YouTube unveils Shopping Collections to help creators sell their favorite products
YouTube is rolling out new features designed to help users more easily buy and sell products on its website. On Tuesday, the company announced Shopping Collections, which lets creators curate lineups of items for sale, either from their favorite third-party brands or from their own stores.
Using the YouTube Studio app for iOS or Android, you can now pick a selection of products based on specific themes and other concepts. The collections you choose appear in your product list, Store tab, and video description. For now, you can only set up a collection using the Studio mobile app, but YouTube promises that you'll soon be able to do this on the website as well.
Also: Want a better way to watch YouTube? This app turns your PC into a TV
To show off a Shopping Collection in action, or to inspire you to cook up your own, Google listed three examples in its blog post. Spring Nail Must-Haves from the LongHairPrettyNails collection displays nail polishes and gels, Preppy Essentials from Sydney Morgan touts skincare and makeup products, and Sephora Savings Event Must Haves from Johnny Ross steers you to Sephora personal care and beauty products.
For shoppers, clicking any product takes you to its page at a retailer's website where you can buy it online.
Although YouTube is traditionally known for video sharing, the site has been pushing online shopping lately. In 2023, people watched more than 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos on YouTube, according to the blog post, and spent 25% more time watching such videos.
This trend goes beyond YouTube. TikTok has also been encouraging its users to directly buy and sell items. The company lets creators link products in their profiles so that users can see and purchase them through TikTok Shop.
New collections aside, YouTube has also added other features on the shopping front. A new Affiliate Hub accessible in the YouTube app now helps creators find shopping partners, look for the best commission rates, take advantage of promo codes, and even request samples from many brands.
Also: How to download YouTube videos for free, plus two other methods
Additionally, all shopping creators can now bulk tag products throughout their videos based on descriptions from the creators of those items. YouTube kicked off this option in 2023, but until now it was only available to affiliate shopping creators.
Finally, YouTube has added Fourthwall to its list of integrated platforms, letting creators more easily set up and manage their stores in YouTube Studio.