While other eCommerce platforms are struggling to improve their tools of the trade, and the whole eCommerce is showing not the best growth, Shopify has launched One Thousand and One feature. Boom. It’s really a massive update, the first such massive one in Shopify history. I’ve some experience with some enterprise eCommerce platforms, I can truly say that Shopify kicks their ass*s in the ability to change.
Let’s check this out.
The Shopify release is split into 2 points of view: merchant and developer perspectives. It was made intentionally, to gain the trust of both groups.
Here I’ll focus on the most important features from the Merchant’s perspective.
What I can use as a Merchant to find customers?
Shopify Audiences
It becomes hard to make a successful Ads campaign, targeting the right customers and not spending the whole budget on the first day. Shopify Audiences promises to help with it, by providing a proven list of customers generated by Shopify algorithms. The procedure is simple. At first, you are generating a list of buyers. In the second step, you are exporting the audience list to your Facebook Ads account, and launching ad campaigns that target that audience.
This is for US and Canada Shopify Plus merchants only, and for stores using Shopify Payments. If you are into marketing and Ads, I would recommend you to check it.
Link: https://www.shopify.com/audiences
Twitter Shopping
This is a native Twitter integration with Shopify. You can add a direct shop-to link to your Twitter profile for any of your products. By this, you will have a direct shoppable link in your Twitter account.
Just install this Twitter Shopping free app, and connect your Twitter profile. It will sync all products from Shopify to https://ads.twitter.com/shopping_manager. Choose the proper product and voila, you have it in your Twitter profile.
Link: https://apps.shopify.com/twitter
Dovetale
This is a platform to recruit influencers from Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitch platforms. Create your brand page, choose platforms for recruitment, fill in the requirements for influencers and start inviting them.
You can track conversions, affiliates, gifts, and offers. You can pay your influencers with PayPal. It will be helpful for marketing people.
Link: https://apps.shopify.com/dovetale
Marketplace Kit
This is a collection of APIs and documentation that allows integrating Shopify store products with any ecosystem you want. Marketplace Kit uses a channel app to connect Shopify merchants to a platform. You build the app, and the merchant installs it and directs products to it. These products are displayed on your marketplace as a part of your inventory.
Link: https://shopify.dev/marketplaces
How can I improve conversions as a Merchant?
B2B
Finally, Shopify has decided to upgrade the obsolete B2B sales channel to something more modern and valuable. Because Shopify positions itself as a platform for small and medium businesses, this feature represents the same scale. This is not a completely customizable solution, it covers the specific goal.
As a merchant, now you can choose from 2 types of stores you can use: blended or dedicated stores. They have different sets of features. Blended stores are for B2B and DTC customers both. They share the same Discount settings, Gift Cards, and Notifications. Dedicated stores require you to create a new store, and make it “for B2B only”.
All analytics combine results from both B2B and DTC customers. The only difference between B2B and DTC customers is sales reports only.
As for the templates and coding, both of the stores (B2B and DTC) are actually the same theme, and if you want to add some you can use the customer.b2b? variable in any .liquid file.
There is a new entity type in the admin, Companies, related to the B2B. They are B2B customers you are working with. Each Company profile has a lot of properties, such as contact permissions, payment terms, price lists, catalogs, and tax exemptions.
Summarizing this feature I can say that this is a mature solution for those Shopify merchants who want to use B2B, but it is not an Enterprise B2B.
B2B is available on the Shopify Plus plan only.
Link: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/b2b
Checkout UI extensions
This is a Shopify Plus exclusive. It solves the problem of not customizable Shopify Checkout for Plus merchants.
Here is the main diagram to show available tools to customize the Checkout experience:
Checkout UI extensions
Available for Shopify Plus merchants. You will have a minimum of 2 supported locations on the page to paste your extension widget, for every Checkout step. Extensions use JavaScript to read and write data and call external services, and natively render UIs built using Shopify’s checkout components. Beware, Checkout UI extensions don’t have access to the DOM and can’t return DOM nodes. If you want to try these new extensions, you should create a developer store with Checkout UI extensions preview enabled.
Checkout branding
This is a feature to customize the Checkout look, via API. For example, you can change the branded colors of the inks. Available for Shopify Plus merchants only.
Link: https://shopify.dev/api/admin-graphql/unstable/objects/CheckoutBranding
Shopify Functions
This is a boomer! Shopify Functions allow developers to customize the backend logic. Yes, you’ll be able to customize the admin business logic. Phew! You can write your code in any language that could be compiled to WebAssembly and it will be run on Shopify’s infrastructure. Very promising, doesn’t it?
Every function has memory limits, can’t exceed 256 kB in size in compiled view, and the logic of the function must execute within 5 milliseconds.
It will be available for any Shopify plan soon.
Link: https://shopify.dev/api/functions
Discount Combinations
The limitation of having only one discount at a time was driving me and my clients mad. Now with the Combinations entity, we can provide a customer with multiple discounts at the same time.
This feature will be rolling out to all merchants over the next few weeks.
Link: https://www.shopify.com/blog/discount-combinations
Pre-orders and Try before you buy
For those who sell some items and sometimes want to engage customers in a purchase before the real item arrives in your stock, this feature is mandatory. This feature was covered by third-party apps such as the Pre-order app. It stays the same, but now Shopify has integrated the UI experience in the storefront and admin.
How can I create a unique UI experience as a Merchant?
Shopify has launched the Hydrogen + Oxygen framework to cover all needs of any merchant. I will cover this in a separate article a little bit later.
Also, say hello to the 8 new free themes: https://themes.shopify.com/collections/free-themes, 10 premium themes, and the Metafields.
Link: https://hydrogen.shopify.dev/
How can I build better relationships as a Merchant?
Customer Engagement Tools
This is an enhanced version of Shopify Emails, Customer segmentation, and Email automation tools that are now available in every Shopify admin. To push it forward Shopify provides every merchant on every Shopify plan can now with an amount of 10,000 emails per month, at no additional cost.
With these features, we can omit the usage of Klavyio or MailChimp and have the native Shopify tools at no cost.
And check the Shopify Inbox free chat app. It is awesome.
How can I run my business better as a Merchant?
Shopify Fulfillment Network
This is a Shopify chain of fulfillment centers across the United States with a guaranteed 2-day delivery time. To boost reasons for using this service they offer free storage for 6 months per item with no up-front costs.
Link: https://www.shopify.com/fulfillment
Shopify Balance
This is a free money management account connected directly to your Shopify store. You can have a virtual card, or you can order a free physical card with your business name on it, Everywhere Visa® is accepted. Shopify even offers 2% cashback to your account each month when you spend on eligible business purchases.
