The sun is shining, and so are the latest updates from Shopify! With the arrival of summer, Shopify has rolled out its much-anticipated Summer Editions 2023, packed with new features and enhancements to make your online store sizzle. Whether you're a seasoned Shopify merchant or just starting out, these updates are sure to elevate your e-commerce game. Let's dive into the coolest additions that will keep your store hot this season.
Shopify Subscriptions (New App; Available Through Early Access Only)
As the subscription economy continues to thrive in e-commerce, there's a growing demand for convenient and flexible subscription solutions. While numerous third-party apps exist on the App Store, many come with a price tag. However, with the all-new Shopify Subscriptions app, you can provide your customers with free subscription options, allowing them to effortlessly subscribe to your products.
Moreover, managing subscriptions becomes a breeze for your customers as they gain the ability to perform essential actions like canceling, pausing, or updating payment details directly within their customer accounts. You can sign up for early access to the app here.
Shopify Collective (New App)
Boosting sales and increasing average order value are essential goals for any e-commerce business. One effective method to achieve this is by expanding your product catalog with enticing new items that encourage customers to make additional purchases. Shopify Collective emerges as the perfect solution to facilitate this process through fruitful partnerships with other brands within the Shopify community.
With Shopify Collective, discovering and curating new products from high-quality brands in the U.S. becomes a breeze. By integrating these products into your store, you offer your customers a diverse selection without the need to purchase and stock inventory. This seamless integration allows you to gain margins effortlessly, boosting your revenue.
Navigating the Collective app is an intuitive experience. In the discovery section, you can explore a myriad of eye-catching products, but you also have the option to search for specific items like cleansing brushes, which complement your bestselling facial creams. Once you find a product of interest, you can request pricing directly from the brand, unlocking the potential for a lucrative partnership.
Once you receive the pricing details and confirm the partnership, importing the chosen products into your store is simple and seamless. The Collective app ensures continuous inventory synchronization between your store and the supplier, eliminating any worries about overselling. Managing orders, fulfillment, and payments can all be done effortlessly through your Shopify Admin.
Using Shopify Collective creates a win-win situation. Retailers experience boosted profits, suppliers expand their sales, and customers enjoy the convenience of finding everything they need in one checkout. Moreover, the app is free to use for eligible Shopify stores, making it an attractive and accessible solution for growing your business.
Learn All About Shopify Collective
Shopify Marketplace Connect (New App, Formerly Codisto)
This app is designed to streamline your product uploads to various marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. With this powerful tool, you can effortlessly synchronize inventory, orders, descriptions, customers, and pricing, ensuring seamless management across platforms. Take advantage of the flexibility to set up custom pricing tailored to each specific marketplace.
Notably, Shopify Marketplace Connect appears to be a revamped version of the previously available Codisto app, which is no longer listed on the App Store and has been integrated into Shopify's official offerings. This enhanced app brings an array of features to simplify your multi-platform selling experience and offers a unified solution for marketplace integration. Enjoy the convenience of centralized management and maximize your reach across leading marketplaces with Shopify Marketplace Connect.
Shopify Bundles (New App)
With this powerful new app, creating enticing product bundles has never been easier. Having extensively tested it on one of our stores, we can confidently say that it not only meets but exceeds expectations. What sets Shopify Bundles apart is its seamless native integration within the platform, providing you with an intuitive and user-friendly experience. You can now effortlessly curate custom bundles from the existing products in your catalog, tailoring unique offers to cater to your customers' diverse needs. Whether it's a "Buy One, Get One" deal, a complementary package, or a thematic collection, the possibilities are endless.
One of the most significant advantages of Shopify Bundles is the automated inventory adjustment feature. When a customer purchases a bundle, the app automatically updates the inventory of the bundled products, sparing you from manual adjustments and potential discrepancies. The icing on the cake is that Shopify Bundles comes at no cost to you. Unlike many third-party bundle apps available on the App Store that require payment, this native solution offers all its fantastic features completely free of charge, making it an even more attractive choice for your e-commerce store.
Updates To Shopify Collabs
Shopify Collabs is a game-changing solution for businesses looking to connect with customers through influencers and creators. As advertising costs rise, Collabs provides a cost-effective way to market products and expand brand reach. The Collabs network within Shopify Admin simplifies the process of getting creators on board to promote products, offering instant commission options and seamless application procedures.
