🏗️ Foundations

Welcome to the Shopify Editions Winter ‘24 issue of Morning Commerce.

I’ll be honest, after the 100+ updates released in the Summer Editions I was expecting a slightly more humble update this time. Instead what we got was another 100+ updates to the Shopify platform 👀

They nicknamed this editions “Foundations” which perfectly sums up the theme of these updates, improving the core Shopify product from all the angles that matter; conversion, channels, marketing, operations, and developer experience.

Today I’ll be sharing some of my favourite updates that I know a few of my clients will be excited about, including:

• Rich product attributes based on category

• POS UI extensions and smart grid editor

• 2000 variants per product!

• Exchanges on Shopify

• Combined listings app

• New POS terminal

• Semantic search

• Shop campaigns

• Theme blocks

• And more!

I’ve worked directly with over a 120 Shopify brands and the one thing I’ve learned is everyone uses the platform in their own unique way. So it’s worth your while to take a look at the official Shopify Editions Winter ‘24 website and take a gander at any updates specific to your situation.

— Kyle Tully

CONVERSION

Rich product attributes based on category

Shopify has updated their taxonomy mapping each product category to a set of product attributes, making it easier to organise products and automatically create variants.

For example, if you select the “snowboard” product category for a product, Shopify will automatically give you metafields for properties such as “color”, “age group“, “recommended skill level“, and “snowboarding style”.

If you have more than a handful of products these type of classifications are so important for helping people easily find the products they are looking for, and they really do help conversions.

Verticals already released include Apparel & Accessories, Food, Beverages, & Tobacco, Home & Garden, Sporting Goods, and Furniture. All 20 verticals are set to be fully updated by the end of February. You can track the status here.

Combined listings app

One of the most common customisations we code for stores where visual merchandising is particularly important is combining product variants into a single product listing, with product photos that update based on the selected variant.

The effect is really nice, but it can be a tricky piece of code that is resource intensive and often not compatible with various apps.

Shopify’s new Combined Listings App aims to solve this problem, giving you a centralised product listing, with each variant getting it’s own image carousel, descriptive URL, and publishing controls.

This is one of the exclusive Shopify Plus releases due to roll out in ‘24.

2000 variants per product!

Shopify’s 100 variant per product limit sounds like a lot, until you actually start working with products that combine multiple options and you quickly hit the limit.

(Shopify Plus stores can get access to 250 variants by asking their rep to enable the jumbo_extended_variants_per_ feature. Everyone else needs to use an app to simulate more variants.)

In API release 2024-04 (currently in developer preview) Shopify is updating the product model, which includes variants no longer fixed at 100. Most shops will support an initial rollout of 2000 variants, with the wording of the release sounding like this may just be a starting point.

Semantic search

Another Plus-only update, Shopify’s new Semantic Search uses AI to enable search-intent matching that goes far beyond keywords and uses natural language to provide rich search results.

For example, right now you need to search for something like “red dress” or “mens size 12 running shoe“ in order to get relevant results that are matched directly to product names and properties.

But with semantic search enabled, people will be able to search for things such as “something sexy to wear for my school reunion“ or “the best shoes for running a spartan race“ and Shopify’s AI will use both text and image data of your products to match relevant results.

CHANNELS

New POS terminal

Shopify has very deliberately moved away from the word ecommerce and now simply uses commerce in most of their communications. Backing up their words with actions, they’re making improvements to their in-store solutions with the release of a new POS terminal that accepts tap, chip, and swipe payments and has some fancy custom image display.

POS UI extensions and smart grid editor

The new smart grid editor lets you configure and assign smart grid layouts on a per-location basis, and the new extensions setting allows you to manage app UI extensions across multiple store locations.

MARKETING

Shop campaigns

Risk-free CPA ads targeting Shop Pay users are now available to Shopify Plus merchants via Shop Campaigns.

Here’s how it works: Buyers earn Shop Cash on Shop Pay purchases. Shop Cash can be spent (and boosted) with offers on Shop. Shop Cash offers are displayed on the Shop store and promoted via push notifications and email. You earn the full product value while gaining risk-free new customers.

Campaigns can be setup in a few clicks and merchants using the program have seen up to a 43% increase in new customer growth.

Shop minis

Shoppable videos, livestreams, product recommendation quizzes, and one-click upsells are just some of the app-powered customisations you can add to your Shop app storefront with the power of Shop Minis.

OPERATIONS

Shopify lending

Shopify lending leverages machine learning and a 360 degree view of your business to provide fast capital for your business.

Once approved you can receive funds in as little as two days, and similar to Paypal’s Working Capital product, you simply pay it back with automated payments as a percent of daily sales.

You can use the funds for anything related to your business, including paid marketing, inventory, hiring experts, or new product launches.

Larger retailers can access lines of credit, term loans, and cash advances.

AI product photography

Improvements coming in early ‘24 for Shopify Magic include AI-enabled image editing features, allowing you to quickly remove backgrounds from images, or merchandise products with natural language image generation.

Exchanges on Shopify

Native exchanges in coming to Shopify early ‘24 — you’ll be able to create, track, and manage exchanges for any order from the admin.

DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE

Theme blocks in developer preview

Powerful drag-and-drop layout editing is coming to themes, with flex sections allowing merchants to re-size, group and edit content with a few mouse clicks.

Nested theme blocks will extend the power of metaobjects allowing merchants to design layouts for content without needing to touch code.

Customer account extensibility

Soon you’ll be able to build extensions directly into new customer accounts with the same UI components as Shopify Checkout — currently available in developer preview.

100+ Shopify updates

There are SO many awesome little updates in this Editions that it was impossible to include even a quarter of the ones I’d love to talk more about.

Shopify is moving fast and my advice is grab your beverage of choice and have a good read through the full list of updates and see which ones may have the biggest impact on your business so you can position accordingly.

How we can help…

🔥 Looking for an experienced Shopify Partner to work with? 
Smart ecommerce brands rely on us for innovative design, development, optimisation, and growth strategies to create highly profitable Shopify websites. Work with our consultancy.

🎯 Want to reach our audience? Hit reply to discuss advertising.