An exhaustive list of websites, which include Reddit, Twitch, PayPal, Amazon, Github, Stack Overflow, HBO, Quora, Shopify, Vimeo, and several news outlets like CNN, The Guardian, New York Times, Bloomberg News faced an outage today. An outage of this stature occurs rarely, and has thus been a subject to news, views, discussions, and ridicules all around the world. Twitter being the receptor of such news has obviously been flooded ever since the outage was first discovered.
The recent outage that affected a massive number of popular apps and websites around the globe has supposedly occurred due to the technical glitches experienced by Fastly, a popular American cloud-computing and CDN service provider.
Fastly has reported that it has been experiencing issues with the CDN services on Tuesday afternoon and has also informed the same on its Twitter. The firm announced, “We’re currently investigating potential impact to performance with our CDN services.”
As soon as Fastly declared about the outage they were facing, the other websites started to experience similar problems. The users who tried to visit the above-mentioned websites during the outage seemed to be stuck with a screen that says “Error 503 Service Unavailable”.
The outage was first reported at 3:28 pm, Tuesday, June 8, 2021, by the Fastly systems, and it continued to disrupt the services on some major platforms till 5:27 pm when Fastly applied a fix. So, it was an outage that lasted for 2 hours, according to Fastly.
However, the cloud computing giant also informed that users around the world might continue to face difficulties in accessing several websites for some time after it has already been fixed by Fastly.
What should you know about Fastly?
Fastly is a popular CDN services platform that helps speed website loading times with the help of “edge cloud.” This technology boosts the loading time of the websites along with helping them to tackle denial-of-service attacks or the cyber-attacks that try to deliberately maim a particular machine or network resource.
Fastly is one of the most popular service providers in North America and South America that powers some of the prominent online media websites. This is the reason why the majority of the complaints were discovered in the Northern and Southern regions of America.
The Fastly-induced downtime that was experienced extensively across North and South America also affected some parts of India. Fastly, which operates in the Indian cities of New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai also experienced issues with its operations and has cited “Degraded Performance” in these regions.
Conclusion
Though the Fastly issue that the world experienced today was “global CDN disruption” and was not limited to a particular data center, the global cloud service provider acted swiftly and ended the outage faster than it was thought of!
However, such continuing outages that had also earlier affected Amazon Web Services, raises questions on the evolving internet infrastructures and why they are limited to a countable list of companies.
FAQ
What is fastly used for?
Fastly is a content delivery network (CDN) company that helps users view digital content more quickly.
Which companies use fastly?
A total of 812 companies reportedly use Fastly including tech giants like Netflix, HBO, PayPal etc.
Who are fastly competitors?
Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Akamai, Google, and Microsoft are competitors of fastly.
With the emergence of online stores such as Amazon and Flipkart, and their success, more entrepreneurs have realized just how profitable an online store can be. Although, until a few years back, you would have needed an extensive coding knowledge in different frameworks to build your own online store, the game has changed now. Many online eCommerce websites offer a platform allowing you to create your very own Online Store; and as of now, Shopify is the most popular one.
Shopify
Shopify
Shopify is an online platform that offers users all tools and functionalities to create an Online Store and run it efficiently. It allows you to start your online business, market and sell your products, and manage your store in day to day business. Statistics have shown that about 1 million businesses have delivered using Shopify, and have generated a combined sales of over $200 billion.
Although Shopify gives you everything that is quintessential to run an online marketplace, you still need tools for other relevant work. Be it resizing an image, automation of trivial tasks like marketing, or making business cards, attention to detail is what makes anyone successful. This is why every Shopify user should also use the below mentioned tools, not just to run an online store, but also make sure to make them professional enough to generate revenue.
Kit is a tool offered by Shopify to help you with the social media marketing of your online store. Social Media Marketing is one of the leading marketing techniques and has by far helped most business users in advertising their products and services. Since essentially every internet user has a social media profile, chances are that you will find most of your customers through social media marketing strategies. From launching your store and growing business to email marketing along with sales and conversion, Kit is the extra set of hands you need to focus more on your business.
