1. Extended Checkout & Extensibility
Summary:
Customizing your Shopify checkout is more accessible than ever, thanks to the introduction of 14 new APIs, UI components, and over 90 innovative checkout apps. While Shopify's one-page checkout is a proven game-changer, there were still some limitations to address. These new updates remove a lot of the obstacles we encountered when converting our clients’ checkout from checkout.liquid to Checkout Extensibility.
With the new Branding API, we can give your checkout a whole new look and feel that suits your brand. The validation API is a valuable new checkout extension that allows you to perform validations (such as minimum product value or quantity).
New checkout features: delivery customization through APIs, Checkout extensions for Thank You and Order Status pages (exclusive to Shopify Plus merchants), Checkout/Cart Validation, Privacy Consent, Map Components, Choice List, Payment Icon, Product Thumbnails, Advanced color settings, header and footer customizations, container styles. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans
Rollout: Now available
Jeroen Baake (Project Manager): “This series of checkout updates allows merchants to further uplift and customize their checkout experience. Are you still on old checkout.liquid with your custom Shopify checkout? Then this is your final call to upgrade. Remember: On 14-08-2024, checkout.liquid will be depreciated and merchants who have not switched to the new Shopify checkout will fall back to a default checkout.”
2. Powering more complex products and attributes
Summary:
Shopify has improved the listing and discovery experience for all products in the most significant update to their product model in over a decade. Explore the latest merchandising features, from a new app designed for merchandising products available in multiple colors and styles to an improved product taxonomy and more. Learn more here.
- View and bulk edit variants grouped by option: Effortlessly handle numerous variants simultaneously with Shopify’s improved variants card. Additionally, you can now conveniently view and edit price and availability details for both individual and multiple inventory locations directly in-line.
- Shopify Combined Listings app (Shopify Plus only): The new Shopify Combined Listings app allows you to create a product listing that combines all the different variations of a product into one centralized product listing. Imagine products become ‘parents’ with their variants listed as ‘children’ with their own individual descriptions, rich media, meta data and URL. This update will save merchandisers loads of time, as well as positively impact their marketing efforts (unique descriptive URLs for marketing campaigns, link sharing and SEO).
- Rich attributes for each product category: Shopify's updated taxonomy aligns each standard product category with a comprehensive set of linked attributes. This simplifies the process of creating, categorizing, and organizing products while automating the generation of variants for a more streamlined experience.
Relevant to: Merchants with high numbers of product variants
Rollout: Released in 2024 - Sign up for early access to Shopify Combined Listings and the other product merchandising updates.
Bob Rockland (CCO / Co-founder): “Bulk editing variants will make it much easier to apply updates to product variants, which will come in handy when you have a lot of variants. Shopify’s Combined Listings App is great for SEO too, normally you would need an agency for this.”
Sónia Gomes (Frontend developer): “I’m very curious to see how Shopify’s Combined Listings App will save time for both developers and merchants. Development-wise, we always had to create a custom solution, from Javascript solutions to building setups with Metafields… and sometimes, we found barriers when it came to the support of those solutions by PIM systems. So having the option to do it natively will be gold!”
3. Semantic Search in Shopify Search & Discovery: Smarter search that better understands a customer’s intent
Summary:
A great shopping experience starts with a simple search and seamless discovery. Shopify’s Search & Discovery app got upgraded and now contains AI-powered semantic search (Shopify Plus only). Shopify's latest AI technology introduces a more intuitive search experience for stores that goes beyond simple keyword matching by understanding the context of customer queries to deliver more relevant results. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Shopify Plus merchants
Rollout: Available for Shopify Plus merchants, now only in English
Pier Segaar (Solution Engineer): “We like efficiency and cutting-edge tech trends, and AI is definitely one of them. Shopify’s default search has already seen some big improvements a year ago with the Shopify Search & Discovery app, now it is taken to the next level. This can also save costs for merchants with larger product catalogs, who would no longer need an external search app.”
4. New web performance dashboard
Summary:
Shopify expanded its global points of presence, allowing them to speed up the platform by 35%. But since improving performance is a joint venture between Shopify and you as a merchant, they now introduced a new dashboard to provide you with insights to improve your performance. The web performance dashboard, now accessible on your Online Store's Themes page, helps you improve real user experience across three Google Core Web Vitals: speed, stability, and interactivity. This new tool provides you with insights and opportunities to boost your store's performance, improving conversion rates and reducing bounce rates. Learn more about the dashboard here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans
Rollout: As of January 31, 2024, Shopify will begin rolling it out over the next few weeks
Mark Oosterom (Director of Customer Success): “Shopify's new dashboard helps you monitor your Core Web Vitals with real-time data, so you know exactly how a new feature or app impacts your site speed.”
5. Draft orders support discounts and metafields
Summary:
Boost your sales potential with improved support for discount codes, automatic discounts, and the capability to combine discounts seamlessly in draft orders. Additionally, metafields from your draft orders will now seamlessly transfer to completed orders, providing a more comprehensive and streamlined experience. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans
Rollout: Available now, you can try it out here.
Coen Fredriks (E-commerce strategist): “Price strategy and discount are always relevant for merchants to push conversion and sales. Till now, the options from Shopify were always limited. Looking forward to seeing the results of this optimization.”
Patrick Watzeels (Solution Architect): “The possibility to add metafields to a Draft Order and be able to copy them over to the final order automatically can be very beneficial when you’re directly connected to a 3PL Fulfillment company. In some occasions, they need more information than standard available in a Shopify Order.”
