ‘I can do it better my way’,” Filipovska says.

“And I have”.

The Disney Dream

In the eight years since taking full ownership of MADMIA, Filipovska has scaled the business drastically — off-handedly saying she believes it’s about 3,000%.

The one-woman team now has around 30 staff, with two more hired just yesterday. Due to the demand from customers, MADMIA has three warehouses: two in Sydney (along with the HQ) and one in Bulgaria.

“It’s been two years, but it just doesn’t stop. It’s unbelievable,” Filipovska says, reflecting on the growth in the American market.

Indeed, the Floridian warehouses have paid off immensely, perhaps considering Walt Disney World is based there, too.

The most popular launch to date for MADMIA has been Disney’s Stitch socks, with demand so high that the company extended pre-orders four times to sell 60,000 pairs of Stitch socks despite only releasing the product three months ago in July.

“[The business] is doing significantly well,” Filipovska acknowledges, “The demand is there, and now the problem we are facing like every business owner, [is] how can we keep up with the demand?”

Filipovska herself isn’t sure what to expect, considering the business is “booming from year to year”.

She is hopeful that by 2025, all orders of the sellout Stitch socks will be filled from the pre-orders, and that the manufacturing issues MADMIA is currently facing due to the increase in demand will be smoothed out.

Despite only opening the warehouse in Bulgaria six months ago, Filipovska is already on the lookout for a larger location.

The rapid growth in the European market wasn’t anticipated, but Filipovska says the staff are “buzzing” about scaling the business even further, and she clearly isn’t shying away from the challenge with the headcount growing as we speak.

“I can’t believe it, sometimes,” she says about MADMIA’s success.

“…But at the beginning, it was very hard.

“I must say, if you asked me to do it again, I probably [wouldn’t], because it was really, really hard.”

The post Never accept ‘no’: Madmia’s colourful journey from a one-woman show to $15 million in revenue appeared first on Alinga.

Before diving in, there are essential strategies and precautionary measures to consider; neglecting these can backfire. Here are some tips ranging from easy to more demanding:

1. Avoid Poor Quality Content

Content is king! Low-quality content will drive visitors away and undermine your monetisation efforts. A great user experience hinges on quality content. While the type of content will depend on your site’s purpose, it should always provide relevant information and value to your audience.

2. Don’t Overdo Advertisements

While ads are crucial for any monetisation plan, finding the right balance is key. Too many ads can lead to ad fatigue, annoying visitors and driving them away. If users encounter the same message repeatedly, they may resort to ad blockers. An over-reliance on ads can diminish their effectiveness.

3. Leverage Customer Data

Maximise your monetisation strategy by effectively using customer data gathered through sign-ins or subscriber lists. Create an email list of past visitors and send them seasonal promotions tailored to their interests.

4. Keep Your Target Audience in Mind

Understanding your target audience is vital for effective monetisation. If you don’t know who they are, you won’t know what products or deals will interest them. If your strategies aren’t performing as expected, take a step back and analyse your website’s analytics to learn about your visitors.

5. Avoid Irrelevant Ads

Showcasing the right ads can yield enormous benefits. It’s essential that your ads are visible and attract the audience’s attention. Ads should drive viewers to take action, so make sure they are relevant and well-placed.

Final Thoughts

These tips can help website owners elevate their businesses to the next level. For those looking to maximise their online presence, partnering with Shopify can be game-changing. With the right approach to ads and content, your business can thrive. As eCommerce specialists, Alinga is here to help you navigate the journey of website monetisation and ensure your success.

The post Website Monetisation: Getting It Right for Success appeared first on Alinga.

What is ERP?

ERP ensures that the influx of orders is not a matter of anxiety and commotion, but of celebration. It is built to automate core business processes. It saves you the trouble of manual stock inventory and other admin tasks. It helps a business become more methodical.

All the data that an ERP system collects is displayed in a dashboard for better overall analysis.

ERP systems create a single database of the entire business. This database is a single and authentic source of data that you can further use to derive specific information.

What are the benefits of a ERP system?

● ERP systems help you stay abreast of the growth of your business. It provides real-time information to help you assess the highs and lows of your business.

● It improves the accuracy of your orders. The processes are carried forward with the help of machines and not humans. Thus, the chances of error are significantly less. This helps meet the expectations of the customers.

