‍1. Unified Markets Management: Bringing It All Together

Let’s get together. This summer, Shopify is introducing a massive overhaul to how merchants manage markets. Now everything is truly unified, allowing you to manage multiple markets and configurations from one place, simplifying cross-border sales and B2B operations. Customised buyer experiences can now be tailored more effectively, enhancing your store’s appeal to different regions and market segments.

This centralisation not only streamlines the operational complexities of managing multiple markets but also integrates various aspects of eCommerce management into a single, cohesive interface. Merchants can easily adjust product offerings, pricing strategies, and promotional campaigns tailored to local preferences, all from one “command centre” (or mission control, base of operations, the situation room… take your pick). This seamless integration helps in reducing administrative overheads and minimising errors, ensuring that merchants can focus more on growth and customer engagement rather than getting bogged down by logistical challenges. And nobody likes getting bogged down. 

2. Real-Time Analytics: Leverage The Power of Immediate Insights

Think of this like same day delivery for analytics. Shopify’s revamped analytics now offers real-time data and customisable dashboards, empowering merchants to make timely and informed decisions. This feature includes detailed reports, as well as fully custom report building, providing deeper insights into your store’s performance without the usual 24-hour data delay.

Additionally, the new analytics system allows merchants to drag, drop, resize, add, or remove metric cards on their dashboards, creating a highly personalised view of the most critical data points. This flexibility ensures that you can monitor key performance indicators that are most relevant to your specific needs. The ability to edit pre-built reports and combine metrics and dimensions enables more sophisticated analysis, helping merchants to uncover trends and patterns that might have been previously overlooked. By providing access to real-time insights and more granular data, the new analytics tools support proactive decision-making, allowing you to swiftly adapt to market changes and optimise operations for better results. Like an eCommerce ninja. 

3. Even More Flexibility: Split Shipping

Shopify is doing the splits. Enhancing the checkout experience, Split Shipping offers greater transparency and flexibility. Customers can see upfront if their orders will arrive in multiple shipments and choose different shipping speeds for each, improving satisfaction and trust.

Split Shipping integrates seamlessly with Shopify’s existing systems, ensuring that inventory and order management remain efficient and accurate despite the complexity of handling multiple shipments. This feature allows merchants to offer a more personalised shopping experience, as customers can opt for faster delivery for urgent items and standard shipping for others, all within a single order. By providing clear and flexible shipping options, you can reduce cart abandonment rates and enhance customer loyalty, as shoppers feel more in control of their purchasing experience and more confident in the reliability of the delivery process. Because everyone’s a control freak at heart. 

4. Wave The eCommerce Wand: AI-Powered Shopify Magic

Magic! Enough said. Shopify Magic introduces AI-driven tools to simplify business operations. Your new eCommerce right-hand man or woman, the Sidekick assistant provides tailored business guidance, while AI image generation and customer engagement features help automate and optimise your marketing efforts.

Shopify Magic’s wand (AI tools) extends to various aspects of business management. For instance, the AI can automatically generate product descriptions and SEO-friendly content, ensuring that your store remains up-to-date and visible in search engine rankings. It also offers AI-driven insights into customer behaviour, helping you to personalise marketing campaigns and improve customer targeting. The AI image generation feature is particularly beneficial for creating high-quality visuals that align with your brand’s aesthetics without the need for extensive graphic design skills, or the need to pay for expensive third-party AI tools. Magic at no extra cost? It’s a no brainer.

5. Make It Theirs: Customisable Storefronts with Style Settings

Graphic design IS my passion. The new Style Settings feature allows merchants to customise storefront layouts with ease, adapting the site’s appearance for mobile devices without separate settings. This flexibility ensures your brand’s online presence is always fresh and engaging.

Style Settings empowers you to fine-tune website aesthetic elements, such as adjusting image block direction, alignment, and spacing, to create a visually appealing and cohesive look. The device-specific adaptability feature means that merchants can seamlessly transition their storefront designs across various devices, ensuring a consistent and engaging user experience whether customers are shopping on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone. Plus, merchants can use static blocks and conditional logic to build complex layouts that respond dynamically to customer interactions and preferences. Time to unleash your inner web designer. 

6. Hydrogen Visual Editor for Headless Commerce

This one’s for the devs. The Hydrogen Visual Editor, powered by Utopia, makes building and managing headless storefronts more intuitive and collaborative. This tool allows real-time changes and integrates seamlessly with developer workflows, enhancing the flexibility and functionality of Shopify.