6. B2B on Shopify: Support for sales reps & Custom discounts
Summary:
Shopify is rolling out access control, providing precise authority to your sales reps over B2B orders. This helps sales teams to place orders and access customer info for their accounts.
Furthermore, Custom Promotional Discounts for B2B clients are now available. Craft exclusive discounts using third-party or custom apps powered by Shopify Functions, complementing the customer-specific wholesale prices set in Catalogs. Restrict access for sales reps with our new staff permissions, allowing them to only manage their own orders and customer info. Learn more here.
Relevant to: B2B (only Shopify Plus plans).
Rollout: You can try this out here.
Wouter Monkhorst (CEO/Co-founder): “The new access controls and custom discounts features make it possible to turn Shopify into a bespoke B2B Sales Tool, empowering agents to do the shopping for their B2B clients in a way that fits the merchant's B2B culture best. This creates a great window of opportunity for merchants to make the leap from email and paper to a SaaS solution with a low TCO.”
7. Native Exchanges on Shopify
Summary:
Native Exchanges, set to launch early in 2024, will help how you handle returns and exchanges on Shopify. Customers seeking to exchange items rather than opt for a refund? The platform allows you to seamlessly create returns and exchanges in your admin, retaining revenue, minimizing refunds, and potentially increasing revenue through upsells. When adding exchange items to a return, the system takes the value of return items and applies it against the exchange items. You have the flexibility to collect any differences in value from the customer or issue a refund at your preferred time, whether immediately or upon receiving the returned items. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans
Rollout: Available in early 2024.
Dominick Mastenbroek (Project Manager): “It’s an excellent solution for 60-70% of Shopify merchants. What you’ll get is a simple, fast way to offer exchanges. What you won’t get: connections with 3PLs, automated return handling, integrations with label providers and advanced return rules. Code’s native Shopify app Returner offers just that.”
8. Shopify Subscriptions app in full release
Summary: With Shopify Subscriptions, merchants can improve customer lifetime value and ensure predictable revenue through various subscription plans. This includes the flexibility to customize models, such as combining one-time purchases with recurring deliveries or offering entirely subscription-based products. The platform seamlessly integrates with Shopify, providing a user-friendly experience for both merchants and customers. The free subscriptions app allows easy setup and management of subscriptions directly from the Shopify admin, empowering customers to conveniently modify or skip subscription orders from their accounts. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans
Rollout: This app is now available on all Shopify plans - Install the app now.
Pier Segaar (Solutions Engineer): “While the Shopify Subscriptions app still doesn’t bring the same level of functionality and customizability offered by third-party apps like Recharge or Firmhouse, it can open up new revenue streams to brands at no extra cost. The most important downside currently is the lack of support for local payment options. Awesome for pilots, but not (yet) our go-to subscription solution for serious scale.”
9. Product Variant Limit jumped from 100 to 2000
Summary: Merchants with large single-product variation have been longing for a higher product variant limit for a long time, so this is great news for merchandisers! The 200 product variant limit will soon be increased to 2000 so you can easily manage and display a wide range of options, like sizes, colors, and materials, all in one product listing. Learn more here.
Are you a Shopify Plus merchant offering products with lots of variants, e.g., colors and styles? The 2000 variant limit is not yet available to all merchants, but make sure to check out the Combined Listings App.
Relevant to: Businesses with lots of product variants, including Enterprise and B2B merchants.
Rollout: This feature is in developer preview and will be gradually available for selected merchants throughout 2024.
Bas Kuijf (Lead frontend developer): "This big performance update allows merchants to create advanced product configurators for products with many options. Also, merchants no longer need to handle product variants for size and color as separate products with the new Combined Listing App.”
10. New theme blocks
Summary: Reusable theme blocks are great news for developers (eliminating lots of redundant work), but it’s one that will bring clear benefits to merchants too as they will help you keep your store design consistent and efficient. You can create blocks like text sections, images, or buttons once and use them in different sections across your store. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans
Rollout: Available in Developer preview
Sabine Tieland (Frontend developer): “With the ‘new theme blocks’ feature, Shopify offers yet another level of code reusability to our developers, resulting in better maintainability, consistency, efficiency and code architecture, But this one will also bring clear benefits such as lower cost of ownership and more degrees of freedom to help you keep your store design consistent and efficient.”
11. Customer Account Extensibility
Summary: After launching customer accounts last year, Shopify now makes it easy for developers to enhance those customer accounts by adding apps and features through a simple drag-and-drop interface. This means customers can easily update their personal information, view loyalty points, store credits, and more. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants that want to focus on retention and a great post-purchase experience
Rollout: Available in developer preview
Mark Rijkelijkhuizen (Lead frontend developer): “Being able to modify the new account pages is what we have been waiting for since the customer account pages launched in 2023. We can now create a full-page extension, and fill it with all sorts of helpful and valuable functionalities. It now also supports the new B2B offerings.”
Time to explore and see what’s next
In this whirlwind of innovation, Shopify's Winter Edition '24 has once again proven its commitment to revolutionizing the e-commerce landscape. With 100+ different updates, we acknowledge that our spotlight on 11 is just the tip of the iceberg.
While we couldn't cover every highlight in this blog, we encourage you to explore the full spectrum of updates and discover how each one can help grow your online stores. If you need help or have questions about implementing these features, don't hesitate to reach out.
We are already very curious and looking forward to what the upcoming Summer Editions will have in store for us. One thing is clear: Shopify continues pushing the boundaries, and we can’t wait to discover the innovations and possibilities that will shape the next chapter!