● It propagates transparency by providing access to customer information.

● It helps in the betterment of the overall customer services.

● It improves inventory costs.

● By providing better invoicing and payment tools, it helps boost the cash flow.

● It prevents any suspicious software from getting downloaded in the system.

● It provides better data security as the data is divided among multiple servers.

Some ERP Systems Shopify Has Integrated With

SAP Business One

This is an ERP system which helps you get an insight into your business. It gives a better command over the business. SAP B1 gives you access to the data that it carefully collects so that it can be used company-wide. Rather than providing you unending and headache-inducing spreadsheets, it only shows you the particular areas that you need to manage.

Microsoft Dynamics GP

This is a “mid-market business accounting software.” It is the best solution for medium and small-sized businesses. Its modules include:

● Financial Management and Accounting

● HR Management

● Manufacturing and Field Services

● Business Intelligence and Reporting

ORACLE Netsuite

Termed as #1 Cloud ERP, Netsuite is the world’s first company to deliver top-grade business applications. It offers advanced back-end operations to smoothen the functioning of a business. It helps companies to expand and grab new market opportunities. A Gold Coast-based chocolate manufacturer, Belgian Delights, flourished after the use of Netsuite.

Netsuite’s features include:

● Financial Planning

● Order Management

● Production Management

● Supply Chain Management

● Warehouse and Fulfillment

● Procurement

Why do we need ERP systems?

It is a must to invest in ERP if you have an expanding business. Establishing a business is accompanied by infinite bills. However, ERP is a one-time investment which will help you save your hard-earned money in future. It provides an outstanding ROI (Return on Investment).

There are many departments in a business, and one has to invest in all of them individually. ERP, on the other hand, is an all-in-one solution for multiple tasks, thus, saves a lot of money.

As mentioned above, ERPs help you analyse your business better. Analytics and reporting is a critical factor that determines the destiny of your business. It gives you a bird’s eye view to help you hone the areas that need attention.

Lastly, by escaping from all the tedious tasks through automation, all the team members have ample amount of time to do other essential tasks, this, in turn, increases productivity.

ERP, thus, is the backbone of a strong business and should never be overlooked.

The post What is ERP and Why Do You Need One? appeared first on Alinga.

Having fresh food or ready-made meals delivered to your door is now more important than ever. We created this Re occurring food delivery eCommerce website in Shopify – complete with online ordering, easy add to cart and subscription functionality.

Having invested a lot of time designing and developing this product, we market it for $7,950 but in times like this, it’s about sharing, offering a hand and try to help keep people employed.

So, we decided to provide the custom theme at no cost and offer a substantial discount on the store setup.

The theme itself is Free but there are some fixed costs listed below. We aren’t profiting from this – our reasoning is to help. As a Shopify Partner – we will create the Shopify store account for you and then transfer the ownership.

If you know any local food business that would benefit from this service please get in touch.

Take care of yourself and anyone you can.

Adrian

The post Home isolation? Ready made meals will help you and your local restaurant appeared first on Alinga.

Shopify Plus, has been achieving massive growth over the past 2 years and with major brands re platforming from Magento Community and Magento Enterprise we have been very busy offering our services.  The number of migrations to Shopify Plus is staggering!

Over the past 3 years, we have worked on Shopify plus and helped growing brands leverage the full power of Shopify’s enterprise eCommerce solution.

 

Infectious are now one of the leading uniform suppliers in the country attracting customers from individuals and small practices, all the way through to large organisations—supplying entire hospital teams with Australia’s largest medical, health and beauty scrub style uniform range.

Shopify Plus was used to bring the concept to life with custom development and store apps to further enhance the customer experience. Infectious is a beautiful website showcasing some of the best online shopping has to offer.

The post Magento to Shopify plus – How we replatformed Australia’s biggest medical uniform providers appeared first on Alinga.

UX largely depends on several factors such as usability, utility, desirability, attractiveness, and many such features. In the competitive nature of the market today, user experience is held in the same esteem as the specifications of the product since it will give you an edge over your competitors. Although businesses previously wondered why UX design matters but they are now spending a considerable amount of money to design products that suit their customers.