Burst is a free Stock Photo Platform, and is powered by Shopify to offer free and high resolution pictures to users for a perfect blog or website. The photos can be found by category including Home, City, Education, Food among others, with new photos posted every week to keep the stock fresh. The pictures offered by Burst are all free for commercial use for designer, developers, bloggers and entrepreneurs, while also being editable. Burst also offers users some amazing business ideas to choose from a collection of trending and fresh ideas through case studies, marketing analysis, and business model insights.
Slogan Maker
As the name suggests, Slogan Maker helps you find and develop eye catching slogans and catchphrases to use in your business. All you need to do is type in the word that you need in the phrase, or the main keyword of your product or service, and the Slogan Maker will automatically generate a slogan for you. A slogan shouldn’t be taken lightly, since some of the most popular brands are recognized by a slogan, and a good catchphrase might also help you grab some of your customers’ attention.
Hatchful
Every business, online or retail, needs a good logo to first have an identity and mark its presence. This is where Hatchful comes in handy as a tool, Shopify has to offer. Hatchful is a free logo maker for creating professional-looking logos and allows you to choose from a plethora of free and professionally designed templates. It allows you to add icons and edit the logo as you please with an easy to use interface and let the logo brand your niche.
Image Resizer
The worst mistake one can make while starting an online store is taking things lightly, and even worse, disregarding the picture of your product or other images you use. Image Resizer is the tool that takes care of this situation for you. A customer, when purchasing online, literally has to bet his money on the image of the product you have to offer. Resizing the image comes quite in handy, as it optimizes the image for use on the web, while also setting it in accordance with the configuration of the website, to make your online store more professional and appealing.
Oberlo
Oberlo is a dropshipping application that works in a business model where you can sell on an online store without having to maintain an inventory. With Oberlo, you can find products to sell online and sell them directly from the manufacturer to the customer. Moreover, with millions of products to sell online and an automation tool like Oberlo, you can focus more on marketing strategies to enhance and scale your business, and create more revenue. Also, once you have made sufficient sales, selling products with Oberlo becomes as simple as clicking a button.
Printful
Shopify is a platform to sell your products and sometimes they can include t-shirts, mugs, and other accessories which need on-demand printing. This is where Printful comes in. You can connect Printful with your Shopify store and generate an image of the product with the desired print or embroidery from a collection of 228 different products. It is more of a dropshipping service where all you will receive is the order notification and Printful will take care of the rest.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a marketing platform that helps you enhance your marketing and advertising strategy with a more personalized approach. Klaviyo offers trigger flows based on dates, events, and memberships for a more optimized and targeted marketing campaign, and needless to say, the better the marketing, the more is the revenue generated. Moreover, with the use of data science to predict risks, sending time, and product recommendations, users get the most out of a marketing tool with Klaviyo.
On multiple occasions, users abandon their shopping cart, and this could be the case even with your online store. PushOwl is a web push notification application that comes quite in handy in such situations. It sends out automatic notifications for cart recovery, keeps tabs of and retargets regular visitors to send notifications regarding price drops, product availability and shipping, and offers users with the best push notification services as the most integrated browser push application. PushOwl also helps users with retention marketing as well as CRO.
Shopcodes
Shopcodes is a tool built for creating QR codes for customers so they can simply make a purchase by scanning the code. QR codes are making rounds on the internet as the more convenient method to make payments and purchases, and this opportunity is offered by Shopify to its users through Shopcodes. When you make easy purchase and offer users a better customer experience from other websites, you create more loyal customers even without affiliate marketing. Moreover, you can analyze the scans and look into how many purchases were made through the QR code.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by the organization it is based on.
E-commerce has become mainstream in people’s daily lives with profound benefits. Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. It is also the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems.
Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools.
Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is a company that develops a cloud-based, multichannel commerce platform for small and medium-sized businesses. It is used to design, set up, and manage stores across multiple sales channels, including web, mobile, social media, brick-and-mortar locations, and pop-up shops. The platform also provides a back-office and a single view of the clients’ business.
Shopify operates a cloud-based commerce platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Its software is used by merchants to run business across all sales channels, including web, tablet and mobile storefronts, social media storefronts, and brick-and-mortar and pop-up shops.
Shopify – Recent News
As of December 2020, Shopify Merchants Break Records with $5.1+ Billion in Worldwide Sales over Black Friday/Cyber Monday Weekend.
“We’re excited to share our Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend results, with sales of $5.1+ billion from the more than one million Shopify-powered brands around the world. From November 27 through November 30, total sales grew by 76% from the $2.9+ billion reported for Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend in 2019, a record that was surpassed this year on Saturday, November 28, at 5:00pm ET.”
Shopify – Logo and its Meaning
The calm green color of the Shopify emblem symbolizes comfort and growth, it also evokes a sense of safety and reliability. The logo, designed in 2006, wasn’t changed until today, as it is a perfect reflection of the company’s values and principles.
Shopify’s Company Logo
Shopify – Founder and History
Shopify was founded in 2004 in Ottawa by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Dissatisfied with the existing e-commerce products on the market, Lütke, a computer programmer by trade, instead built his own.
Founders of Shopify
The first iteration of Shopify (before it was called such) was an online store that sold snowboards. When Shopify was a store selling snowboards, it was called Snowdevil. When Shopify was first an e-commerce platform, it was called Jaded Pixel.
It only took two years for the company to turn a profit, and now the company boasts $29 billion in sales and over 377,000 active shops on its platform. It’s also grown by leaps and bounds internally. When Lutke started Shopify it was him and a few friends. Now, they have nearly 2,000 employees and five office locations.
Shopify has garnered recognition for its growth and success; in 2012 the company was named “Canada’s Smartest Company” by Profit Magazine and was also a finalist for Startup of the Year. The same year Lutke was a finalist for Entrepreneur of the year, and three years later Shopify was named Employer of the Year in the Canadian Startup Awards.
Shopify’s mission statement says, “We help people achieve independence by making it easier to start, run, and grow a business. We believe the future of commerce has more voices, not fewer, so we’re reducing the barriers to business ownership to make commerce better for everyone.“
Shopify – Business Model
Shopify has a platform business model approach – Shopify acts as a platform that enables users to create an online store in order to sell their goods online. Shopify helps businesses connect with consumers by providing the businesses with the tools necessary to build an ecommerce site.
Shopify Plus is a service thought for enterprise customers, with larger volumes, which is several times more expensive than the advanced plan.
Shopify Plus is for merchants with higher-volume sales and it offers additional functionality, scalability, and support requirements, including a dedicated Merchant Success Manager.
That comprises brands like Unilever, Kylie Cosmetics, Allbirds, and MVMT. Shopify has around 5,300 enterprise accounts as of 2018, which are a key driver of both the company’s subscription and merchant revenues.
Shopify – Revenue and Growth
Shopify revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2020 was $2.457B, a 73.4% increase year-over-year.
Today, their platform Shopify hosts over 325,000 shops for individual sellers and internet giants like Google and Tesla. The more money customers made, the more money Shopify made. This drove Shopify to help their users become better merchants, and that’s the biggest reason they’ve grown to where they are today.
Shopify has raised a total of $122.3M in funding over 4 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Dec 11, 2013 from a Series C round. Shopify is funded by 8 investors. Felicis Ventures and Insight Partners are the most recent investors.
