In recent times, Shopify has launched its latest update, Editions Winter ‘24, dubbed “Foundations”, boasting over 100 new product updates. The ambition behind this release is to establish a sturdy foundation, enticing more Enterprise brands to swiftly migrate to Shopify Plus.
As per tradition, Platform invests over $1.5 billion annually in research and product development, unveiling two major updates known as Winter and Summer Editions.
Join Bluefocus as we delve into the notable features of the Winter 24 update and explore its potential impact on ecommerce trends in the years ahead.
The Variants Limit has now been expanded to over 2000 through APIs
The platform has undergone significant development by allowing the variant limit to be increased to 2000. The rationale behind this move is to attract enterprise customers with complex product structures and numerous variations.
Additionally, the platform will provide APIs for app developers to build or upgrade Apps to support these 2000 variants.
Expanding Potential for Conversion
Conversion rate has always been a point of pride for Shopify, with its user-friendly interface and high-converting Checkout page ranking highest among ecommerce platforms.
With the Winter ’24 Update bringing improvements to how variants are organized and handling more diverse and complex attributes, this is the biggest change to the platform’s product structure in the past decade.
Upgrade Combine listing product
In response to customer expectations, the platform has allowed the bundling of products with multiple colors or styles into a single product. However, this feature is exclusively reserved for customers using Shopify Plus.
If you’re not on the Plus package, you can still utilize other apps with similar functionality, though the experience may not be as seamless as Shopify‘s native feature.
Rich Attributes Feature
This is a feature that allows you to add attributes to products, facilitating easier product initialization, storage, and filtering, thereby enabling customers to quickly select products according to their preferences.
Bundles, Discounts
The Bundles feature increases the maximum number of products from 10 to 30.
Draft orders can apply discounts and metafields.
New types of discounts have been added, such as the ability to combine both Free shipping and Buy X Get Y at Checkout.
Shopify Subscription App
Subscriptions have long been a piece of cake that this platform wants to reclaim from major solution providers like Recharge or Loop.
When working with third-party apps, they often charge a fee of around 1% on each subscription order. This can be quite significant for enterprise customers with volumes reaching hundreds of millions or billions of USD.
The platform provides this solution for free, aiming to attract more customers to switch to using its native solution. It’s expected that smaller subscription apps will struggle to survive through this phase.
Checkout Extensibility Feature
Transitioning from checkout.liquid to Checkout Extensibility, the platform is heavily investing in creating the most conversion-driven and sophisticated checkout pages in the ecommerce world.
- One-Page checkout: A new design reduces checkout completion time by 4 seconds compared to the norm.
- Checkout speed increased by up to 95% with the new platform architecture.
- 90+ new apps from partners for customizing the checkout page.
- Branding UI Components allow for brand-specific styling changes.
- APIs for Local Pickup, Order Routing, Map Components.
Usually, Checkout Extensibility is only applicable to Versione Plus customers.
Storefront Performance
Platform introduces a new way to measure website speed and performance so you can monitor Core Web Vitals metrics (including Loading speed, Interactivity, and Visual stability).
When using this platform, efforts are also being made to increase the speed of storefronts globally.
AI-powered Features in Ecommerce
The platform has announced new features as well as additional functionalities supported by AI.
Shopify Magic Feature
Introducing a tool that allows for the generation of product images based on Shopify Magic AI. The feature is set to be released in the first half of 2024.
The Sidekick feature, powered by AI, intelligently responds to and handles all queries and questions from merchants within the admin interface of this platform.
The Semantic Search feature
This is exclusively available for Shopify Plus customers, is supported by AI.
When platforms’ search engines or ecommerce websites query based on the keywords customers search for, it often comes with limitations when the keywords they use don’t match those in the product titles or descriptions.
With Semantic Search, customers can use more natural keywords based on their understanding, and the Semantic Search AI will deliver results relevant to that search query.
Shopify Hydrogen Solution
Hydrogen is a Headless commerce solution provided by Platform. Hydrogen allows for superior storefront customization, ensuring businesses can excel in the digital market.
Currently, Hydrogen is increasingly well-supported and more accessible to enterprise customers.
This year, Hydrogen provides more development and debugging tools to accelerate the pace of headless commerce project development on Shopify Hydrogen.
Utilizing Shopify Lending
Including Balance and Capital allows merchants to earn interest based on the amount stored in Balance, as well as Capital, which allows merchants to borrow business capital based on revenue.
shopify lending
At present, these tools are only available in markets with Payments such as the United States, Canada, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia,…
Shopify B2B
The platform aims to enhance its B2B features to compete with strong B2B enterprise platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce (Magento).
The B2B feature of the platform is included in the Shopify Plus package and has been upgraded with several notable features:
- Sales rep allows permission management for employees authorized to handle B2B orders.
- Headless: B2B is officially supported for headless development with Hydrogen.
- Custom discount: enables the creation of custom discounts for B2B orders.
POS Terminal feature
Terminal serves as a tool for swiftly reading credit cards and processing payments within seconds. It’s a handheld device tailored for offline stores.
Presently, Terminal is exclusively accessible in the US and Canada markets.
Markets Pro
This is offers functionalities pertaining to currency conversion, tax handling, translation, and localization. This facilitates the global expansion of your business.
Currently, Markets Pro is only available to customers in the United States.
The Audiences feature
Enables merchants with locations in the US and Canada to target customer audience segments across the entire platform’s dataset.
Similar to Meta or Google, Shopify owns a database of customers with various preferences and shopping behaviors.
Audiences is exclusively available for customers using Version Plus.
Conclusion
Bluefocus delves deep into the intricate advancements within the platform, underscoring its commitment to enhancing global ecommerce experiences. With features such as Terminal, Markets Pro, and Audiences, Platform continues to empower merchants, particularly those using Shopify Plus, to thrive amidst the ever-evolving digital landscape. We remain dedicated to elucidating the latest platform innovations, ensuring businesses stay ahead in the realm of online commerce.
