Why Shopify Collabs FAILED

After 4 years of life, its safe to conclude that Shopify Collabs has been a complete flop.The original idea, a marketplace to connect brands and creators, came from Shopify’s acquisition of Dovetail. Dovetail, on the other hand, was a tool that customers spoke highly of. Now, those same customers, speak in utter disgust of Shopify Collabs:

LOVED Dovetale, and was excited about the buyout, but unfortunately Shopify Collabs is a far cry from what Dovetale used to be. Our affiliate codes won’t work, and it’s hindering our user experience.— Go Rings, United States

Thats interesting, what else are Shopify merchants saying about Collabs? We’ll, I copied all the app’s public 1-star reviews, pasted them into ChatGPT, and asked for a summary. Here is what it gave me:

The reviews of Shopify Collabs reveal several high-level issues, each of which contributes to the overall negative perception of the app. These issues can be categorized into the following buckets:1.

Poor Functionality and Technical Issues
 — Frequent Bugs and Glitches: Users report that the app often crashes, displays errors, and fails to load properly, making it difficult to use consistently.
 — Example: “Stopped displaying page properly after only a few days, landing page looks awful.”
 — Integration Problems: Issues with Meta (Facebook/Instagram) integration and PayPal payments are common, hindering the app’s effectiveness.
 — Example: “When setting up Instagram I keep getting this confirmation: ‘You’ve now linked Shopify Collabs to Facebook’ but then an error shows.”
 — Complicated Setup: The setup process is cumbersome, with users facing difficulties in importing .csv files, creating shareable links, and dealing with verification issues.
 — Example: “I couldn’t even get the CVS file to import, this app is not user friendly.”

2. Ineffective Influencer Vetting and Accountability
 — Low-Quality Influencers: Many reviewers complain that the platform attracts small or fake influencers who do not deliver any value.
 — Example: “Most of the applicants have very little following/engagement. We sent gifts and received nothing in return.”
 — Lack of Accountability: There is no mechanism to ensure that influencers fulfill their commitments after receiving free products, leading to brands feeling exploited.
 — Example: “Every single collab who has applied, never posted to any socials after getting their product and have stopped communicating with us.”

3. Limited Customization and Control
 — Poor Customization Options: Users find the app’s customization capabilities insufficient, limiting their ability to tailor the app to their needs.
 — Example: “Poor customization options, reoccurring issues verifying required social accounts during application process.”
 — Restrictive Features: The app forces users to work within the Shopify network, preventing them from using their preferred influencers or fully customizing their campaigns.
 — Example: “This forces you to use collaborators that are only within the Shopify Network.”

4. Inadequate Support and Documentation
 — Lack of Support: Users frequently mention that Shopify’s customer support is unresponsive or provides inadequate assistance.
 — Example: “The support is non-existent, they reply with canned responses.”
 — Insufficient Documentation: The app lacks comprehensive documentation, making it difficult for users to troubleshoot issues on their own.
 — Example: “Not enough documentation. You need to go back and forth too much with support to learn anything more than the 2 help pages.”

5. Ineffective Payment and Reward Systems
 — Payment Issues: Problems with processing payments to influencers, especially through PayPal, are a recurring complaint.
 — Example: “Doesn’t work with PayPal. Impossible to make a payment to influencers.”
 — Flawed Discount Code System Discount codes are often intercepted by bots and shared publicly, leading to financial losses for brands.
 — Example: “The strategy of providing discount codes to influencers is flawed. These codes are frequently intercepted by bots.”

6. Barriers to Entry
 — High Entry Requirements: The app requires a minimum of $10,000 in sales before a store can join the collab network, which many users find prohibitive.
 — Example: “The most ridiculous app. In order to join the collab network you have to have made $10K in sales in the last year.”
 — Country Restrictions: Users in certain countries find the app unsupported, limiting its global usability.
 — Example: “Not supporting Spain, I was very excited when I reached 10k sales but I can’t join.”7. General Disappointment
 — Unmet Expectations: Many users had high hopes for the app, only to be let down by its performance and features.
 — Example: “I had high expectations, and have been disappointed.”

People had higher expectations for Shopify, since their e-commerce product is so good. I know that marketplaces are hard, but poor customer support and bugs seem like low hanging fruit for a tech giant with so much experience to get right.

Reading through articles and the low reviews, several thoughts emerged as to why this might be the case, and what Shopify (and other tech giants) can do next time to avoid this:

Why not let the little guys have it: In the beginning of the iOS app store, a guy made millions from selling a flashlight app. Apple then ruined his business by implementing this functionality natively. Why do big tech companies do this? They have enough money, why not let another company have it? Shopify did the same thing here. Sometimes, niche businesses are better left to 10–50 person companies. Not every company needs to be a unicorn.

Marketplaces are hard: A 2-sided marketplace is arguably one of the hardest tech products to get right. One must manage supply and demand, new country launches, and buyer/seller vetting in a careful manner. It is clear that Shopify was not prepared for this. The lack of trust, where merchants must trust influencers for the marketplace to have value, as shown in the comments render Collabs useless.

A high standard: Shopify has gained so much trust with their community over the years, and they set a high bar. Some of the reviews said things like “this isn’t you Shopify”. Once you create a wonderful product, you aren’t really allowed mistakes.

If Shopify Collabs is a failure, how should brands do influencer marketing? We’ll before finding an app, I would start by breaking it down into the steps of the process:

1. Finding influencers: There are plenty of influencer databases out there, but people forget that Instagram and Tiktok have their own search functionality on the discover page. Search for hashtags or people in your niche. For example, if you are selling a wellness product, look for fitness influencers. Hint: Beware of beautiful women in bikinis, most of their followers are men and not potential customers for your women’s clothing brand.

2. Make contact: Send a quick and short message from your branded account (usually on IG since tiktok DMs can be complicated): “Hey love your content, do you want to collab with our brand?”

3. Sending them product: Instead of manually typing in orders and copying and pasting shipping addresses, simply send an Influencer Gift Form. Its a link where they can fill in a form to place a $0 gift order in your store.

4. Measuring engagement from their posts: Not all posts drive sales, some are just good for UGC, authentic reviews, and brand awareness. If you are trying to drive sales, make sure to send the influencer a discount code for attribution!

   
   

As you can see, most of the steps I listed can be done manually. Sometimes tools, like Shopify Collabs, tend to over-engineer the entire process. Bad documentation, payment processing issues, discount codes and the buggy sign-up process are all examples of that.

Happy influencer gifting!