For merchants, Collabs network powers affiliate sales without adding extra workload. It works alongside other recruitment features like application pages, streamlining the approval process for brand fans. Creators benefit from a wide range of products and brands within the network, making it easy to explore and share products that offer instant commissions. They can apply to work closely with merchants of their choice, facilitating meaningful collaborations.
The Collabs network also benefits merchants by providing valuable data on sales generated by creators without additional costs. This information allows merchants to identify top-performing creators and offer them higher incentives or explore further partnership opportunities. Shopify Collabs streamlines the management of creator relations, empowering businesses to drive more sales with less effort and expand their reach through authentic influencer marketing.
Learn All About Shopify Collabs
Custom Metaobject Landing Pages
Every e-commerce business has its unique characteristics that make it stand out. For instance, a gourmet coffee shop provides carefully curated coffee blends that customers have come to rely on for an exceptional morning brew. A fashion boutique shares inspiring stories about emerging designers to generate excitement for their latest collections. Similarly, a tech store showcases the cutting-edge features of its gadgets to emphasize their superiority. All these businesses share a common goal - to convey their exclusive content through captivating and visually enticing storefronts, all with just a simple click.
Enter Metaobjects, Shopify's latest addition to its custom data platform. With Metaobjects, businesses can create structured design elements for their storefronts, including designer highlights, influencer profiles, and interactive quizzes to personalize the customer experience. Additionally, it allows back-office extension and merchandising flows with custom business information like brand specifications or product highlights.
One innovative application of Metaobjects is the creation of structured landing pages for online stores. For instance, a brand may want to design a page for each of its unique coffee blends, complete with captivating images, detailed flavor profiles, and recommended brewing methods. With Metaobject Pages, businesses can develop a reusable template for each coffee blend, streamlining content management and enhancing efficiency. By setting up a Metaobject definition, businesses can effortlessly populate the template with new coffee blends and seamlessly publish them as pages on their online store. This streamlined process empowers brands to showcase their artisanal blends, designer collaborations, tech gadget specifications, and much more, offering endless possibilities for creative and engaging storefronts.
Shopify Sidekick: AI-Powered Functionality
Shopify Sidekick is an AI-powered virtual assistant designed to assist Shopify store owners in effectively managing their businesses. It was introduced by Tobias Lütke, the founder and CEO of Shopify, with the aim of streamlining various tasks and providing valuable support to store owners. One of the primary functionalities of Shopify Sidekick is its integration with Shopify Inbox. Leveraging AI capabilities, it automatically generates replies and FAQs, enabling store owners to efficiently respond to customer inquiries and provide timely support.
Furthermore, Shopify Sidekick aids in creating improved emails and product descriptions. Crafting compelling and informative product descriptions is vital for engaging customers, and Sidekick's AI capabilities can analyze product information to generate optimized descriptions, thereby enhancing the overall shopping experience for customers. The introduction of Shopify Sidekick is part of the broader Shopify Magic toolbox, which comprises various AI-powered commerce tools aimed at empowering merchants and enhancing their efficiency in managing their online stores.
Updates To Checkout
Shopify maintains a strong focus on improving its checkout experience, reaffirming it as a top priority. In their efforts to enhance the checkout process, Shopify introduced 17 new APIs specially tailored for developers. Alongside this, they presented an exciting product roadmap dedicated to Checkout Functions.
The recent update to Shopify enables apps to implement custom validation logic for cart and checkout processes. This empowers apps to block buyers from completing checkout if they attempt to use a PO box address. Additionally, apps can now verify, suggest modifications, and ensure accurate delivery addresses to prevent address correction fees and ensure smooth order deliveries.
Moreover, apps have the capability to offer personalized delivery options, such as selecting delivery dates, and times, and providing special delivery instructions, enhancing the overall customer experience.
For developers, the update allows them to preview the one-page checkout, order status, and thank you pages directly within the checkout editor, streamlining the development process and facilitating better optimization for a seamless shopping journey.
Updates To Shopify Functions
With these updates, third-party developers gained the ability to extend or replace crucial parts of Shopify's back-end logic using custom code. This introduction marked a significant leap forward in building unique commerce experiences.