Companies are struggling to retain their customers since according to statistics, 95% of the mobile apps quit within a month. Hence, it is necessary to provide a good experience if you want new customers to keep utilizing your products. If your products lack a UX design, it will likely become less attractive to your customers since they may not be able to relate to it.

Some of the reasons why UX designs are important are mentioned below.

1. Effective Usability:

Many people are mistaken that the word simply means boring when it is quite the opposite. You need to understand that when people come across a new app or website, the first impression they form is whether the app is user-friendly or not. If they find it too complicated, they will likely be put off and may never use the app again. Users expect the products to be simple so that they can be confident when using it and when it does not require too much time to figure out the instructions. An effective UX design will guide the users through your website or app and show them what you offer while the designers can conduct research to eliminate unnecessary and difficult options so that they can make the product useful.

2. It Increases Customer Loyalty:

Positive user experience is synonymous with customer experience. This statement means that the higher the level that your product offers user experience, the more likely your customers will be inclined to use your products. It is understood, that satisfied customers will usually use your products repeatedly and form loyalty to your brand. If people associate positive emotions when they interact with your site that may do the trick for you. There is a high chance that they will return to your site again which means both a higher traffic percentage and an increase in the probability of them purchasing your product online. Hence, it is worth investing in improving the UX of your brand if you want to remain competitive within the market since customers remain loyal for a long time if they formed a positive first impression when they used your products.

3. Unique Product:

Countless apps are available online which you will probably never see even once in your life while many other apps failed at the beginning of their journey. The same case can be used for physical goods which are found in the market. Many products are similar or share the same properties and businesses are wondering every year how to make their product stand apart from others and are constantly looking for any uniqueness which their products possess. However, UX experts can generally predict the reaction of the audience towards your products by analyzing the needs of the target audience and how you should cater to them. If you give the users a product that will provide them with pleasant user experience and is satisfying the needs of the user, it will help you to make your product look unique when people will compare with other products.

4. Saving Money:

Although UX design is not a free service by any means but is still considerably cheaper than fixing usability issues while your product is on the market. Depending upon your approach regarding user research, UX designers usually choose the set of features and plan user interaction in such a way so that the risk of facing usability issues is minimized. UX professionals also carry out experimentation on a percentage of their target audience to judge their reaction and improve the issues. Hence UX design on the stage of product development costs significantly low when compared to adjustments in the product after it is completed. The money you save will be crucial to improve your cashflows and may help if you are thinking about expansion purposes.

5. Positive Brand Experience:

Developing a positive brand experience for the users depends upon several factors apart from taking a considerable amount of time. User experience plays an important role in developing a strong brand experience among your users so you must spend some time on it. Whether you like it or not but many users will remember your products and will form an opinion based on the first time that they interacted with it. The first experience is crucial and if any mishap occurs, your brand will likely lose the customer. A positive UX will guarantee the superiority of your brand which will likely help you gain new customers since you will be providing them with products that they enjoy consuming regularly. Thus, the worth of a good UX design cannot be stressed enough since it will help your business to grow consistently.

Conclusion:

Remember the last time you focused on improving the user experience? If you cannot remember, you may be missing out on a chance to improve your business since user experience plays a fundamental role in shaping the future of your business. If your customers are not happy with the services that you provide, they will likely look for substitutes which will affect the profits of your company. So it would better if you focus on improving the user experience so that your customers will develop strong customer loyalty and make your business profitable in the future.

The post 5 Reasons Why UX Design Matters appeared first on Alinga.

Choose your theme wisely

The first decision and one of the most important is your theme.

The right store theme isn’t necessarily the flashiest. Choosing your theme doesn’t mean picking the most eye-catching and spectacular one available. Selecting a good one is about speed and conversion.

Users won’t wait for your page to load huge images and complicated elements.

Search engines value page speed as a significant rankings factor and various benchmarks (Pingdom, AB Tasty, Neil Patel) generally tend to agree that three seconds is the slowest acceptable page speed. Page Speed Insights is the easiest way to see exactly where your website is losing valuable seconds. The main culprits tend to be oversized images and the Google tool will give you exact measurements of how costly they are to your page speed.

