New Shopify Features

Everyone gets all excited when Apple announces their new products at their synopsis. Well for us developers we get all giddy when all the new features are announced for our favorite software. Every year Shopify has a conference called Unite, where they do just that. Announce all the new awesome improvements to make the customer’s experience and the business owner using their software even better.

So I am going to breakdown the features that were announced at this year’s Unite.

It has been one of those features that merchants have asked for and it's finally rolling out! One of the biggest frustrations is when a customer places an order and there needs to be an edit after it has been placed. You will not be able to edit quantities, variants, and shipping methods before the order has been fulfilled. If there is a difference in price between the new price and the original order, you can easily send a payment request. No more duplicate orders or lost sales. This feature will be live for all merchants by the end of the year.

This is the addition I am most excited about and the one frustration I see with so many merchants, especially if you offer different types of products that may not always fall within the same type of shipping option. The only options you currently have is to be a wizard and try to figure out how to charge multiple shipping options or pay an expensive app fee. Shopify has announced they are rolling out the ability to create Shipping Profiles. You will be able to setup specific profiles based on size, weight or shipping origin and make multiple profiles for your shop. The new profiles will be available in July and I have an awesome project I will be starting in August that is going to be amazing with this new update.

Watch out Amazon, Shopify has just announced that they are going to be launching a fulfillment network that will allow you to house your products in their fulfillment centers and have everything from custom packaging, branding and returns available so you can sit back, relax and let Shopify manage your fulfillment. We will keep you updated as this service becomes available.

Everyone loves how you can design your homepage with Sections, and now this will be accessible to all pages on Shopify, including: premade templates, easier customization, draft saving capabilities, and no longer needing to redo your whole site when you switch your theme. This is going to make it so much easier to give my customer’s full control of their website and give them the confidence to make edits themselves.

Video is becoming a main part of everything we do in marketing. From social media, YouTube and now your e-commerce experience. Shopify announced native support to add video and 3D modeling assets to your online store.

Subscriptions are an awesome tool to keep customer’s engaged with your branding and continually receiving your product. The only barrier we currently have with Shopify is the checkout process for subscriptions is completely separate from Shopify, so if a customer wants to buy something on subscription and a onetime order, you have to go through two separate checkouts. With this next update, subscriptions apps will be able to seamlessly integrate their apps with Shopify, allowing customers to purchase subscription products without leaving your checkout. This will increase cart conversions and make the checkout process easier for your customer.

Finally there are some additional features that have already rolled out and you may be using. If you didn’t know about these features, you should definitely check them out and see how they can improve your store.

Customer’s no longer have to remember the discount code and you won't have to deal with customer service because they didn’t get their discount. Automatic discounts allow you to setup a discount and if all the requirements are met during their session, they automatically have the discount added to their cart. Easy peasy.

If you theme doesn’t already come with product recommendations, you can now implement Shopify’s native product recommendations directly into your theme. You can also automatically optimize recommendations for visitors already on your site and give smarter recommendations based on their site search and order history.

Customer’s who use site search are more likely to buy from you, but if a customer cannot find what they are looking for, the are 80% more likely to abandon cart. The new predictive search functionality allows you to guide and improve how your customer’s search. It comes with real-time analytics so you can see what your customer’s are looking for and improve their results. Instant results and speed will give your customers what they are looking for. Your new themes will have this included in later this year.

Well I know this is a lot of information, but not to worry, I will be your resource to update you when these features launch and how to best use them for your business. So make sure to join our mailing list to be up to date on the latest features and tools available to improve yours and our customer’s experience.