👉 Background: Shopify is the e-commerce platform that helps people and businesses create online stores — whether it be your old-school local bakery that finally makes its way onto the world-wide web, or some big name brands like Heinz, Fitbit and Sephora and another 1.7 million businesses around the world.

👉 What happened: Now, Shopify has announced a mega-jump in its third quarter earnings of 132% in operating income year on year, to $283 million USD.

👉 What else: The reason for its revenue and income growth was due to Shopify's gross merchandise volume jumping 24% for the quarter, to nearly $70 billion USD. And, that ain’t it because it reckons it will see even more growth in the next quarter.

What's the key learning?

💡GMV, or Gross Merchandise Volume, is a key metric used by e-commerce companies to measure the total value of goods sold through their platform. This is an important indicator of how much activity is happening on the platform.

💡For Shopify, growing its GMV aligns closely with the success of its merchants. That’s because the higher the GMV, the greater the volume of transactions Shopify facilitates, which drives revenue. Kaching!

💡For Shopify, they have two key ways to increase GMV:

• They can increase the number of merchants on their platform
• Or they can see an increased value of goods sold from each merchant

And right now, it seems like Shopify is achieving both.