1. Checkout Blocks is Now Free
Summary:
Shopify Plus merchants can now enjoy Checkout Blocks for free. This feature makes it easier to customize checkouts and thank you pages with no coding required. You can add custom banners, loyalty rewards, and more to enhance the checkout experience. It was built specifically for Shopify Plus and Enterprise using checkout extensibility. You can get the app here.
Relevant to: Shopify Plus merchants.
Rollout: Available for Shopify Plus merchants, now only in English.
Mark Rijkelijkhuizen (Lead frontend developer): "Checkout blocks allow you to easily add upsells, USPs, and much more to your most important page. This will create a much better checkout experience!"
Bas Kuijff (Lead frontend developer): "The Checkout Blocks app allows merchants to add upsells, extra fields, custom address validations, and branding changes to checkout with no/low code to optimize conversion. Because Shopify acquired the app, it's now free!"
Mark Oosterom (Director of Customer Success): "With the rollout of the new checkout, Shopify is fully committed to the most optimal checkout experience. By making the powerful Checkout Blocks app available for free for Shopify Plus merchants, more control & optimization is possible for them to further increase conversion!"
2. New Style Settings for Themes
Summary:
Liquid theme developers now have more layout flexibility with new style settings, static blocks, and block targeting. This feature aims to provide greater customization options. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans.
Rollout: Available in developer preview. Coming soon.
Roy van Neden (Frontend Developer): “The upcoming new theme styles will give you even more freedom to make the changes you want to your shop. With smart section planning, we as developers can offer many options within the same section, allowing you to get more creative and build the converting pages you desire.”
3. Store Credit
Summary:
Say goodbye to using gift cards and discount codes as workarounds—Shopify now lets you issue store credit directly from your admin. From your admin, issue store credit, view balances, and transaction history, and let customers use their credit at checkout effortlessly.
Store credit is a non-transferable monetary value tied directly to the customer's account, not like gift cards or discount codes. You can set it with or without an expiration date. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans.
Rollout: This feature is available globally with early access.
Coen Fredriks (E-Commerce Strategist): “This is one of the out-of-the-box features that really makes Shopify stand out from other platforms. You can couple store credit to a loyalty program, resell, returns or use them in special promotions. For example to add store credit at various thresholds to incentivize customers to bulk buy and grab savings for their next visit.”
4. Split shipping in checkout
Summary:
Boost your customer's checkout experience by clearly showing when an order will be split into multiple shipments. This transparency allows them to choose the shipping option that best fits their needs, whether it's the lowest price, the fastest delivery, or a custom option. Give your customers more clarity and choice, ensuring they know exactly how and when their items will arrive. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans.
Rollout: Available now.
Bob Rockland (Co-founder): "Frequently requested functionality that we previously built custom for our clients, such as Urbanara. Always nice to see Shopify invest in much-needed features like these. They listen to us :)."
5. Combined Listings App
Summary:
A combined listing connects separate products into a single, unified listing. You can link products by shared attributes like color, model, or dimension.
The Combined Listings app lets you showcase rich media galleries, descriptions, and URLs for multiple product options under one parent listing. This feature is especially beneficial for Shopify Plus merchants, making it simpler to present products without a custom theme code. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Shopify Plus merchants.
Rollout: Available now, download the app here.
Pier Segaar (Solutions Engineer): "With a combined listing, we can choose to add separate products but present them as variants on the PDP. Something that was previously only possible with custom theme code is now made simple."
Bas Kuijff (Lead frontend developer): “Before, we needed to split variants into separate products to display each variant on the PLP. The combined listings app allows customers to display variants on the PLP without losing the connection to the different variants meaning better discoverability for customers."
6. Hydrogen Visual Editor by Utopia
Summary:
The Hydrogen Visual Editor, powered by Utopia, allows your dev team to design, merchandise, and build with a shared store view. Changes are synced to GitHub, ensuring your code remains the source of truth. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans.
Rollout: Available now.
Matt Morrow (Frontend Developer): "Shopify is making headless development a dream with the new visual editor powered by Utopia. It brings design and development in one collaborative place. Devs can edit their React code directly in the editor via an embedded VS Code and commit and deploy with CI/CD. Merchants and designers can layout a template made up of custom components and tweak the design using the GUI. Combined, this gives everyone more control while increasing transparency and reliability. It's the next level in website development and I can't wait for it!"