Date
Round
Amount
Lead Investors
Dec 11, 2013
Series C
$100M
Insight Partners, OMERS Ventures
Oct 17, 2011
Series B
$15M
Bessemer Venture Partners
Dec 13, 2010
Series A
$7M
Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark
Jan 1, 2007
Seed Round
$250K
Klister Credit
Shopify – Acquisitions
Shopify has acquired 11 organizations. Their most recent acquisition was 6 River Systems on Sep 10, 2019. They acquired 6 River Systems for $450M.
Acquiree Name
Date
Amount
About Acquiree
6 River Systems
Sep 10, 2019
$450M
6 River Systems mission is to redefine fulfillment automation for e-commerce and retail operations.
Helpful
May 23, 2019
–
Helpful is a human way to build relationships at work. Create short mobile videos to energize your distributed team.
Handshake
May 23, 2019
–
Handshake is a B2B eCommerce platform that helps manufacturers and distributors grow their business by powering in-person and online trade.
Tictail
Nov 21, 2018
–
Tictail is an online marketplace that enables users to discover independent brands.
Return Magic
Jun 20, 2018
–
Return Magic is allows merchants to build loyalty while making shopping more convenient for consumers.
Oberlo
May 11, 2017
$15M
Oberlo connects Shopify merchants with suppliers who ship products directly to consumers.
Tiny Hearts
Dec 5, 2016
–
Tiny Hearts is an app studio that develops mobile apps and games.
Boltmade
Oct 3, 2016
–
Boltmade is a software development company that focuses on cloud development, user experience research, and mobile design.
Kit
Apr 13, 2016
–
Kit is a virtual employee that helps store owners sell more using digital advertising and marketing.
Jet Cooper
Aug 2013
–
Jet Cooper is a user experience agency based in Toronto, Canada. They provide strategy, design, and development services to leading
Shopify – Competitors
The top 10 competitors in Shopify’s competitive set are Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Volusion, PrestaShop, 3dcart and Ecwid.
One of the main concerns for most online store owners is the lack of face-to-face customer interaction. This is one of the best and worst things about e-Commerce. These days, customers do a lot of research to avoid brick and mortar stores and shop online. So, store owners need a mechanism where, without having face-to-face interaction with their prospective customers, they can convince them to buy online.
This is the point when analytics comes into the picture. There are lots of analytics options available to the Shopify stores but still, there are some gaps which need to be filled.
In 2017, the #DeleteShopify hashtag campaign called for a boycott of Shopify for allowing Breitbart News to host a shop on its platform. Shopify’s CEO, Tobias Lütke, responded to the criticism, saying “refusing to do business with the site would constitute a violation of free speech”.
In October 2017, Citron Research founder, short-seller Andrew Left released a detailed report which described the e-commerce platform as a “get-rich-quick” scheme in contravention of Federal Trade Commission regulations. The day the report was released, the stock plunged more than 11%. The main question he posed was “Outside the roughly 50,000 verifiable merchants working with Shopify, who are the other 450,000 the company says it has?” Third-party marketing tactics were expected to be improved. Left was quoted in 2019 by The Street as saying about Shopify “I still think they are best in class”.
Shopify – Future Plans
In the last couple of weeks, the company has been making waves and announcing some major product updates and new features. Shopify is now offering not only an easy-to-use e-commerce platform but also a range of products from emailing and shipping to financial services. The company has also reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by launching its Shopify Capital program in Canada, that offers cash advances between $200 CAD and $500,000 CAD to small and medium-size merchants. All this in the hopes of capturing an accelerating e-commerce penetration and as the founder, Tobi Lütke, emphasizes, to help struggling companies.
The unfolding economic crisis has hit especially small and medium-size businesses hard. With lockdowns in effect all over the world, many companies were forced to turn to online, hoping to restore revenues and keep their business afloat. E-commerce penetration in the U.S. took a steep increase from 16% at the end of 2019 to 27% at the end of April. This change is likely here to stay – even after the lockdowns are lifted, many shoppers will continue shopping online from the safety and comfort of their homes.
