Yesterday, Shopify released its second round of updates this year – over 150 this time – under the name Unified.
And why unified? Because “All great software is unified,” says Shopify President Harley Finkelstein. “We’re bringing everything together under one roof, making all parts of our platform work together even more seamlessly.”
In this article, we break down the most exciting updates for retailers and explore how they might benefit your business.
Shopify has been releasing updates since 2022 under the name Shopify Editions.
Designed to support merchants, partners and developers, the first Shopify Edition was coined Connect to Consumer and focused on expanding the consumer base, converting customers, building stronger relationships, and scaling businesses.
The second, released in winter 2023 was called Built to Last and steered towards brand growth and reaching more customers.
The next was named Imagine My Business, which featured over 100 new product updates and put a lens on the future of commerce and its ever-changing landscape.
Shopify’s winter ’24 Edition called Foundations, also boasted over 100 updates and focused on the building blocks that make a business, like data models, business logic, APIs and high-performance infrastructure.
This most recent edition is all about “creating the most unified Shopify yet.” “Our platform’s full potential can only truly be realised when its parts are seamlessly integrated,” says Shopify, “when it all works well together hand in glove.”
“That’s why in this edition we’re doubling down in unifying key workflows and infrastructure, all across Shopify, so that it’s faster, more resilient, and more tightly integrated than ever before.”
Let’s take a look at the highlights…
Shopify merchants are already selling around the world with Shopify’s Managed Market solution, which uses a merchant-required model to handle all operational complexities – like tax filing, duties, pre-paid shipping labels, customs documentation, fraud protection and more.
The latest Edition makes it even easier to expand your business and convert more international buyers.
First, Shopify has made the catalogue restrictions user experience much more streamlined – you can trust the platform to automatically restrict specific products that would be denied at customs as well as see which products have been restricted in which regions.
You can now also include duties and import taxes directly in your product prices in regions where customers expect to see just one all-inclusive price at checkout. This change will improve conversion from your international buyers by removing the shock of seeing duties added at checkout.
Another way to boost conversion is to offer more shipping choices at checkout. That’s why Shopify is expanding its carrier options to include standard shipping via UPS.
Finally, when making edits to orders post-purchase, you can now edit and change the international orders without having to worry about the duties, taxes, and currency changes, as these will update automatically.
In the past customers only saw one shipping rate and delivery date, even if items were shipped in multiple shipments or from multiple warehouses. Now, with split shipping and checkout customers can see if their orders will arrive in multiple shipments upfront.
And if multiple shipping speeds are available customers can select options between the lowest price or fastest or even customise for each shipment so they have more control over speed and cost.
To deliver a seamless omnichannel experience it’s crucial to provide customers with greater convenience and flexibility to choose how they receive their orders. That’s why Shopify is rolling out two major updates that will connect online orders with in-store fulfilment.
With Pick Up In Store you can now enable and configure store transfers so that the products customers want get to the location they want to pick up from. This feature allows you to use your network of retail stores and distribution centres to unlock more convenient pickup locations.
And for merchants using Shopify POS, it’s now simpler for retail staff to send orders to customers with the ship-from-store fulfilment workflow. This allows every one of your retail locations to assist in fulfilling orders and easing the pressure on any single store; you’ll save on shipping costs whilst getting orders to your customers faster.
And if the store is too busy to handle an order and staff can’t get to it on time, you can reroute it to the next best store.
Shopify Plus merchants can now request percentage-based deposits at checkout, configured for each B2B customer.
“The B2B Deposit Collection feature is an exciting addition for Shopify Plus merchants who cater to business customers,” says Dan Gamble, Chief Technology Officer at By Association Only.
“It allows sellers to require a percentage-based deposit at checkout for each B2B customer, providing greater flexibility and control over transactions. This feature is particularly beneficial for businesses dealing with custom or made-to-order products, as it ensures a commitment from the buyer and helps manage cash flow more effectively.”
“By enabling B2B Deposit Collection, merchants can tailor their deposit requirements to suit different customer segments or product categories.”
“This level of customisation strengthens the seller-buyer relationship and creates confidence in the transaction process. The feature also seamlessly integrates with Shopify's existing checkout process, ensuring a smooth and intuitive experience for both merchants and their B2B customers.”
Building a business is hard and full of obstacles, that’s why Shopify is building Sidekick, which is a helpful resource of information with all the context and guidance your business needs to make good decisions and resolve tasks.
Sidekick also understands your store and your business data, making its responses more relevant to your specific needs than any other digital assistant.
Because it’s trained on your products, orders and customers, Sidekick can generate customer segments, too.
Over the past year, Shopify has been embedding AI throughout the platform, to keep you on the cutting edge.
The platform has extended AI image editing to everywhere in the admin you work with images, including the Shopify mobile app so you can make professional image edits anywhere, even on the go.
