Twice a year, Shopify introduces its latest product updates and news around the Shopify cosmos. With over 100 updates, Shopify Editions offers a wide range of improvements to optimise the e-commerce experience for both merchants and customers. What's new and what other adjustments can we expect in the coming weeks and months? We took a closer look at the 100+.
The power of AI: Shopify Magic
Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes the spotlight in Summer Editions '23, opening up a new era of possibilities in e-commerce. Shopify is harnessing the potential of AI to simplify complex tasks and deliver advanced solutions to merchants in their stores. Since the beginning of the year, Shopify Magic has enabled merchants to create custom product descriptions using just a few keywords. Shopify plans to expand Magic to generate content for emails, blogs and customer service responses. Best of all, this AI feature is available to all Shopify merchants, regardless of their Shopify plan, and supports multiple languages.
Sidekick: Your AI-powered commerce assistant
Sidekick: Your AI-powered commerce assistantIn addition to Shopify Magic, Shopify is introducing Sidekick, the AI-powered commerce assistant. Sidekick leverages Shopify's vast data to provide personalised and contextually relevant assistance for a range of tasks, from store building to marketing and customer support. The goal is to save merchants valuable time and effort by streamlining workflows and automating processes. While Sidekick is not yet live, merchants can sign up to an early access list to test the beta.
Bundles: Boost sales with product bundling
As announced in the Winter Editions, Shopify now offers its own Bundle app, making it easy for merchants to create product bundles. Bundles are an effective strategy for increasing average order value and generating more sales. The new Shopify Bundles app allows merchants to create fixed bundles and multi-packs, with real-time inventory syncing to avoid over-selling.
For more complex product bundles, third-party apps from the Shopify App Store are recommended.
Subscriptions App: Simplified subscription management
In addition to the Bundles app, Shopify also introduces the Subscription app, which allows merchants to seamlessly create and manage subscriptions. Using standard templates, merchants can easily remind customers of subscription payments and delivery details.
However, for more advanced subscription models, third-party apps from the Shopify App Store offer more customisation options.
Improved user experience: Simple and intuitive
Shopify is committed to providing a great user experience. The platform has a completely new design with refined fonts, buttons and a clean admin interface that makes it intuitive and easy to use. The global search function has been improved and offers new filter options, such as order status, for quick access to relevant information. In addition, the redesigned homepage offers clear at-a-glance statistics and analysis to provide valuable insight for merchants.
Flex Sections in the Online Store Editor
With 'Flex Sections' in the Online Store Editor, it should now be easier than ever to create visually appealing and unique layouts for the online store. Retailers can resize, group, edit and customise sections. The new preview feature allows for real-time changes and ensures smooth editing.
Shopify Themes: Endless creativity
Shopify themes are getting exciting new features that allow merchants to add animations, hover effects and parallax effects to image sections. These enhancements enable merchants to create visually appealing storefronts that leave a lasting impression on their customers and drive brand loyalty and engagement.
Checkout Extensions (Shopify Plus only)
First announced in Shopify Editions Winter '23 - now available for everyone: The long-awaited one-page checkout. The goal is to pre-populate billing and shipping information, speed up the checkout process, and reduce shopping cart abandonment. Other checkout enhancements will also make it possible to offer subscriptions and pre-orders of out-of-stock items in the checkout.
B2B on Shopify: Improving wholesale transactions
With the Summer Editions, Shopify has also announced a number of improvements and updates in the B2B area to streamline the ordering process. These include volume discounts, quick order lists and multiple payment methods. The integration of PayPal payments and credit card deposits expands payment options.
Shopify Collective: Curated add-on products (US only)
To increase sales and create unique shopping experiences, Shopify Collective is launching an innovative solution. This feature allows businesses to search for and integrate complementary products into their offerings, instantly expanding their product range and enriching the shopping experience for their customers. By seamlessly integrating these high-quality products from other Shopify brands, merchants can create new revenue streams and earn margins on every sale without having to worry about large inventories. This feature will initially launch in the US market only.
To sum up
All in all, an exciting mix of new features and updates. Of course, it remains to be seen what the new optimisations will really bring. Either way, these are exciting features as Shopify tries to keep up with the times and offer merchants the best possible platform for their shops.
