Winter 2024 Edition! As e-commerce evolves, so does Shopify with its biannual releases. These updates signify Shopify’s commitment to advancing its tools and products, ensuring you stay ahead in e-commerce. Let’s explore how Shopify revolutionizes the merchant experience with its latest innovations. Buckle up as we dive into the exciting developments!
Expanded Product Variants
Shopify has lifted the previous 99-variant limit per product with its new GraphQL product API. Now, merchants and developers can create up to 2000 variants per product, offering more diverse options for customers. This enhancement allows for more sophisticated product catalogs and is available for developer preview, with a general release scheduled later.
Streamlined Listings
Merchants can now merge product variations into one comprehensive listing with the Combined Listing App. Each variation retains its unique attributes, including image carousel, URL, and publishing controls. This streamlined approach offers a cohesive shopping experience for customers, enhancing product visibility and customization.
Checkout Extensibility
Shopify Plus merchants are likely familiar with Checkout Extensibility, a feature revolutionizing checkout. Unlike the outdated checkout.liquid, this advancement offers a forward-looking approach for Shopify, extending its reach beyond the core checkout page. Previously limited to enhancing only the core checkout page, merchants and developers can now apply customizations to additional site sections, providing more flexibility in tailoring the checkout experience.
Personalized Pages
The robust customization options available for the checkout page are now extended to the “Thank You” and Order Status pages. Merchants can personalize various aspects, including appearance, color schemes, headers, footers, and container styles. These enhancements, driven by apps, are future-proof and ensure compatibility and extensibility for developers.
Customization for Customer Account Pages
Similar customization capabilities are now accessible for the Customer Account page, enabling the creation of enhanced customer experiences.
AI-Powered Enhancements with Shopify Magic
AI continues to be a trending topic, and Shopify introduced Shopify Magic in 2023 for product descriptions. In 2024, they’re expanding their AI-powered features in the Winter Edition. Merchants can now leverage AI for image manipulation, expanded autowrite, and upgraded search functionalities. Let’s delve into some of the key new AI capabilities.
Effortless Image Editing with AI
Every product in your store has an image, and managing these images can be time-consuming. With Shopify’s expanded Magic image manipulation capabilities, you can streamline basic image editing tasks with integrated AI tools. Create professional product photos effortlessly by instantly generating, matching, or removing backgrounds using just a few clicks or keywords. Whether you need to enhance a product shot or showcase a model on the beach, these AI-enhanced image features in Shopify offer endless possibilities.
AI-powered image editing not only saves time but also enhances the visual attractiveness of your products, increasing their appeal to potential customers. Clear and attractive product images influence customer shopping decisions, potentially increasing sales.
AI-powered Semantic Search
If you haven’t explored the Shopify Search & Discovery App yet, you’re missing out on native capabilities. Customize search, filtering, and product recommendations with this powerful tool. Watch for an improved search experience with the new AI-powered storefront features.
Semantic Search, an innovative AI-powered feature, goes beyond basic keyword matching. Comprehending the shopper’s intent delivers more comprehensive and relevant search results.
Accelerate Store Page Creation
Shopify’s merchants are likely familiar with Shopify Magic’s AI-based product description tool, which speeds up the writing process by generating compelling descriptions using product titles and keywords. This feature has now expanded beyond product descriptions to other sections of the Shopify Admin, including Pages. Creating pages such as About Us or FAQ is effortless, with just a few clicks and prompts.
Enhanced B2B Functionality
For Shopify Plus merchants, B2B capabilities are essential for catering to the unique requirements of business-to-business transactions. While Shopify B2B already supports companies, customized pricing, bulk discounts, and payment terms, Winter 2024 brings exciting new upgrades. These enhancements provide even more useful features for Shopify Plus stores, elevating the B2B experience for merchants.
Sales Rep Support
Shopify B2B now enables assigning sales reps to B2B customers. New staff permissions allow staff to place orders and access customer information for specific company locations. Different access levels for sales managers and reps can be set using roles within staff permissions. This feature enhances support and guidance for B2B customers.
With sales rep support in your Shopify B2B store, you can cultivate stronger, personalized customer relationships. Dedicated sales reps become intimately familiar with each customer’s needs, preferences, and challenges, leading to increased sales, higher customer retention, and more profound trust between the company and sales reps.
Headless B2B
Shopify Hydrogen, known for headless development, now extends to B2B stores. Utilize Shopify’s APIs and developer tools to craft unique B2B storefronts, offering limitless development possibilities in a headless configuration. Shopify now integrates B2B features into the headless paradigm, enabling B2B businesses to combine Shopify’s robust ecommerce capabilities with custom frontend designs.
Tailored Discounts for B2B
Shopify offers developers powerful tools like Shopify Functions to inject customized backend logic. These functions, developed as apps and installed within the store, enable backend customizations for discounts, shipping, and payment methods. Now, Shopify extends these functions to B2B checkout, allowing the creation of promotional discounts exclusively for B2B customers. These discounts can be automatically applied at checkout, offering pricing tailored for B2B clients.
All-in-One POS Terminal
For retail stores leveraging Shopify, Shopify POS offers excellent omnichannel expansion. Integrated with your Shopify platform, Shopify POS and POS GO provide a unified solution for your business, but innovation continues beyond that.
The POS Terminal is an all-in-one countertop tool designed for retail customers. It is a dedicated payment terminal with Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity and an integrated customer display. Customize the screen with your branding, and enjoy new features such as capturing customer emails at checkout and offering one-tap digital receipts.
The POS Terminal is a valuable companion for your store. It gives customers a real-time display of their purchased items. With clear flows for payment, PIN entry, tipping, and receipt selection, customers can confidently complete their transactions.
New Subscription App
Subscriptions offer a reliable way to sell products repeatedly, boosting customer lifetime value and ensuring predictable revenue. Until now, merchants had to resort to third-party apps to support these services. But today marks a significant change.
Shopify introduces its free, native Subscription app, allowing effortless setup and management of subscriptions directly from the Shopify admin. Customers can easily modify or skip subscription orders from their account on your store, eliminating the need for third-party apps to support basic subscription services.
Closing Remarks
Shopify’s unwavering commitment to progress has made it one of the most cutting-edge e-commerce platforms available today. Contact VT Lab’s team of Shopify experts for assistance with Shopify Plus or Checkout. Let’s explore how Shopify can propel your business into the future.
