A community of 1M people engaging in meaningful conversations 😱🤩
Here's how Shopify built a community of 1M people!
I first learned about e-commerce back in the 2010 time frame. Working for an MNC, I used to see a few colleagues having their orders delivered to their offices.
A few years later, in 2014, the situation had totally changed - “e-commerce” became a popular concept and I used to order a lot of products online. I’d even order presents for my parents in a town to surprise them 😊
E-commerce had already begun altering mainstream consumer behaviour…
However, we had just seen the beginning of the e-commerce trend, and one company in particular, didn’t just ride this wave to the T, but created a tsunami out of it!
It was 2015, and I heard about a company from my brother (while he was working in a startup building data integrations) that had been slowly building a community online.
He said, people from all over the world who he had never met before were praising and complimenting him on its forum…
I opened my laptop to quickly check out the forum and its website. It had over a thousand members all participating and exchanging thoughts in the community.
Wow, why are so many people from all parts of the world engaging so actively with each other?
Say hello to the future e-commerce gamechanger by the name of…
SHOPIFY!
Shopify is a platform on which more than 1.75 million merchants across 200 countries have built their e-commerce businesses generating more than $300 billion in revenue yearly.
What one can wonder is do they have everything to serve so many millions of merchants across so many countries?
The answer is a resounding NO!
But, what they do have is a platform that can integrate with more than 26 million third-party applications.
Let these numbers sink in…
26 million third-party applications!
With such a huge merchant, partner, and developer base, they needed one place to bring them all together…
The Shopify Community!!!
More than a forum, it’s a place for one to grow in numerous ways…
Grow business, grow knowledge, grow partnerships, grow network, grow brand, and more.
Whatever the topic is, whatever the question is, I’m sure you’ll find an answer from its 300,000 discussion topics and if not, you’ll have it answered in < 24 hours.
So massive is the strength of their community consisting of more than 50,000 active users.
Besides the regular discussions as part of a community, the 2 things that stand out about the Shopify community are:
Groups
Events
The Shopify community has regional groups which are quite popular for merchants to seek support from other merchants or partners or experts from the same region. Business at the end of the day depends a lot on which region you operate in.
Secondly, events. It's a great place to discover insightful talks and networking opportunities, online or in person.
There are 4 to 6 events (free or paid) hosted once a week on different topics important for a business merchant.
Lastly, getting into something intricate but very important with its discussions is that as a user you can filter "unanswered" or "unsolved" queries.
This according to me helps in the following ways:
1. Independent Shopify experts can address questions and grow their reach
2. Shopify team can look at the questions and answer them.
Both are a win-win for Shopify as an e-commerce enabler, ecosystem and company!
Thus, overall, one of the world’s most innovative companies, founded by a visionary entrepreneur in 2006, is utilizing community to solve interesting problems in interesting ways, and is a tech company to look forward to for major advancements in the future!
