Shopify Summer Editions 2024

Shopify Markets

Shopify helps millions of merchants grow their businesses, whether expanding into new regions, scaling into wholesale, or running a global retail network.

Currently, this work is spread across many parts of Shopify's admin and often involves splitting one store into many to create different setups.

Shopify is rolling out a new central command centre called Markets.

Shopify businesses can now expand across borders, through B2B sales channels, or from a single screen and create custom buyer experiences for each market without creating multiple stores or navigating multiple scattered workflows.

Markets will also provide a unique bird' s-eye view of your entire business. It is a cheat sheet that shows precisely the markets you operate in, how each is configured differently, and how they all fit together.

Smart Analytics

To grow and optimise your business, you need access to relevant, timely performance data that you can explore easily and drill down into.

Shopify has wholly rebuilt and unified analytics to work smarter, faster, and more intuitively. In real-time, merchants can explore and pivot their data however they want to get the exact answers they're looking for and gather insights with pre-built reports made for commerce.

Introducing Style Settings for Your Storefront

Your storefront is a crucial part of your brand identity, and as your brand evolves, so should your storefront. Flexibility, adaptability, and style are essential. Earlier this year, Shopify introduced Themed Blocks in the developer preview, enhancing the reusability of blocks.

Now, Shopify takes it a step further with the release of Style Settings. This feature empowers theme developers to allow merchants to fully customise the layout of sections and blocks, streamlining the design process.

For instance, imagine a theme with an image gallery section. Using the layout panel, a merchant can tweak settings like direction, alignment, or the gap between image blocks to create a unique look.

Style Settings are also adaptable for different devices. Merchants can easily customise their site's appearance for mobile without separate settings. Additionally, blocks can be statically rendered, preventing merchants from accidentally reordering or deleting them.

This flexibility enables theme developers to create more complex layouts, such as accordions, while applying conditional logic to collections with a "view all" button that appears only when more products are in the collection than displayed on the page.

Shopify's focus on Reusable Blocks and expanded layout customisation is exciting. Soon, blocks will be able to pass resources (like products, collections, and metaobjects) to their children, paving the way for even more dynamic and flexible storefronts on Shopify.

Exciting improvements for D2C and B2B sellers!

• Promotions made easy: Draft orders and point of sale now support discounts and discount functions, simplifying the creation of sales and promotions.
• Drafts get a boost: Both D2C and B2B users can now leverage draft orders with more flexibility, including payment customisations, bundles, and manual payment methods.
• B2B deposit collection: Take control of your B2B transactions by collecting deposits directly at checkout.
• Build headless storefronts: Unlock the power of custom storefronts with the Storefront and Customer Account APIs (for developers).

Headless storefronts

Build custom storefronts without the limitations of pre-designed templates. Shopify's Storefront and Customer Account APIs give you complete control over the look and feel of your online store.

Introducing the Hydrogen Visual Editor:

• Effortless Collaboration: This visual editor, powered by Utopia, lets your entire team work together on your storefront. It's like having a familiar drag-and-drop builder but with the power of code behind it.
• Code Stays in Control: Unlike traditional builders, the Hydrogen Visual Editor keeps your code as the single source of truth. Developers can easily review and manage changes made visually.

Developers will enjoy the same level of creative freedom over your storefront design but with the added benefits of a visual interface and a developer-friendly workflow.

AI, AI, AI

Shopify has been an early adopter in implementing and showing off the power of AI solutions for improving workflows and customer satisfaction. Over the past year, they've been embedding AI throughout the platform. Shopify has extended AI image editing to everywhere in the admin where you work with images. Using the Shopify Mobile App, users can make professional image edits anywhere, even on the go.

Shopify Magic has been integrated into the product creation flow to make intelligent, specific recommendations for product categories and attributes. This makes it easier to classify your products so that they're searchable and discoverable on your site, social media, and marketplaces.

Final Words

The latest Shopify Editions represent a significant leap forward in unifying the platform, empowering merchants to do more directly within Shopify admin while enhancing the shopping experience for customers. From cutting-edge analytics to even more AI-powered tools, these updates solidify Shopify's commitment to eCommerce innovation and excellence. By embracing these new features and capabilities, merchants can unlock new opportunities and drive growth in the digital marketplace.

Whether you're launching a new business or expanding your enterprise, we're excited to see the most unified Shopify yet.