“We’ve even integrated Shopify Magic into the creation flow, to make intelligent, specific recommendations for product categories and attributes,” says Shopify, “making it easier to classify your products, so that they’re searchable and discoverable on your site, on social media and on market places.”
Better quality product images aren’t the only thing that helps shoppers convert. Providing shoppers with real-time answers to their questions can increase conversion by 69 per cent.
Shopify Magic will quickly suggest a response to a customer’s question in Shopify inbox using data specific to your store. You can edit the suggestion or send it as is, saving you time and creating happy customers who are more likely to make a purchase.
Shopify has rebuilt its product taxonomy with over 10,000 categories and 2,000 plus attributes to supercharge discovery across your store, search, and marketplaces using powerful AI.
“Shopify's introduction of a Built-in Taxonomy is a game-changer for product organisation and discoverability”
“Shopify's introduction of a Built-in Taxonomy is a game-changer for product organisation and discoverability,” says Gamble.
“The new Standard Product Taxonomy allows merchants to categorise their products using a predefined set of categories and subcategories. This standardisation simplifies the process of organising products and ensures a consistent browsing experience for customers across different Shopify stores.”
“The Built-in Taxonomy feature is particularly exciting because it enhances the functionality of Shopify's Search and Discovery app.”
Customers can now quickly filter products using intuitive category filters, making it easier to find exactly what they're looking for. This improved navigation not only saves time for shoppers but also increases the likelihood of product discovery and conversion. Moreover, the taxonomy is designed to be flexible, allowing merchants to adapt it to their specific industry or niche, ensuring optimal product organisation and discoverability.
Growing and optimising your business also depends on access to relevant timely performance data, that you can drill down into and easily explore to get important insights. That’s why Shopify has completely rebuilt and simplified its analytics, to work smarter, faster, and intuitively.
“We have completely rebuilt our analytics to work smarter, faster, and more intuitively for you,” says Shopify. “We reimagined the ways that you can see, explore and curate your data, now in real-time”
First, you can access your most important performance metrics at a glance in your dashboard. You can drag, drop, resize, add or remove metric cards to tailor your dashboard to be just the way you want it.
Each card on your dashboard is powered by detailed, pre-built Shopify reports that are designed to answer the most frequent ecommerce questions asked, such as “How are my sales this week compared to last week?”
If you want to dive deeper, you can now edit a Shopify-built report to layer on any combination of additional information and dimensions. This allows you to view a more detailed intersection of your data, like viewing your conversion rate and sessions together in the same single view.
You can also build a new report from scratch with the precise data that you want to monitor and full control over how that data is presented.
Earlier this year Shopify developed theme blocks in developer preview, which introduced the ability for blocks to be more generic and reusable. The platform is continuing to roll out new features that make it easier to build storefronts that stand out and make it easy to create advanced layouts.
Yesterday Shopify introduced Style Settings. With Style Settings, theme developers can give merchants the ability to completely customise the layouts and sections of blocks, making it simple and fast to build their designs.
Blocks are automatically rendered so they can’t be deleted or reordered by merchants. This will allow theme developers to design more complex layouts. And, conditional logic can be applied, like on a collection for example, where a view all button only shows where there are more products in the collection than displayed on the page.
The Hydrogen Visual Editor, powered by Utopia, lets your full team design, merchandise, and build headless stores with a shared view. Your code remains the source of truth, and changes are synced to GitHub with small and straightforward diffs.
So for the first time, you can give your no-technical teams the powers they need to do their job more independently. For example, you can easily craft templates so they can create new pages with just one click.
The Combined Listings app, available exclusively to Shopify Plus merchants, revolutionises the way products with multiple options are presented.
This feature allows merchants to showcase different variations of a product, such as size or colour, under a single-parent listing. Each variation can have its own rich media gallery, description, and URL, providing a more immersive and informative shopping experience for customers.
By consolidating product variations into a single listing, Combined Listings streamlines the browsing process and reduces confusion for shoppers. Customers can easily compare different options and make informed decisions without navigating through multiple product pages.
This enhanced product presentation not only improves the user experience but also has the potential to increase average order value by showcasing the full range of available options
Combined Listings also offers SEO benefits by concentrating search engine authority on a single URL, potentially improving search rankings and driving more organic traffic to the product page.
To quote Finkelstein, “Commerce moves fast but as always… Shopify moves faster.”
The platform is constantly innovating and improving and these, of course, are just the highlights. To see the full list of Editions product updates from Shopify click here.
As time goes on and we learn more about the updates and how they can benefit your business we will of course update you.
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By Association Only is the Shopify Plus agency for the world’s most design-conscious luxury brands. Get in touch to discover how our team of experts can support your brand’s Shopify ambitions.
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