Shopify Editions Summer '23 Breakdown

Welcome to Morning Commerce!

Kyle here with our special Summer Editions ‘23 issue.

We’re covering the best new Shopify updates plus highlighting important features Shopify released in the past 6 months.

Here’s just some of what they dropped:

• B2B on Shopify

• Shopify Bundles

• Shopify Collective

• Shopify Subscriptions

• All new Shopify visual design

• Improved global search

• Marketplace Connect

• Flex Sections

• Contexts

Almost impossible to pick a favourite from this list. (Maybe B2B + Contexts + Subscriptions + Bundles?) All in all a big update to the Shopify platform. Let’s dive in.

— Kyle Tully

DESIGN

All new Shopify visual design

You might have already noticed your Shopify dashboard got a little makeover.

Updated fonts, tighter spacing, smaller buttons (with a more definitive “click” response), and simplified card layouts combine to get more important data on screen without sacrificing readability.

I wasn’t sure if I liked this when it first changed — no one likes change — but it has quickly grown on me and I appreciate the extra screen real estate. There’s definitely less scrolling around and everything is easier to scan.

Might be my imagination but everything feels snappier too.

What do you think of the changes?

Improved Global search

Search results now load super fast and are broken down by data type, so you can search your entire still and quickly drill down to the info you’re looking for.

I know this update will be appreciated by many of my clients who need to quickly look up customer details while dealing with people either on the phone or in person.

You can now pull up customer details and have an answer ready before they’ve even finished asking the question. Nice.

PRODUCT

Shopify Collective

If you’re in the US, then finding great products to sell and quality suppliers to get them from just got a whole lot easier thanks to Shopify Collective.

This new app connects you with suppliers from brands across the US and allows you to plug their products directly into your store with a few clicks.

There’s no inventory to buy, no stock to count, no warehouse to manage, no orders to ship. You simply list the products and make sales, and they ship directly to your customers. You might know this as drop shipping.

Currently only available to US stores selling in US dollars and who have sold at least $50,000 over the past 12 months. We hope to see this rolled out to other markets at some point.

Shopify Bundles

You can now create simple product bundles without the need for a paid app. Hurrah! Shopify Bundles is available right now for all merchants.

You can create bundles with up to 10 products that will look and function just like a regular product. Best of all, stock management works right out of the gate so your inventory will always be in sync across regular products and those within a bundle.

If you need to do more advanced bundles such as the ability to mix-n-match or have custom quantities for individual variants then you’ll still need a paid app. But this update will be a godsend for those who only need simple bundle functionality.

Shopify Subscriptions

Another feature we’ve been waiting on for about 10 years is native subscription functionality, and Shopify has finally delivered.

The new Shopify Subscriptions app lets you create quick n easy subscriptions for any product, with the ability to set a delivery frequency and discount rate for each option.

With the high cost of existing subscription apps holding many smaller merchants back from offering subscriptions, I’m really excited to see the impact this has.

Take it from someone who has seen behind the scenes of hundreds of Shopify stores — the sooner you can add a recurring revenue element to your store the better 😉

MARKETS

Marketplace Connect

Shopify Marketplace Connect lets you manage your product catalogue, listings, orders, and fulfilment completely in Shopify, while selling across channels such as Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Etsy. Sweeet.

B2B

With the new B2B functionality you can create custom catalogs with wholesale pricing for specific companies you sell to.

Built right in are overall price adjustments, volume price breaks on a per-product level, and min/max quantity rules.

On top of that, each company can have their own payment terms, checkout options, and catalog currencies.

This is available right now to all merchants, under Products → Catalogs.

Contexts for B2B and International Markets

Another update that will save merchants thousands of dollars in development costs is the new Contexts editor inside Theme Editor.

Now you can edit your theme pages based on the context of who is visiting the page. For example, for B2B customers you might want to show a quick order form or quantity price break table. And for International visitors, you could show custom delivery information or promotions.

Between this update and the B2B functionality, merchants can now set up an entire B2B presence without the need for any external apps or the help of a developer. Slick.

DEVELOPMENT

Import data from another store

Managing staging environments and testing content changes before going live has always been a challenge in Shopify. There are workarounds and everyone has come up with their own unique way of doing things.

But Shopify’s new “import data from another store“ feature makes this simple.

Now you can spin up a development store and with a few clicks import all the files, product data, and themes from your live store. Hopefully, this leads to less testing in production 😂

COMING SOON

Flex sections

The upcoming drag-n-drop visual section editor, called Flex Sections, allows you to dynamically add content blocks to theme sections using the theme editor.

If you’re already using an Online Store 2.0 theme then you’ll be familiar with the drag-n-drop section editor that lets you move entire sections around on the page.

Flex sections take this to the next level, giving you the power to add, rearrange, and restyle content within each section. Wish that image-with-text section had three columns instead of two? No problem. No need for a developer, just drag another image block into the section, add your content, and you’re done.

This update is going to save you a TON of custom development time and greatly speed up the time to launch new ideas.

Sidekick

Shopify’s upcoming AI-powered commerce assistant, called Sidekick, allows you to use everyday language to do everything from asking about the best apps for your store, to answering questions about sales data, and even creating discounts and simple theme edits.

This looks really cool and should demystify and democratise a lot of Shopify functionality that was previously only in the hands of more hands-on or technical store owners.

Increase to 250 variants

If you’ve been hampered by Shopify’s limit of 100 variants per product then you’ll be glad to know they’re finally upping this to 250 soon. It’s a small update but will make a big difference in the lives of many merchants!

One-Page Checkout

The much-anticipated one-page seamless checkout will be rolling out over the coming weeks and months. Feels like we’ve been waiting for this one forever.

EVERYTHING ELSE

There were dozens of other little updates, too many to list, but a few small highlights include:

• You can now customise your appearance on the Shop app.

• Shopify Inbox gets AI to answer common questions based on your stores data.

• Shopify checkout was shown to increase store conversions by up to 36% (average of 15%) over the competition.

• Theme settings will now let you create cool animations and image parallax effects.

Check out the complete Shopify Editions | Summer ‘23 update here.

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