Shopify Editions Summer 2024: Benefits For Ecommerce Teams

In this episode, we sit down with By Association Only CTO Dan Gamble to review the latest Shopify product release, explaining what it means for merchants and what it reveals about Shopify’s product strategy and GTM focus.

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If you’re part of the Shopify universe, then you’ll be well aware of Editions and the marketing bandwagon that accompanies it. Twice a year, Shopfidy drops a major product release containing 100+ new features, features enhancements and technical updates.

There’s a lot of talk about what has landed, less about the implications for ecommerce teams. In this episode, we pick out the important themes and explain what has impressed us, and why. We also discuss how these new features benefit ecommerce teams, whilst highlighting capability gaps that still need to be addressed, flagging which are in-flight but don’t have a committed release date.

We cover the following big topics:

• Content management
• Markets
• Products & merchandising
• Customer Service
• Reporting and analytics
• Checkout B2B

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Discussion guide

• [02:30] Dan’s overall developer perspective on the release and view on introduction of Hydrogen visual editing
• [07:00] Evolving to more low/no code tooling for content management e.g. style settings in the theme (Flex sections) 
• [11:50] New markets:
  1. Improved structure for where Markets is located in the admin panel
  2. Visual UI improvements, including the ease of setting parent markets
  3. Ability to use POS in other currencies than the base currency
  4. GAP: Shopify Payments settlement into multiple currencies announced but not delivered
• [21:20] Product & merchandising:
  1. Built in taxonomy, 10K+ categories and 2K+ attributes e.g. select Furniture, colour exists as category metafield, predefined colour definitions >> accuracy and speed
  2. Add bundles to draft orders
  3. Finally combined listings! Unique images, descriptions, URLs for multiple options under a parent (Plus only)
  4. Filtering based on icons, images + the ability to reorder filter values
  5. Bulk import and export metafields
  6. Stack multiple discounts in an order
  7. GAP: still no price books!!!
• [30:17] Customer Services:
  1. Store credit in DTC! Great for returns outside the policy window
  2. Can convert loyalty points into money rather than discount codes
• [34:10] Reporting & analysis:
  1. Impact of store changes on core performance e.g remove app, change code – really useful on top of the performance dashboard introduced last time
  2. Analytics changes nice, stronger data visualisation including cohort analysis: perfect for ecom teams who want simple charts without having to pay for a 3P reporting tool
• [38:40] Checkout:
  1. Split shipping, different rates and options per item when there are multiple shipments – integration with Shipper HQ to have different nominated day shipments
  2. Checkout Blocks app now free for checkout extensions e.g. add upsells, add custom fields for gift message, hide or reorder payment methods
  3. Shop Pay opt-in box beneficial for data capture
  4. Automatic payment capture per fulfilment: shipping and taxes collected when full order fulfilled
  5. Prefilled delivery addresses: default address to speed up and improve CX, can set this in Shop Pay as well
• [48:40] B2B:
  1. Proper theme for out the box launches
  2. Multiple B2B stores with unique catalogues and content
  3. Deposits at checkout on Plus
  4. Shipping rates based on weight and destination (request access only)

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