Another key point to remember when choosing your theme is that your customers shouldn’t have to try hard to buy from your store or contact you. The path to the checkout should be simple and obvious, taking as few clicks as possible to complete the transaction. The checkout and cart should almost always be visible and easy to find, and contact details prominently displayed.

Built in SEO features

Shopify has been designed specifically for online shopping and to make it possible for people of all knowledge levels to get a store up and running. This extends to some of the SEO elements that are baked into your store and handle some of the technical elements.

Canonical URLs

Online stores can comprise hundreds of pages based on product variations. If you sell 30 products and those 30 were available in five sizes and 10 colours, you could have 1500 almost identical pages. Search engines don’t like duplicate content and it can harm your rankings results. Canonical URLs direct search engine crawlers to only rank the main page and ignore the copies, ensuring your site isn’t punished for the inescapable fact of running an online store.

Sitemaps

Shopify auto-generates your sitemap – the outline of your site that allows search engine crawlers to access all the pages. Creating and uploading a sitemap is SEO 101 and a standard part of implementing a SEO strategy. Sometimes that is also the last time the sitemap is ever looked at. Shopify ensures your sitemap never falls into obsolescence by automatically adding new pages and removing old ones when you make changes.

Robots.txt

Shopify also takes care of your robots.txt file by making it for you. This lack of control can be a frustration for some users but the lack of customisability is a trade-off for ensuring search engines aren’t mistakenly sent elsewhere because of an incorrect robots.txt.

Two important tools
SEO is as much about analysing data as it is about taking action and making changes. The most important tools in your SEO arsenal are:

1. GoogleAnalytics
2. GoogleSearch Console

These tools allow you to track your results, monitor traffic, see where improvements can be made and continue to grow your business.

Image Credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/digital-marketing-technology-1433427/

Getting your SEO off the ground in four steps

SEO isn’t a one-time solution – it is the culmination of all your efforts together. To get started it is important to take care of the core elements.

1 – URLS

Choosing the right page URLs and website structure is critically important for your SEO. A good URL will be short, but also descriptive. For example, yourwebsite.com.au/outdoor-furniture/chairs.

The idea is to think logically about the hierarchy of the website, and map this out before you build the website. Additionally, you will want to separate out different product types into different collections. This helps create a more specific category page, which will be able to rank better for the targeted keywords.

2 – KEYWORDS AND CONTENT

Keyword research is a vital part of SEO for Shopify and non-Shopify sites alike.

Your main focus when thinking about keywords is user intent. You want to understand the people who use your products and how they would go about searching. Search intent can be broken into three categories:

1. Searches that expresses a desire to buy a product – ‘buy a computer’
2. Searches to find a particular website or brand – ‘Apple’
3. Searches for details and knowledge – ‘best computer’

Now, the point isn’t to simply optimise for one type of search intent but all three. The buying journey starts at different points for different people and the quest to find out more about a product or service may also turn into a purchase. Google Ads Keyword Planner is a very useful tool for deciding on the words to target. It offers suggestions and tells you how much traffic words and phrases attract. It can help you look at your keywords and target audience from different angles to achieve the nuances of search intent. To go even deeper into keywords, a tool such as AHREFS allows you to determine how difficult your chosen keywords are to rank and how many people are searching those terms. It shows you how and what your competitors are doing and how you fare in comparison. 

Image Credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/business-paper-office-aerial-3190209/

Your keyword strategy is a place to experiment with different approaches and types of content to see what brings results. Those different types of content are where you will be using your keywords. Product descriptions, category descriptions, blogs, articles, social media updates – everywhere you can put content is a place to use your keywords.

3 – TITLES AND META DESCRIPTIONS

Your page titles are the results users see when they search on Google. The search engine results page (SERP) displays your page titles and your meta description, which makes it important to make them as appealing as possible.

The top entries on the first page of results are generally a good guide to how you should be formatting your own titles. Often, good titles will contain the essence of the page distilled to a few words but different conventions work in different industries, so research is important.

The same is true of your meta descriptions. They must be compelling and inviting, simultaneously convincing the user that your site is the right choice and being less than 160 characters. Again, consider intent and how to best answer a user’s query.

4 – BACKLINKS

Generally, the most labour-intensive part of your SEO strategy, backlinks are also one of the most valuable components. Being the destination of a link on a well-regarded website is a powerful rankings signal and the more you can acquire, the better your SEO results will be. Just remember quality is key.