Since its initial release, developers have been harnessing the power of Functions in innovative and creative ways, inspiring Shopify to explore even more customization possibilities and platform improvements.
In this latest update, Shopify has expanded access to a wider range of Functions APIs, enabling developers to craft customizations with APIs like product discounts, order routing, location rules, cart and checkout validations, cart transforms, fulfillment constraints, and more.
The developer experience has also received significant attention. With expanded JavaScript support now available in General Availability, a unified development experience for all extensions streamlines workflows. Versioning and rollback capabilities allow for better control over the development process, and the Shopify app Dev command speeds up development and iteration.
Beyond just the developer experience, Shopify has also added support for Apple and meta fields, simplifying implementations and unlocking more use cases. Developers can now utilize additional cart data fields, such as customer authentication status and selling plan data, to create even more advanced commerce customizations.
Learn All About Shopify Functions
Shopify Flow Now Available to All Pricing Plans
Shopify Flow, an app that enables store owners to create powerful automations such as sending welcome emails or delisting sold-out products, was initially exclusive to Shopify Plus merchants. However, Shopify has now made it accessible to other plans as well. Starting today, Shopify Basic stores can also use Shopify Flow for free, unlocking the potential for streamlined and automated workflows to enhance their operations.
B2B Functionalities For Shopify Plus Stores
New B2B enhancements have been introduced, but these features are exclusively available for Shopify Plus merchants. Shopify has been actively working on enhancing the B2B segment, providing businesses with advanced tools tailored to their specific requirements. Notable additions to the B2B platform are mentioned below.
Tailor Your Store to B2B & International Audiences
In the theme editor, you'll find a new drop-down menu that allows you to customize specific pages, elements, or blocks for particular markets or B2B segments. This is an incredibly powerful tool that simplifies the process of localizing storefronts for specific markets. The feature is automatically activated when you're using Shopify Markets or B2B, making it even easier to tailor your online store to different audiences.
Set Volume Pricing And Quantity Rules
This update gives you the option to implement quantity rules and volume pricing, which enable you to establish specific quantity requirements or price breaks for your B2B orders.
With quantity rules, you can set specific requirements or limitations for B2B orders. For example, you can sell products in certain increments or restrict the amount of a product purchased at once, tailoring the buying process for your B2B customers.
Volume pricing allows you to offer price breaks to customers who purchase larger quantities. By setting volume pricing, you can encourage B2B customers to buy more by providing discounts based on their purchase quantities. These tools can be used together or independently, giving you flexibility in pricing strategy. Utilize these powerful features to create a personalized and efficient B2B shopping experience on your Shopify store.
Introduction Of Quick Order Lists.
If you use a free theme by Shopify, version 11.0.0 or later, then you can add the Quick order list section to your Products template, so that your business-to-business (B2B) customers can easily purchase multiple quantities across different product variants.
Store B2B Customers' Credit Card Information
When checking out, B2B customers can click a checkbox to vault their credit card information, or they can log into their account to add a vaulted card. After credit card information is vaulted, B2B customers can choose to use the vaulted card on future checkouts.
Support For PayPal in B2B Transactions.
With the new feature, B2B businesses can conveniently pay for their orders and invoices using PayPal. Moreover, they have the option to easily reconcile payments directly through their Shopify admin.
PO Numbers
This update allows you the ability to add, edit, or view purchase order numbers directly on the order details page for B2B orders.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Shopify Summer Editions 2023 brings a plethora of exciting updates and features that are designed to empower businesses and enhance the overall e-commerce experience. From improved search functionality to new apps like Shopify Subscriptions and Bundles, merchants now have more tools at their disposal to boost sales and customer engagement. The addition of Shopify Collabs Network and Metaobjects further expands the possibilities for collaboration and customization, allowing businesses to thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
With Shopify's unwavering commitment to innovation, the Summer Editions of 2023 serve as a testament to their dedication in providing cutting-edge solutions that cater to the diverse needs of merchants worldwide. Whether you're a seasoned Shopify user or just starting your e-commerce journey, these updates are sure to make a significant impact on your business's success. So, embrace the Summer Editions with enthusiasm and make the most of the exciting opportunities that await!