7. Manual Payment Methods for B2B
Summary:
Offering flexibility in payment options, merchants can now provide manual payment methods such as bank transfers, checks, and international wires at checkout. This feature caters to B2B customers who prefer alternatives to credit card payments. Learn more here.
Relevant to: B2B (only Shopify Plus plans).
Rollout: This feature is in early access.
Pier Segaar (Solutions Engineer): "Even though direct payment can be a nice option, most B2B payments will still be handled via invoice & bank transfer. Especially for B2B customers, it is important to have the flexibility to set up manual payment methods.“
Bob Rockland (Co-founder): “With these and all the other new B2B features (Trade theme, sync data with Microsoft Business Central, 10K ship-to locations) and the speed at which Shopify continues to evolve their B2B platform, any B2B merchant should seriously consider Shopify for a low TCO and great customer experience.”
8. Trade Theme
Summary:
The new Trade theme is designed for B2B stores, facilitating wholesale repeat and bulk purchasing. Trade's professional and clean design requires minimal customizations. Learn more here.
Relevant to: All merchants, but comes pre-built with support for all of our advanced features for merchants on Shopify Plus.
Rollout: Available now, you can try it out here.
Bob Rockland (Co-founder): "If you are still doing B2B sales via email, telephone (or fax ;), Shopify’s out-of-the-box Trade Theme is a great way to set your first steps in online B2B selling with a relatively short time to market."
9. Track how events impact Store Performance
Summary:
With the Web Performance dashboard, you can monitor your core web vitals and track the impact of changes to your store, such as app installations and theme updates, on performance metrics over time. Adjust filters to best reflect your site’s traffic and see the direct impact of your changes. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans.
Rollout: Available now.
Mark Rijkelijkhuizen (Lead frontend developer): "We can now get insights into the impact apps and other changes have on your shop. This will push the quality of apps, making them faster and better."
10. Shopify Magic - Suggested Categories & Attributes
Summary:
Classify your products effortlessly with Shopify Magic-suggested categories, attributes, and values. This feature makes products more discoverable in your storefront and marketplaces. Learn more here.
Additionally, good to know that Sidekick (your personal Shopify Assistant) is live in thousands of Shopify stores and Shopify is unlocking AI media editing on mobile and across the admin. You can easily answer customer questions with AI-suggested replies in your Inbox (coming soon). So, lots of AI tools are available now!
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans.
Rollout: Available now, you can try it out here.
Coen Fredriks (E-commerce Strategist): "Simple conversion optimization can be achieved by properly arranging your categories and menu(s). Many brands do not think outside the box enough. I expect a lot from this functionality."
11. Stack Discounts in Store
Summary:
Stacking discounts just got easier. For some promotions, combining different discounts can significantly help customer satisfaction and increase sales. Shopify now allows you to stack discounts, providing customers with the best possible total discount on their cart. You can set up automatic discounts and discount codes to work together seamlessly.
When configuring discounts, you can select which classes of discounts can be combined. For instance, a 10% off order discount can be set to combine with product discount codes. This means that multiple discounts—order, product, and shipping—can be applied to the same order, optimizing savings for the customer. However, if customers enter multiple discount codes that cannot be combined, they will see a message indicating that their discount codes are incompatible. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans.
Rollout: Available now, you can try it out here.
Bas Kuijff (Lead frontend developer): "Stacking multiple discounts wasn't easily possible before. With the discount allocation API, we can develop a strategic approach to this."
Coen Fredriks (E-commerce Strategist): “Sales campaigns still generate a lot of sales and revenue. This functionality brings more creativity because they have to look differently at their discounts. This will also lead to better campaigns and the personalization of sales campaigns.”
12. Image Filters for Search
Summary:
Visual filters using the Search & Discovery app make it easier for your customers to find the perfect product. Now, you can filter by logos, icons, and other images. Imagine a fabric color filter showing little color swatches—super helpful, right?
Create visuals for your filter values using metafields and meta objects, making product discovery quicker and more intuitive. Learn more here.
Relevant to: Merchants on all Shopify plans.
Rollout: Available now, you can try it out here.
Bob Rockland (Co-founder): "The Shopify Search & Discovery App continues to improve and is a very viable alternative to established search solutions, especially when your catalog is not too big and you are not selling complex products (e.g. consumer electronics)."
These are just a few highlights from the over 150 updates in Shopify's Summer Editions 2024. For a deeper dive into all the new features, check out the full list. If you want to know how these innovations can help your business and optimize your Shopify experience, contact us here.
