The 7 Most Important New Features Announced At Shopify Editions
Image from Shopify.
Shopify Editions went live last week, announcing a host of new and coming soon features along with a super high-tech animated rollercoaster video to get us all excited about where eCommerce is heading.
Here’s my short & sweet take on what will matter most to your online storee -
1/ Combined Discounts
Small but mighty. Finally we can enable multiple discount codes at the checkout — eg. a 10% off code AND free shipping. This has definitely caused headaches for us all in the past!
2/ Shopify Audiences
Sync your customer data to FB and other paid platforms for audience retargeting and lookalikes. Currently you can do this, but it’s a manual CSV so this will help automate the process. It’s only available to select merchants right now, but rolling out soon.
3/ Shopify POS
If COVID taught us anything, it’s that physical stores will survive despite eCommerce growth. Shopify have put a lot of money into POS and it’s gone from something relatively basic to a real contender — now offering in-store iPhone tap to pay payments, Google local inventory sync (this is huge for brick & mortar marketing),
4/ Pre-Orders & other checkout apps
Not a native pre-order functionality (boo), but Shopify will now make it easier to integrate some of the most popular pre-order apps within the checkout, with customised messaging around fulfilment times. For most stores, I suspect there’ll still be a decent amount of custom development to setup pre-orders.
5/ Better Search
Shopify’s native search is finally getting a facelift, with the ability to set custom filters, promote specific products and recommend products via AI. Not as advanced as the dedicated search apps out there (which you should definitely explore if you have a large inventory) but looks to be a good improvement.
6/ ShopifyQL Notebooks (Plus only)
Currently the only way to explore your Shopify data is to use pre-built reports with limited customisation, or export as CSV and manipulate it yourself. Notebooks promises to be a new way to explore data, similar to Google Data Studio, with pre-built, customisable templates. As a data nerd, I’m curious to see where this goes, but I’ll still be predominantly relying on Google Analytics.
7/ Shopify Flow for all
Once a Plus-only feature, Shopify’s custom automations tool is now available to all stores on the Shopify plan and higher. It will particularly benefit stores that use Shopify’s inventory management system and those who rely on apps which integrate with Flow such as subscription and loyalty apps or use Slack for internal comms.
Other Noteworthy Features
B2B Storefront (Plus only) — We’ve had B2B for a while on Plus but it’s been a bit basic — it seems Shopify is now developing this further, with the ability for custom themes and a better checkout for wholesale customers. Depending on your industry, this offering might really be a time-saver for your team.
Twitter Shops — Does anyone really shop on Twitter? Maybe? I don’t see it becoming anything close to Facebook or Instagram, but nice to have.
Planet app — A new app for merchants to offer carbon offsets for shipping based on distance, weight and shipping mode. Nice idea — unsure if it will really move the needle.
Fulfilment network — Now offering 2 day delivery and 6 months’ free storage per item. Depending on your profit margin, a good option for small stores or stores breaking into new markets with high expectations on delivery timeframes (USA)
ShopCash — Shopify is launching a cash back program as a part of their Shop app ecosystem, where merchants can participate in cash back promotions to generate sales, in the same way you would with a Cashrewards or similar.
Hydrogen — If you’re on a custom headless storefront, your developer will probably be excited about the changes to this framework. For the vast majority of the market who are not on headless, it’s irrelevant.
Shopify Functions — Developers can now create their own backend code in an app called Functions, which gives them more open-source flexibility without needing a separate host. This will probably be pretty great for small customisations of the platform.
Shopify Capital — Small loans to growing stores which are repaid based on a percentage of daily sales. Smart idea for small stores that need a boost and are confident in returns.