For those of you that know us, we are a Shopify centric agency, having developed on the platform for a number of years on projects big and small. We recently decided with the release of Shopify's Summer 2024 Editions update to go over and highlight a few of the new updates coming to stores and what these mean for you.
1- Unified Markets
Perhaps our favourite feature we're starting out with. When our team started out with Shopify, one of the common drawbacks for large international companies was the need to setup multiple stores for different regions. Management is rather clunky when you need to administer stores for UK, EU, US, AU and more markets as several previous clients have done. Requiring quite a lot of custom services to connect store flow together and often requiring iPaaS services in between to provide that connection. While these services are incredibly powerful and still very much relevant for many companies today, the unified market update will definitely make management so much easier!
From now on stores have the ability to control multiple regions and store types from a single dashboard in a single store, making admin a much simpler task. It also brings the ability to see in a simple diagram, how your store is setup, how specific regions are setup and how everything connects to each other.
2- Analytics update
Another welcome update is to the analytics dashboard. The team have performed an extensive rewrite to the analytics reports and tools with granularity and customisation in mind. Reports are now incredibly customisable allowing you to drill down to the exact data you're looking for. Furthermore, we welcome the edition of a code editor to allow you to write custom Shopify QL queries to retrieve data in the way that suits you.
The final most important update form the analytics team is the switch to real time data streaming. No more waiting for reports to be generated! Get a to the second performance review of your sales direct from the website dashboard, perfect for sale periods.
3- Split shipping at checkout
Customers can now see when items will be split during shipping and allow them to pick the most convenient or cheapest options to suit there needs.
4- New theme settings
Theme developers can now access a range of new settings allowing for better control of theme layouts from selecting things like layout style grid and justification / alignment tools. Alongside this, there are now better section targeting and better styling specificity capabilities.
5- Shipping to retail stores
Shopify now allows for online orders to be sent direct to a store for customer collection at there convenience. This can be done via the new look POS app.
6- POS checkout
Shopify POS checkout now has a more streamlined flow and feel to make in person transactions even easier. Now featuring digital receipts that allow or direct opt in to your email newsletter service as well as better staff attribution.
7- Shopify Sidekick AI
Shopify are continuing to release a myriad of new features to there intelligent assistant. Not only has smart descriptions received a new look and feel, but smart image tools are now available allowing you to remove and change product shot backgrounds to showcase products in different settings without actually needing to do any more photography! From what we can tell, the specific Shopify offering does a pretty good job here, rivalling most professional services offering the same thing.
Generate automatic FAQ's with the new look assistant for all kinds of things on your site including product specifics. In addition smart updates have also been made to email campaign management and various other services.
Summary
Phew, that's a wrap until the next one! These of course are just an overview of the key and most important features we think most users will benefit from. Shopify continue to add new features to stores at a rapid rate, offering more and more value for money showing how eCommerce should be done and why they are indeed still the top dog.
Want to get started on a new Shopify store or find out how to utilise some of the above for your own store? Why not reach out to us to explore how we can help you today.
Bye for now :)