Shopify’s Summer ‘24 Edition has arrived, celebrating two decades of innovation and dedication to creating top-tier software for running businesses. This blog dives into the latest features and enhancements introduced in this release, aimed at unifying key workflows and infrastructure across Shopify’s platform. From streamlined cross-border commerce to AI-powered tools and enhanced analytics, these updates are designed to empower ecommerce professionals and drive growth for businesses of all sizes.
Centralized Expansion with Markets
Millions of merchants rely on Shopify to grow their businesses, whether by selling to new regions, scaling into wholesale, or managing a global network of retail stores. Traditionally, this work was scattered across various parts of the Shopify admin, sometimes requiring multiple stores for different setups. Enter the new Markets feature – a central command center for expansion.
Markets enables Shopify businesses to manage cross-border, B2B, or point-of-sale sales from a single screen within a single store. It allows for custom buyer experiences for each market without needing multiple stores. Markets also provides a bird’s-eye view of your entire business, showing how each market is configured and how they all fit together.
With Markets, businesses can:
-
- Customize catalogs for different regions.
- Set specific catalogs for retail stores, managing pricing and product availability.
- Expand wholesale operations with B2B market customizations.
- Preview product lists and prices as seen by buyers in different markets.
Enhancing Cross-Border Commerce
Markets streamline the complex task of managing international sales. Previously, merchants had to juggle multiple disjointed experiences and settings. Now, with Markets, all configurations for different regions are centralized. For instance, if you want to expand your business into the UK, you can create a new market, customize the product catalog, set prices, and tailor the store’s theme to suit UK buyers – all from a single dashboard.
B2B and POS Customizations
For B2B sellers, Markets simplifies expanding into new regions. Shopify Plus merchants can customize store themes for each B2B market, ensuring a personalized experience for wholesale customers. Additionally, for retailers using Shopify POS, Markets allows for specific catalog settings, managing pricing and product availability for different store locations. This means you can easily mark down prices for outlet stores or stock best-sellers in flagship stores.
All New Analytics
Timely access to performance data is crucial for business optimization. Shopify has completely rebuilt its analytics to be smarter, faster, and more intuitive. This new analytics platform allows merchants to explore and pivot their data as needed, with real-time data streaming for up-to-the-minute insights.
Customizable Dashboards and Reports
The redesigned analytics dashboard provides a customizable view of key performance metrics. Merchants can drag, drop, resize, add, or remove metric cards to tailor the dashboard to their needs. Each card is powered by detailed, pre-built Shopify reports designed to answer common commerce questions, such as weekly sales comparisons.
For those needing deeper insights, Shopify allows editing pre-built reports to add additional metrics and dimensions, creating a detailed view of data intersections like conversion rates and sessions. Custom reports can also be built from scratch, offering full control over data presentation.
AI-Powered Enhancements: Shopify Magic and Sidekick
AI is transforming the landscape of online business tools, and Shopify is at the forefront of this wave. Shopify Magic brings intelligent, specific recommendations for product categories and attributes, making it easier to classify products for better searchability and discoverability.
Introducing Sidekick
Shopify’s Sidekick is a digital assistant that understands your store and business data. It provides relevant, context-specific guidance and can perform tasks such as generating customer segments for targeted marketing campaigns. Sidekick is already live on thousands of Shopify stores and will continue to roll out to more in 2024.
AI Image Editing and Recommendations
AI image editing, initially launched in the last edition, has saved merchants significant time by generating over one million images. This functionality is now extended to the Shopify mobile app, allowing merchants to make professional image edits anywhere. Shopify Magic also enhances customer service by suggesting real-time responses to customer inquiries, increasing conversion rates and improving customer satisfaction.
Enhanced Developer Tools and Visual Editing
Shopify is making significant strides in developer tools and visual editing with the Hydrogen Visual Editor powered by Utopia. This tool allows entire teams to work together in a visual environment, streamlining the creation, building, and shipping of headless storefronts. Developers remain in control, with all changes syncing to GitHub, ensuring the code is always the source of truth.
