Shopify Kicks Off 2014 with Focus on Mobile

It looks like mobile's momentum is pushing forward into 2014. Popular commerce company Shopify has just introduced a new way for merchants to sell products and manage their store, dubbed Shopify Mobile.

Shopify Mobile is essentially a complete overhaul of the company's iOS app, which includes new features to help merchants increase sales from the palms of their hands. The company notes the "most exciting" part about Shopify Mobile is that merchants can take their cash register right to their customers.

"Merchants using Shopify Payments can use our free card reader to accept cash or credit card payments from directly inside the app. You can sell your existing products or create custom sales on the spot," the company's blog post states. "This is great news for retailers who sell on weekends at places like farmers markets, trade shows or pop-up stores."

Once a payment is accepted, merchants can send custom email receipts to customers. Plus, inventory is automatically updated across the entire Shopify platform. It is important to note, however, that this feature is currently limited to U.S. merchants. Learn more about the app's new store management features below:

- Order Notifications - Notifications arrive every time a new order comes in, which means that merchants can quickly fulfill orders from anywhere.

- Simple Fulfillment - Merchants can send shipping notifications to customers directly from the app.

- Inventory Management - Through the app, merchants can take product photos, delete products, change a price or add inventory.

In addition to the aforementioned features, Shopify Mobile also works with Shopfy POS. This means that any time merchants make inventory or price changes, the updates are automatically seen in the POS system. Moreover, Shopify Mobile can work with Shopify POS to act like a second register inside a brick-and-mortar location.