Shopify Inc. today launched Shopify Chat, a native chat function for online web portals built on its online web store services.
Shopify Chat, which was announced today in a blog post from Shopify, can be toggled for all pages of an online store using its web services, allowing merchants to communicate with their customers directly.
Merchants will be able to access it not only on the web, but also through the Shopify Ping app, an iOS app that centralized customer conversations from multiple social media platforms including Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Apple Business Chat. Ping was released last year.
Merchants and buyers can also access products and discounts within the conversation through the Shopify keyboard app that was released inside Shopify Ping.
“Chat has always been a crucial part of commerce and is essential for building one to one customer relationships. We’re continuing our investment in making the conversational commerce experience as intuitive and easy as chatting with friends and families,” said Michael Perry, Shopify’s director of product. “With most of our merchants selling across multiple channels and geographies, our latest feature enables dynamic conversations to best support consumer messaging preferences and ensure that the future of commerce is increasingly borderless to enable seamless communication.”
Shopify Chat will be compatible with all browsers and all operating systems.