Leveraging your existing connections, submitting your website to high quality local directories, and using a PR platform like SourceBottle can all help boost the number of quality backlinks pointing to your website.

Author Bio

David Pagotto is the Founder and Managing Director of SIXGUN. He has been involved in digital marketing for over 10 years, helping organisations get more customers, more reach, and more impact.

SIXGUN focuses on scaling organisational growth and building sustainable results for the long-term, with a data-driven approach to developing strategy. As a Melbourne based digital marketing agency, SIXGUN focuses on Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media Marketing.

David is passionate about seeing organisations grow while working on his mission to support meaningful causes.

The post Getting your Shopify SEO right from day one appeared first on Alinga.

As a Shopify Partner, Alinga we were fortunate to have been invited to Unite and benefit from all the new announcements, keynote presentations and lightning talks. Meeting other Shopify agencies, app developers and partners was also great.

The world of eCommerce is changing and Shopify is leading the way providing Direct To Consumer (DTC) opportunities. Their drive to power mid-high level global companies through the Shopify Plus infrastructure is great along with the mindset of ‘were making your problem, our problem’ the featured announcements from the opening keynote presentation were simply. Wow!

While we were happy to be immersed in a world of innovation and partnership, we are even more excited to unpack the new information, ideas and opportunities we’ve learned about, add them to our skillsets and, most importantly, to make them work for our clients’ businesses. Here are some of the highlights

Augmented Reality (AR) and the push to make it the new standard

Check out the featured example – no longer are you going to be asking yourself the pre sale questions, you can see, experience and engage with a product in your own environment

“This new feature will drive the likeliness of a customer completing a purchase by twice as much when interacting with a 3D model.”
3D models of your products are the new ‘recommended media’ for eCommerce and SEO on Gooogle. Alinga will be partnering with 3D model vendors to expand our product offerings

Online Store: Sections everywhere

The new online store design experience will make it easier for merchants to create and customize their storefronts without writing a single line of code. Coming to all Shopify merchants later this year, we’ll introduce a new feature set that will allow you to focus less on guiding your clients through the basics of store editing and more on providing those highly valuable skills and services needed to take a merchant’s business to the next level.

In short, the new ‘Sections everywhere and master pages’ provides you with more flexibility, creativity and sales conversion opportunities.
Your existing Shopify theme will need to be modified in order to benefit from this functionality so it’s not a ‘flick the switch and benefit’ but we are really looking forward to working with the new features and rolling them out to your store.

The new Shopify Plus

Later this year Shopify will be releasing a new Shopify Plus—enabling large, complex businesses to manage multiple stores, users, automation, and more in one place.

Manage the complexity of your business. In one place.
Experience a better way to manage multiple stores, staff accounts, automated workflows, and more with the new Shopify Plus.
All this news makes Shopify a great solution scalable for every brand, that is forcing all other e-commerce platforms to look at Shopify Pus with attention.
If you want to know if Shopify Plus is the right solution for your business, don’t hesitate to contact us! We’ll be glad to tell you other innovative features about Shopify Plus.

Shopify Point Of Sale

At Shopify, we see our direct-to-consumer brands driving the major transformations we’re witnessing in brick-and-mortar retail today. These merchants obsess over the customer experience, and for them, there’s no better way to build those direct relationships than through face-to-face conversations in their own stores.

In the past year, Shopify POS has grown to power over 100,000 merchants and is driving sales in the billions. To better support all of these growing direct-to-consumer brands, we’ve made critical investments to Shopify POS to improve our product-market fit for them.

POS cart app extensions: Loyalty and promotions
Shopify unite 2019 announcements: loyalty and promotions

In today’s retail landscape, customers expect to feel appreciated when they shop. It’s no wonder loyalty apps are some of the most popular POS apps.

Starting today, retailers can see loyalty and promotion details directly in the cart without having to click away, making checkout faster and easier for their staff and customers.