Visual Editor Capabilities
The Hydrogen Visual Editor empowers non-technical team members to create and update content without extensive developer assistance. Teams can craft templates, annotate components, and push code changes in real-time, enhancing collaboration and efficiency. This tool also simplifies data integration, allowing merchants to visually add content from metaobjects, the Shopify Storefront API, or their CMS.
Managed Markets for Global Expansion
Shopify merchants can now easily manage international operations with managed markets. This solution handles operational complexities like tax filing, duties, prepaid shipping labels, customs documentation, and fraud protection. Recent updates include streamlined catalog restrictions and the ability to include duties and import taxes in product prices, enhancing conversion rates by eliminating checkout surprises.
Simplifying International Sales
Managed markets make it easier for merchants to expand globally by automating many of the complex tasks associated with international sales. Merchants can now see which products are restricted in specific regions and why, ensuring compliance with local regulations. Including duties and import taxes directly in product prices reduces sticker shock for international buyers, improving conversion rates.
Streamlined Fulfillment and Checkout
Shopify is improving the fulfillment experience with features like split shipping at checkout. Customers can see if their orders will arrive in multiple shipments and choose different shipping speeds for each shipment. This transparency builds trust and loyalty by setting clear expectations for delivery dates and options. Previously, customers would see only one shipping rate and delivery date, even if items were shipped separately. With split shipping, they can now choose different shipping speeds and see multiple shipment details upfront. This feature extends to subscription products as well, offering more control and flexibility for recurring orders.
Shop Campaigns and Audiences
Shopify Audiences and Shop Campaigns have been updated to help merchants convert more customers and make their advertising spend more efficient. Custom audience lists and retargeting boosts are driving significant increases in retargeting conversions. Shop Campaigns now include external ad platforms and expand to Canadian buyers, providing more opportunities for growth.
Enhanced Marketing Tools
Shopify Audiences helps merchants find more customers on top digital ad platforms by generating custom audience lists based on powerful algorithms and commerce signals. Retargeting Boost lists have shown to double retargeting conversions, offering significant value for marketing budgets. Shop Campaigns allow merchants to drive additional reach with promotion on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, paying only for conversions at a set customer acquisition cost.
Enhanced Point-of-Sale (POS) Features
Shopify continues to innovate in the retail space with new POS features designed to simplify in-store tasks and improve customer interactions. Key updates include:
- One-tap digital receipts and marketing opt-ins.
- Automatic capture of customer information at checkout.
- Return rules and manager override capabilities.
These features streamline the checkout process, enhance customer engagement, and provide staff with clear guidelines and context for returns. The automatic capture of customer information improves data collection, enabling better customer relationship management and streamlined in-store operations.
New Style Settings for Themes
Liquid theme developers now have more layout flexibility with new style settings, enabling merchants to customize their storefronts more easily. These settings support reusable blocks, conditional logic, and static rendering, offering advanced layout customization for unique storefront designs.Merchants can now customize settings like direction, alignment, and gaps between image blocks for unique layouts. Style settings can also adapt to different devices, ensuring a consistent appearance across desktop and mobile platforms.
Conclusion
Shopify Editions Summer ’24 is a testament to the platform’s commitment to unifying commerce and empowering merchants. With over 170 updates including the new Markets feature, real-time analytics, AI-powered tools, and enhanced developer and POS features, Shopify continues to provide merchants with the tools they need to grow and succeed in an increasingly complex digital landscape. Whether you’re a new business or an established enterprise, Shopify’s latest updates offer unparalleled opportunities for expansion and optimization.
For more detailed information on the Shopify Editions Summer ’24, visit the official announcement page.
StoreAutomator’s cloud-based solution empowers businesses to to seamlessly manage product catalogs, multi-channel listings, inventory, and more, all in one place. Discover how we can help you streamline your commerce management and achieve unparalleled growth.