Shopify has long been a leader in the world of e-Commerce, but recently they have been making a push to connect their online store features with brick and mortar solutions for businesses that do both. This has been particularly important recently with Square Register and PayPal Here taking larger and larger chunks out of the POS market. While Square attempts to cut into the large pie that Shopify owns with its e-Commerce platform by creating their own flavor called Square Market, Shopify is already in a unique position because their technology links the sales from their website and POS for improved inventory tracking. Even with these obvious advantages that Shopify holds over its competitors, their cash register app is still far behind in download numbers. Many in the app development community attribute this to the strong focus that companies such as Square and PayPal have to mobile payment processing rather than online sales, but that focus could turn out to hurt them in the end.
Recently, Shopify released a drastically revamped version of their iOS app that aims to make managing a seller’s store both online and offline as simple as a few touches of their smartphone screen. Also, they aim to take on Square directly with a totally free credit card swiper with competitive rates for their US customers.
One of the new features that they have included in the app for their online merchants is a notifications system that lets you know when new orders come in and even allows you to dispatch shipping notifications. You also have complete inventory control at the tips of your fingers that allows you to add or remove stock, change pricing and costs, add photos for your products, and even use your phone as a secondary POS beyond your iPad based system.
Though this is the first product update of 2014, it certainly not going to be the last. Only time will tell if Shopify can compete with Square or PayPal in the mobile payment arena, but these new updates have certainly pushed the company in the right direction.