Our POS cart app extensions for Shopify POS surfaces the loyalty and promotion app functionality merchants want, where they need it: within the customer cart. This makes for a seamless retail checkout experience that includes:

Speed:
Improved discoverability in the cart during checkout reduces the number of clicks from four to one, and decreases the time it takes to apply a discount from roughly 15 seconds down to five

Visibility:
Important information is surfaced automatically and in-context, meaning store staff don’t have to remember to navigate to the apps section of POS

Appreciation:
Customers feel appreciated wherever purchases are made, online and in-store
This new POS app extensions not only helps retail merchants but gives current app developers with embedded POS apps new functionality that can improve the user experience. It also opens up a new world of possibilities for Shopify Partners interested in building loyalty or promotion apps that can be used online and in-store.

We heard the community’s wants and needs and redesigned the app thinking about our partners first. Developers can expect better accessibility, with full-screen app extensions on the home screen, compatibility with all current apps, and a simpler design for a better app experience.

We also made it our goal to create an updated POS app that prioritizes quick and seamless workflows, helping store staff focus on what’s most important to them: human-to-human customer interactions and making each sale a positive experience.

In addition, retail merchants can expect:

Faster checkout, refunds and exchanges, and global search
Simple redesign for retail staff, large tap areas, and smart grids
Scalable with unlimited products, multiple location search, staff permissions, and quick access to apps
A unified back office to sync customers, inventory, and orders across all locations

So excited to hear about Shopify’s investment in their POS and how it will be ‘gifted’ to all Shopify Merchants. For many Merchants running existing retail POS systems, well this is going to save you thousands, provide native Omnichannel experience for your customers and its just more thing that will ‘save you time and make you more money’

Unfortunately, for Australian merchants, the native Shopify payments ‘chip and pin’ reader is still not available. We are disappointed about this restriction but Shopify has assured us that they are working hard on the solution and we believe once that happens, Australian Merchants should make the switch to the Shopify platform for eCommerce with the integrated Shopify POS,

Shopify Fulfilment

To take a quote, direct from Tobias Lütke (Shopify Founder) ‘Were making your problem, our problem‘ and the investment of creating a massive Shopify Fulfillment Network is a Huge undertaking. For us this is massive, Shopify has really listened to their merchants, analysed the problems of eCommerce and make positive steps to solve it by providing faster / Cheaper / Easier shipping services

In short, shipping is as much of a pain for merchants as it is for buyers, and we want to improve the shipping experience for everyone.

Announcing Shopify Fulfillment Network—a geographically dispersed network of fulfilment centres with smart inventory-allocation technology, powered by machine learning that predicts the closest fulfilment centres and optimal inventory quantities per location to ensure fast, low-cost delivery.

Built across the United States to start, Shopify Fulfillment Network includes:

One back office: Reduce errors and frustration with always up to date order, inventory, and customer data that syncs across all warehouse locations and channels—all backed by our high-level service agreements.
Maintain inventory integrity: Schedule regular or ad-hoc cycle counts to maintain accurate inventory levels.
99.5 percent certainty and accuracy: Orders are picked, packed, and out on time without error.
Your eyes at the warehouse: Work with a dedicated account manager who has logistics and Shopify expertise.
Additionally, Shopify Fulfillment Network supports the following functionality:

Multiple channels (online store, retail, Instagram, eBay, Amazon, etc.)
Returns and exchanges
Custom packaging, kitting
Works for merchants shipping 10 to 10,000 products a day

You can read more about the exciting features that Shopify announced at Unite 2019.

As a Shopify Partner, Alinga we were fortunate to have been invited to Unite and benefit from all the new announcements, keynote presentations and lightning talks.

If you want to know if Shopify Plus is the right solution for your business, don’t hesitate to contact us here or call our office directly on 0418 693 764. We’ll be glad to tell you other innovative features about Shopify Plus and the other Shopify plans.

The post Shopify Unite 2019 – Featured announcements appeared first on Alinga.

Wait.. What, free Shopify website setup?
Alinga are offering a Shopify 30 day make a change challenge?

HOW TO GET STARTED

Have you considered starting a new eCommerce store but have been afraid to take the leap? If so, this challenge is for you! We are providing all new ‘Make a change entrepreneurs with a FREE Shopify website setup and our FREE eCommerce Marketing eBook ‘7 ways to your first sale‘ If you are SERIOUS about changing your financial future and benefiting from online sales through the Shopify platform, this is for you!

The post We are offering FREE Shopify website setups appeared first on Alinga.