A couple of weeks ago we posted about Shopify’s new marketplace and pricing model. Today, Shopify’s Marketplace for Shopify powered stores and products went live and can now be seen on the original Shopify.com site (to sign up for a Shopify store you must visit Shopify.info). It appears we are one of the first to cover this story on the launch date.

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Shopify Marketplace Overview:

Shopify hosts over 20,000 stores, now you can potentially access all of them in their new Marketplace.

The Marketplace main page layout is good. They have created a simple, easy to use design, which will hopefully leave them plenty of room to grow and add more features with the addition of more stores. I like the ‘price slider’ that appears under the search box. It allows shoppers to easily find products within their price range when keyword queries are performed.

Under the search box, Shopify has included a section for “Featured Shop of the Day,” which features and displays a different series of shops throughout the day. It contains a link to the store and a sneak peak of some of the items from that stores catalog including a store description. Under that, are links from previous days to other featured shops powered using Shopify’s eCommerce platform.

The results pages are a little plain, but you can expect that to be the case with newly launched product sites like this. We can expect the results pages and features to improve as more sites begin to participate and with site age. The results pages feature a tag cloud, product type and vendor type along the right sidebar. The listings themselves have an image next to each product listing, product title, price, merchant and description text.

Adding Products To Shopify Marketplace:

Adding products and getting your Shopify store included within the Marketplace couldn’t be easier. All that is needed is a live Shopify powered store with a populated product catalog. Once your store is setup and products are added, merchants simply request a Shopify API, login to their account and follow the steps on the screen. You can choose to include all your items and it appears Shopify is setup to include additional features here in the future (possibly the ability to only show certain products from your Online store catalog).

Here are the 3 steps you will need to go through to include your products in Shopify’s Marketplace…

Step #1 - Request an API

Step #2 - Confirm Inclusion

Step #3 - Receive Thank You Message

Now that you have granted access to Shopify, your products will begin showing in the Marketplace within about 24 hours. This is a great way to get immediate exposure for products listed within your Shopify store. If you already have one, go to Shopify now and get your products listed, it only takes a second.

Look for the Shopify Marketplace to appear in our Product Listing Guide within the next couple of days!