The Hydrogen Visual Editor supports a visual-first approach, enabling teams to work together more efficiently through a collaborative interface that reduces reliance on code for design adjustments. Developers can see the impact of their changes immediately, as the tool syncs with GitHub and other version control systems to maintain a streamlined workflow. This real-time integration facilitates smoother project management and reduces the likelihood of errors that can occur when switching between design and development environments.

Its capability to integrate data from various sources means that dynamic content, such as personalised product recommendations or real-time inventory updates, can be seamlessly incorporated into the storefront. This level of integration not only enhances the user experience but also allows for more sophisticated and data-driven marketing strategies, ultimately driving higher engagement and conversion rates. And we all like those. 

7. Take Off: Enhanced Global Selling with Managed Markets

Time for a holiday, without your passport. Shopify’s Managed Markets simplifies international selling by handling tax filing, duties, and product restrictions. This feature ensures compliance with local regulations, making global expansion smoother and more manageable.

Managed Markets integrates sophisticated tools that automatically adjust product availability based on regional restrictions, ensuring that only compliant products are listed for sale in each market. This proactive approach helps avoid potential legal issues and delays at customs. Additionally, the feature includes comprehensive duty and tax calculations embedded into the product pricing, providing customers with a transparent final cost, thus reducing unexpected charges upon delivery. Managed Markets also streamlines the process of international returns and refunds, making it easier for merchants to manage post-purchase customer service globally. That’s happy customers, no matter their location. 

8. All The Channels! Improved Omnichannel Flexibility

An omni-update. Updates like Ship To & From Retail Stores and Easy Retail Checkout enhance the connection between online and in-store operations, connecting the physical world with the virtual one. Features such as in-store collection and ship-from-store workflows provide customers with greater convenience and flexibility.

These features integrate advanced inventory management capabilities that allow merchants to efficiently allocate stock between online and physical locations. This ensures optimal stock levels are maintained, reducing the likelihood of running out of stuck, or having too much stock. The in-store collection feature, also known as “Click and Collect,” allows customers to order online and pick up their purchases at a nearby retail store, providing a convenient option for those who prefer to avoid shipping costs or need their items quickly. Similarly, the ship-from-store workflow enables retailers to fulfil online orders using inventory from their physical stores, which can expedite delivery times and improve overall customer satisfaction. By leveraging local store inventories, merchants can also reduce shipping distances and costs, making the fulfilment process less costly. Omni-savings. 

9. Boost Conversions: Shopify Audiences and Shop Campaigns

Location, marketing, marketing. Shopify Audiences leverages advanced algorithms and commerce signals to create highly targeted audience lists, allowing merchants to precisely target potential customers based on their behaviours and preferences. Improved retargeting features utilise detailed data analytics to identify and re-engage visitors who have shown interest in products but did not complete their purchase, significantly increasing the chances of conversion. 

These features can also tie into Shopify’s Shop platform, with dedicated Shop Campaigns that are designed to integrate seamlessly with popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, enabling merchants to run cohesive marketing campaigns across multiple channels all from within a single Shopify interface. This is especially great for smaller businesses that are less experienced with paid media channels like Meta and Google. (If you’re looking for more advanced marketing strategies, we know who can help).

10. The B2B Next Level: Expanded B2B Capabilities

Putting the B in B2B. For Shopify Plus users, new B2B features allow for more customised store themes and enhanced B2B market management. These updates make it easier to handle bulk purchases, automate workflows, and enhance the overall customer experience for B2B transactions.

These include sophisticated tools for managing complex pricing models and customer-specific catalogues, which are essential for wholesale operations. Merchants can create tailored storefronts for different business customers, offering bespoke pricing, exclusive products, and personalised experiences based on customer profiles and purchasing history. 

Workflow automation tools simplify repetitive tasks, such as order processing and customer follow-ups, reducing administrative overhead and improving efficiency. The new features also support advanced analytics and reporting, allowing businesses to gain deeper insights into their B2B sales performance and customer behaviour, facilitating data-driven decision-making. Additionally, the integration with popular payment solutions and support for various payment terms streamline the checkout process for bulk orders, enhancing the overall transaction experience for business customers. These comprehensive updates enable Shopify Plus users to scale their B2B operations effectively, providing a seamless and professional experience that meets the unique needs of commercial clients.

A Summer For The Ages

Shopify Editions Summer ‘24 is packed with innovative features designed to help merchants optimise their operations, engage customers more effectively, and drive growth in a competitive market. Whether you’re looking to expand globally, improve your checkout process, or boost your marketing efficiency, Shopify’s latest updates unify the very best of the platform, well and truly bringing it all together. Looking for some Shopify experts to get you started? You’re in the right place.