Shopify has come to the rescue of small businesses and offered a different kind of partnership. Even before the pandemic arrived, the company was known for its easy to set up and use e-commerce platform. During the crisis Shopify doubled down on the mission to help struggling businesses and capitalized on the increasing e-commerce penetration.
Companies are drawn to Shopify not just because of the platform’s simplicity and accessibility, but also because it allows them to create a unique touch point and relationship with their customers.
There is no “Powered by Shopify” branding on a merchant’s website. One can choose design of their online-shop and decide how to interact with customers. In a recent interview, the CEO and founder of Shopify, Tobi Lütke explained that his desire is to empower brands to create quality products that people love, and use customer feedback to continuously perfect them. This passion shows in the way Shopify builds its platform. It is centered around their merchants – “focus on your products and let us take care of everything else”.
Shopify – FAQs
What does Shopify Inc do?
Shopify is a commerce platform that allows anyone to set up an online store and sell their products.
Where is Shopify headquartered?
The company is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada.
Who is the CEO of Shopify?
Tobias Lütke is the current CEO of Shopify.
How does Shopify make money?
Shopify merchant solutions primarily make money from payment processing fees from Shopify Payments, transaction fees, Shopify Shipping, Shopify Capital, referral fees from partners, and sales of point-of-sale (“POS”) hardware.
Google has announced that they will be allowing the merchants to list their products on Google Shopping search results for free of cost starting with the US and to be continued in the whole world. This is one of the new way to kick start their work while helping the retailers to sell their product and asking the ads merchants to take the advantage of this new opportunity in the person of lockdown. The main concentration of Google in this case is to revive their revenue source in this difficult situation where they are not having work due to complete global lockdown. Google Shopping ads now drive 76.4% of retail search ad spend, generating 85.3% of all clicks on Adwords or Google Shopping campaign ads. Let us discuss that weather this initiative will be going to be a boon or a bane for Google.
Benefits of the Google shopping campaign
Benefits of the Google shopping campaign
The Google has shown the benefits and the interest of all 3 sections of the society (retailers, shoppers and ads merchants) who are directly connected with the Google shopping facility.
The change given in Google shopping, in the product search offering will help the retailers in such a way that; -now they will be able to get free exposure and experience to millions of people( new and existing) who come to Google every day for fulfilling their required shopping products and materials.
Like the retailers, the shoppers will be able to get more choices over the product and the brands over better pricing from more stores due to the new campaign by Google Shopping. This will be all possible on discovery through the Google Shopping tab on the Google search platform or Google search engine.
The advertisers will also get the benefit of this new facility provided by Google shopping in such a manner that, now they will be getting a new section for running paid campaigns because of this free listings on Google shopping tab. The Ads merchant will be able to get the advantage of the free listings, and this will inspire the new Ads merchant to work in this streamline and make it a new source of revenue.
Google has also made a new partnership with many other platforms for the Google Shopping tab that are working in the same field and helping the businesses by providing their premium facilities. These platform include
Google will be going to work with all the platforms which help the merchants manage their products and inventory in Google Shopping tab, easily without any tension of any type of e-commerce facilities. This includes Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, which helps the make in making a virtual digital commerce platform for themselves.
During the period of COVID-19 and so far, Amazon’s trillion-dollar company, Jeff Bezos has been considered, the most notable winner in terms of business working and expansion who has added $24 billion in his total wealth from the same time, the global shutdown began. While on the other hand, the tech giants like Google and Facebook who are having all their revenue from ads are facing heavy crisis, as there is no business in the world and so, advertisers has cut a big portion from their 2020 marketing budgets. This has pushed the tech giant like Google in the back-foot. The company is now trying to search a new source income in the person of global lockdown.
Since, all the businesses are shut down in this time period except the e-commerce and the basic utility business so, this tech giant is also trying all it’s strategies in the same sector by just integrating it their own business model and making this facility, free for all.
Gorish Dua
