Shopify Editions

👋🏻 Hey, hi, hello!

In 2017, a year after graduating from Syracuse University, I opened my email to find someone reaching out about an application I had put in for a position at an advertising agency in Baltimore. Honestly, I didn’t even remember applying. The role (Project Manager) was described as “the conductor who keeps the trains on the tracks”. I wasn’t so sure the conductor of a train really had anything to do with whether, or not, the train stayed on the tracks… but, nonetheless, it didn’t sound half bad.

Now, I went to school thinking I was going to work in sports. Maybe social media or event production. Maybe sell some sponsorships — I don’t know!? I certainly hadn’t considered advertising, but there I was.

If you’ve worked in an advertising agency, you know it’s chaos pretty much all the time. It’s really just a matter of how well they hide it. So, I get introduced to the teams — account, creative, production, development — and almost immediately, I’m thrown to the fire.

Them: “Here you go. It’s a new eCommerce project to build a site on Shopify.”

Me: “¿Que? What the heck is Shopify?”

Remember, this was before everyone and their mother started dropshipping and side hustling.

Fast-forward a few years and I can’t imagine a world where Shopify isn’t sort of engrained in me. Between my time in advertising, my current role, and my personal projects, I’ve worked on the launch & management of a dozen, or so, sites built on Shopify.

The Shopify of today is lightyears ahead of where it was when I started that job. The platform is constantly undergoing iterative and incremental design and development enhancements to better the experience for merchants and consumers.

To keep developers and merchants in the know, Shopify announced “Editions”, a rundown of product updates, beginning in the Summer of 2022.

The most recent Editions was published last week and it’s the most impressive yet with 100+ foundational updates to the capabilities of the Shopify platform.

I watched the event, read every single update, and compiled a list of eight of the most interesting enhancements so you don’t have to read the whole thing to see where this whole ecomm thing is going!
I mostly stayed away from the backend updates that most people won’t ~see~, though many of those will have some of the greatest impacts on how merchants take advantage of the Shopify ecosystem.

• Foundational Product Updates from Shopify

• Shopify Editions Walkthrough Demo

Hope you enjoy the read! Feel free to reply with any thoughts or comments. And, if you really really liked it, consider sharing it with a friend!? 🙂

Have a great Tuesday!

Sam Sherfey

Presented by:

ECOMMERCE
Foundational Product Updates from Shopify

The Top 8 Announcements of Editions ‘24

1. Shopify Combined Listings

• Merchandise products with different colors or styles on a single parent listing with the Combined Listings app. Each variation will render its own product description, media gallery, and URL. Comprehensive media galleries (opposed to a single variant image) for products that come in multiple colors, materials or dimensions will proved better customer experience and higher conversion rates.
  Early Access Exclusively on Shopify Plus

2. Semantic Search

• In the age of the internet, we’ve grown accustomed to searching for terms that we think might be found in product titles, descriptions, and meta/SEO fields. Now, customers can search in more natural words and phrases, while receiving more relevant results. Semantic Search is AI-powered to understand customer search intent by introducing semantics on top of existing keyword-based search. The feature uses both text and image data of your products to better understand whether they are relevant to a customer's search term.
  Currently available on storefront search (with Shopify’s native search results) for Shopify Plus merchants with English storefronts and fewer than 200,000 products

3. Shopify Subscriptions App

• A new, free subscription app from Shopify allows business admins to offer products as subscriptions directly from the Shopify admin. Subscriptions increase the lifetime value of customers while creating a more predictable stream of revenue, while providing customers with a regularly scheduled delivery of their favorite goods. Customers will have the flexibility and control to modify or skip subscription orders from their retailer account.

4. One-Page Checkout

• One-page checkout has rolled out to all Shopify retailers! Shopify was already the best-converting checkout on the internet (beating the competition by ~15%), but now the experience has been reduced from three pages to one — optimizing for speed and conversion. Fewer page loads and shorter shipping rate load time paired with pre-filled form fields for known buyers (even in the guest checkout) makes for a friction-free checkout.

5. Shop Pay Integration for Any Checkout (not just Shopify)

• Shopify’s accelerated checkout, used by over 100-million buyers, can now be integrated into any enterprise tech stack. Shop Pay is a secure and encrypted, mobile-optimized, one-click checkout with faster load times and saved payment/shipping information that boosts conversion rates by ~50% compared to guest checkouts.
  The Shop app was also updated with myriad new features for lead capture/customer acquisition, campaign tools, product recommendations, review syndication, and more

6. Shopify Magic AI ✨

• Transform product photography, write better product descriptions, or create personalized FAQs for your site or Shopify Inbox (chat service), and optimize email send times — all with AI.

• Shopify Sidekick, a built-in AI assistant with Shopify expertise to advise and assist merchants as they take on entrepreneurship, will join the platform in 2024.
  Shopify merchants can sign up to be considered for early access to Sidekick
  
  Watch here: Tobi introduces the possibilities of Sidekick 👀

7. Shopify’s 3D Scanner for Mobile

• Create interactive 3D models of your products that display seamlessly on your PDPs with no additional software or cost — just your iPhone. Models can be completed in under 20 minutes with no 3D modeling experience required. These 3D models provide potential buyers with an interactive and possibly educational experience previously only available in-store. The online capabilities of 3D are likely to increase conversion and reduce return rates by building more buyer confidence prior to purchase.

8. New Online Store Editor with Flex Sections Coming in 2024

The Shopify team also gave a glimpse into a bigger goals and plans for 2024, which include a new visual editor that allows more drag & drop functionality paired with more layout and styling flexibility.

In addition to the updates mentioned here, Shopify announced tons of enhancements and improvements to bundles, discounts, POS hardware, multi-retailer management, B2B selling, international markets, wholesale sourcing, and more.

You can find the full Shopify Editions, Winter 2024, HERE.

WATCH
📺 Shopify Editions Walkthrough Demo

No time to read the full update!?

Check out the overview with Shopify’s very own, Glen Coates.

Watch here: YouTube 👀

OTHER
Self-Checkout

• Lululemon expands its shoe line with its first-ever men’s collection, including the ‘cityverse sneaker’ available exclusively on the Lululemon app.

• Bud Light & Oreo return to Super Bowl advertising after 1-year and 11-year breaks, respectively.

• Apple launches the Vision Pro, its ski goggle-like spatial computing headset with a $3,500 price tag.

• Sprite goes “naked” in the UK in an effort to simplify the recycling process by reducing the need to separate labels and bottles.

• Orioles and regional sports network, MASN sell to group including Michael Rubenstein, Michael Arougheti, Cal Ripken Jr., Grant Hill, and Michael Bloomberg.

• Adidas names basketball court at their Portland headquarters after former Portland Trail Blazer, Damian Lillard.

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