Amazon Unveils 3D Virtual Shop for Holiday Season🎄

3D Virtual Shopping? If you haven’t tried it yet, now’s the time!

Welcome back to The Ecom Press 🥳, your weekly dose of the latest ecommerce buzz.

This week, Amazon is getting into the holiday spirit with a 3D virtual shopping experience. Also, Shopify is streamlining finances for small businesses with Shopify Finance, and Google’s new Bidding Exploration is boosting ad reach with a fresh AI twist.

Ready to go all in? Let’s get started 🚘!

In a rush? Here’s the juice🤭:

🎄Amazon unveils 3D Virtual Shop for holiday season.

🏦 Shopify launches Shopify Finance for small businesses.

🚀 Google’s Bidding Exploration boosts traffic for search ads.

🧰 Tool Spotlight

⚡️Worthy Mentions

🎄Amazon unveils 3D Virtual Shop for holiday season.

Amazon has rolled out the Virtual Holiday Shop, a 3D immersive experience designed to make holiday shopping more engaging and easy to navigate. Powered by Amazon Beyond’s 3D technology, it features various curated gifts and top brands like Beats x Kim Kardashian, Kate Spade, and Coach.

The Virtual Holiday Shop combines cheerful music, interactive animations, and themed decor to create a festive shopping atmosphere. Visitors can add items directly to their carts with just a few clicks, making holiday prep as seamless as possible.

Here’s the lowdown 😌:

🛍️ Immersive Shopping Environment: Customers enter a festive virtual space complete with holiday music, animations, and interactive content to set the mood and enhance the browsing experience.

🎁 Curated Gift Selections: Shoppers can browse over 300 popular items, including gifts, stocking stuffers, and premium products from top brands, making it easy to find gifts for everyone on their list.

🤩 Interactive Elements: Special touches, like a conveyor belt carrying gifts and shimmering ornaments on the ceiling, reveal surprises throughout the experience, encouraging exploration and engagement.

🧸 Virtual Toy Shop: Amazon also introduces a separate Virtual Toy Shop featuring trending toys from brands like LEGO, Play-Doh, and Disney. It includes small business favorites, giving parents a focused space to explore popular gifts for their kids this season.

Amazon’s Virtual Holiday Shop is more than just festive fun; it’s designed to help shoppers discover products in a new, engaging way. This immersive experience will not only enhance product discovery for the holidays but may provide an avenue for Amazon to gather data on how customers interact with virtual stores.

🏦 Shopify launches Shopify Finance for small businesses.

Shopify recently launched Shopify Finance—a new, unified financial hub integrated within the Shopify admin and mobile app. Designed to streamline money management, Shopify Finance offers a full suite of tools for handling payments, accessing funding, managing bills, and even ensuring tax compliance—all directly on the platform. 

Here are the features ​​⭐️: 

💵 Shopify Balance: A free business account that lets merchants get paid quickly—often by the next business day. It includes a 3.39% APY on funds (4.43% for Shopify Plus members) and cashback rewards on Shopify Balance cards, adding value to daily transactions.

💳 Shopify Credit: This Visa business card offers up to 3% cashback on eligible purchases like marketing and wholesale, helping merchants reinvest in their business. Plus, merchants can opt to repay within a month or gradually through a percentage of daily sales over up to 10 months, allowing flexibility based on cash flow.

💰 Shopify Capital: Shopify’s funding solution provides up to $2 million in accessible capital for eligible businesses, with no credit checks required. New monthly-cost loan options are available, enabling lower overall costs with faster repayments, giving entrepreneurs a more customized financial path.

🧾 Shopify Bill Pay: Merchants can manage business bills through any preferred payment method—credit card, debit, bank transfer, or Shopify Balance—whether the vendor accepts it or not. Batch and recurring payments also help streamline bill management, reducing transaction fees and saving time.

💸 Shopify Tax: This tool simplifies tax compliance by allowing merchants to automate tax filings and set aside sales tax funds in their Balance account. It makes staying compliant easy, with updates on state and local tax regulations included.

Certainly, Shopify Finance is providing access to growth for small businesses by streamlining essential financial tools. For brands like Pupsentials, it’s the right tool that has propelled them on their $10 million revenue journey 🤑. Beyond simplifying transactions, it provides the flexibility and speed traditional banks often lack, directly supporting ambitious, real-time scaling 💥.

🚀 Google’s Bidding Exploration boosts traffic for search ads.

Google’s new Bidding Exploration feature aims to help advertisers uncover untapped, high-value search queries using AI-driven insights. Currently in limited beta, it leverages Smart Bidding to enhance traffic diversity, expand reach, and improve ad performance, especially for campaigns with flexible budgets.

Here’s the scoop 🍨:

🌍 AI-Driven Reach Expansion: Google’s AI intelligently bids on a wider range of queries, bringing advertisers in front of new audience segments that align with their objectives.

⬆️ Enhanced Traffic Diversity: This feature tracks impressions across unique search categories, helping advertisers assess success by measuring engagement from diverse queries.

💵 Customized ROAS Options: Allowlisted advertisers can adjust the ROAS tolerance beyond 10% for a tailored approach to ad spend that can boost campaign flexibility.

🐖 Automatic Budget Management: To ensure full functionality, campaigns need to operate without budget constraints. If a campaign is limited by budget, Bidding Exploration may temporarily be disabled to maximize results.

With these capabilities, Bidding Exploration encourages advertisers to venture beyond typical high-traffic keywords, introducing them to new potential customers while maintaining control over budget and performance standards ✅. 

To unlock its full potential—Google recommends pairing it with broad match or Dynamic Search Ads, and a running campaign experiment to measure its impact 📉.

🛎️ The Ecom Press Insider

Ecom Fact: Amazon’s third-quarter net sales jumped 11% year-over-year, reaching a whopping $158.9 billion, beating analyst expectations. Notably, AWS alone surged 19%, pulling in $27.5 billion (Source: Amazon).

Looks like Amazon’s Prime Day wasn’t just big—it was record-breaking big 🔥! Talk about getting your holiday shopping off to a strong start 💪.

🧰 Tool Spotlight

This week, we have a few tools on the radar designed to elevate everything from customer engagement to social shopping. Let’s dive in…

[cafeteria]: connects brands with real-time insights from Gen Z, letting merchants tap into teen trends and preferences through an engaging platform. With feedback from teens across the U.S., brands gain valuable insights on brand alignment, purchase behavior, and market positioning, all organized into easy-to-navigate "Albums."

Route: provides real-time shipping updates, carbon-neutral options, and package protection against loss, theft, or damage—all helping build customer trust. Its cross-selling and remarketing features aim to boost lifetime value and drive incremental sales for merchants.

Tagshop: transforms social content into shoppable experiences. This tool lets you curate user-generated content (UGC) from Instagram, TikTok, and more, creating eye-catching galleries where customers can shop directly. Advanced AI filters, UGC rights management, and Google Analytics tracking make it easy to bring authentic social proof right to your store.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

• Hootsuite reveals best times to post on social media in Q3 data.

• AliExpress welcomes U.S. sellers ahead of 11.11 Singles Day.

• TikTok Shop gears up for holidays with Brand Palooza and big promotions.

• Target unveils new in-store and digital experiences for holiday shoppers.

• Children’s Place launches storefront on SHEIN for global expansion.

And that’s a wrap 😎! 

From virtual shopping experiences to powerful financial tools, it’s clear this season is all about connecting and growing with ease. What caught your attention the most 🤔?

Till next time, stay curious, and we’ll catch you next week with the latest buzz ⚡️.

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