Unpacking Shopify Editions

This week we heard about the Next Era of Commerce with the introduction of Shopify Editions. The new twice a year update releasing brand new features, functionality and updates across the platform powering merchants into commerce for the future.

The first Edition was focused around Connect-to-Consumer (C2C) and features over 100+ new updates and launches. 

While there's too many exciting features to unpack in one blog post we've highlighted some announcements which our team are most excited about.

The ability to now combined discounts on the same order. For example 10% off and free shipping over $100. This is a feature that's been long request by a number of our clients so we're delighted to see it make it's way into this inaugural Editions release.

While we've built out complex B2B solutions on Shopify for years, we've had to build out a LOT of custom functionality to get it all to work. Here's just some of what Shopify's new B2B functionality will allow you to accomplish:

• Set custom prices for wholesale buyers Including net terms. Net 15 and 30 payment terms are a non-negotiable must have for many B2B merchants. It's great to be able to offer this without the need for complex workarounds.
• Ability to set complex pricing rules, price lists and payment terms for different company profiles or tiers.
• You have the flexibility to have one seamless D2C/B2B experience for your buyers and sell from one storefront or use a dedicated store specifically for B2B.

Shopify Markets was released earlier this year, empowering merchants to easily sell in new regions from a single Shopify store. With the most recent updates merchants now have the ability to set price lists and domains by market, sell in each market’s local currency and language while also collecting duties and import taxes at checkout.

It's fair to say that our development team are super excited about the announcement that Shopify's Headless framework and hosting platform are now available for production use. 

Whilst Headless isn't always the right solution for every merchant it can unlock a world of opportunities and deliver blisteringly fast sites. We've been build out our headless capabilities for some time and are excited to see so many app partners jumping onboard with Hydrogen support.

Shopify Partners will have access to building apps that enable customisation of the stores checkout. Adding checkout functionality, messages, banners, upsells just to name a few. 

Whilst Plus stores have had the ability to modify the checkout this has often required a lot of custom development and regular maintenance as Shopify often updates the checkout. 

Providing app developers and agency partners the ability to make changes in way that is upgrade safe will save merchants time and maintenance costs.

Preorders! - Apps will be able to create a “selling plan”, i.e. how apps like ReCharge sell subscriptions in the native checkout, to sell you a product that will not ship until it’s available. It’s likely that we’ll see third party apps pop up with this functionality.

We can see a lot of our fashion and apparel clients using this for a "try before you buy" customer experience.

The launch of Shop Cash, where customers can earn ‘Cash Back’ to spend over on the Shop app. The Shop app started as a means to track your orders and has developed into a full on marketplace. It's simply another channel for customers to get access to your products and now with Shop Cash Shopify are rewarding customers for using the app. 

It's currently in beta and there is no direct cost to the merchant. It's exciting to see Shopify delivering more functionality to the Shop app. 

ON the topic of payments, there has been enhancements to Shop Pay with the introduction of fraud protection and BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) payment option. This is currently only for US based merchants but we hope to see the features rolled out globally soon. Shop Pay powers the vast majority of our clients checkouts so it's great to see these new enhancements roll out. 

• Shopify Functions allow developers to build apps that can handle complex discount, shipping and or payment logic. This can can be deployed on Shopify's servers and should be lightning fast. 
• The Shopify audiences app, allowing merchants to find high-intent buyers with targeted top of funnel targeting. It's not available for Australian stores just yet but we're excited to kick the tires with some of our North American based clients.  
• The ability to sell your products directly on your Twitter profile!
• Updates to Shopify's native search capabilities.
• Shopify Flow is now available on all stores on the "Shopify" plan or higher.