sync 2025 | 5 Lessons from Shopify on building seamless shopping experiences

Shoppers today expect seamless, connected experiences, whether they’re browsing online, shopping in-store, or switching between devices. At sync, Matthias Kleven, Head of Northern Partnerships at Shopify, explores how unified commerce helps retailers meet those expectations by bringing all sales channels together.

Beyond just connectivity, the session highlighted how unified commerce can drive efficiency, enable innovation, and support business growth. From testing new ideas to expanding business models, Matthias shared how retailers can turn complexity into opportunity. Unified commerce isn’t just a strategy, it’s a foundation for future ready retailers.

Unified commerce explained

Unified commerce is a business strategy that integrates all sales channels, customer data, and back-end systems into a single, centralised platform. Unlike omnichannel, which focuses on front end coordination, unified commerce connects the entire operation, front to back, for true efficiency, growth, and innovation. 

Many businesses still operate with a ‘two-brain’ system, meaning they have to push data between two separate infrastructures. Shopify offers a truly unified commerce solution, where customer, product, and order data flow through one platform, powering seamless experiences and smarter decision making.

Driving efficiency with Shopify POS

Efficiency is the first anchor point in Matthias’ highlights, with Shopify POS at its core. The hardware, app library, and seamless integrations are built directly into Shopify, enabling significantly faster implementation and lower maintenance costs. According to the EY POS Market Report, Shopify POS boasts implementation times up to 20% faster than competitors. 

With a unified management dashboard, merchants can oversee all locations, online and offline, as a result saving over 5 hours monthly on data reconciliation. Whether selling in-store, at events, or online, Shopify’s unified system streamlines operations for maximum efficiency.

Orlebar Brown’s rollout of Shopify POS highlights the power efficient, user-friendly tech. Jamie De Cesare, Chief Technology Officer, credits its smooth adoption to its simplicity and ease of use on the shop floor. The impact being a 30-40% drop in total cost of ownership, a 66% lift in checkout conversions, and 44% of customers identified as Shop Pay users.

From efficiency to expansion

Matthias then went on to highlight that growth is a key outcome once efficiency is in place. Merchants using Shopify can scale on their terms, across the right channels, at the right pace. Growth is driven by fully integrated hardware, centralised management of customer, order, product, and payment data, and a POS app that enables in-store teams to deliver that personalised service. 

With one unified customer view, marketing team can create targeted experiences based on real-time insights. Shopify Markets can support the international expansion, letting merchants customise local buyer experiences without added admin, all from one place. With Shopify, growth isn’t just enabled, it’s seamlessly executed.

Innovation on autopilot

Innovation is built into Shopify’s DNA. With an adaptable, future-ready platform, merchants can unify in-store and online experiences out of the box while benefiting from 22% lower total cost of ownership and saving 10+ hours monthly on inventory management. 

Shopify Editions, released twice a year, deliver new features across retail, B2B, and beyond, keeping businesses ahead of the curve. Represent is a powerful example: after launching localised sites for the US and Europe, they saw a 50% increase in international sales, 100%+ growth in organic traffic, and an 8x conversion lift during Black Friday. Innovation with Shopify isn’t occasional, it’s constant.

Test it. Tweak it. Scale it.

A key strength of Shopify lies in its flexibility, especially when it comes to testing and expanding your business model. On the POS side, partners can build on top of the platform to meet specific merchant needs allowing for customisation where nuances matter. No two businesses are alike, and Shopify’s ecosystem enables innovation that’s uniquely yours.

Testing, iterating, and evolving quickly is central to long-term success. Waterdrop’s experience is a great example: with scalable APIs and tools like Shopify Markets, they expanded into 30 new countries, achieved a 40% average annual growth rate, and maintained 100% uptime during peak traffic. Shopify empowers brands to move fast, stay flexible and grow with confidence.

Watch Matthias Kleven’s full Sync 2025 session to see how leading retailers are making it work.