Shopify continued its tradition of updates by introducing a series of innovative updates called Shopify Editions. Versions released since 2022 are designed to support merchants, partners, and developers, offering more powerful tools for growing and enhancing online businesses. Here's a recap of the previous Editions and the newest Shopify Winter Editions:
Connect to Consumer: Released to expand the customer base, increase conversions, build stronger relationships, and scale businesses with a customer-centric strategy.
Built to Last: Aimed at guiding brand growth and reaching new customers, emphasizing sustainability, and providing tools for long-term brand development.
Imagine My Business: Introduced over 100 product updates, offering insights into the evolving business environment and demonstrating Shopify's commitment to staying current with technology and changes in customer behavior.
Foundations (Winter Editions '24): Unveiled with over 100 updates to strengthen Shopify's foundation and provide more powerful tools. Foundations promises to deepen understanding of customer needs and develop businesses sustainably.
Richer and More Versatile Product Management
One of the significant updates in Shopify Winter Editions was the enhancement of the product model. In the future, you'll be able to manage increasingly complex and extensive product collections.
The new product API allows the use of up to 2000 variants to support more complex listings, compared to the previous limit of 100 variants. This feature will be available in 2024. Additionally, with enriched product data, you can seamlessly integrate a variety of features into the category, making it easier to create, classify, and organize products. Improved categorization enhances the discoverability of your products in both your store and search engines.
Shopify Combined Listings App
With the Shopify Combined Listing app, merchants can more easily sell products with multiple options. Combined listings make it easier to offer products in various colors, materials, or sizes, providing customers with a better, more conversion-driven shopping experience. Each variant can have its own product card with a displayed image collection, URL, and variant-specific publishing options. The app is available only for Plus licenses.
AI Supporting Business Operations
The previously released Shopify Magic, introduced in the last edition, expands into image processing in 2024. The Shopify Magic AI tool helps merchants create professional product images, remove backgrounds from existing images, and immediately create a new background using keywords.
Semantic Search
Another AI-powered feature is semantic search, aiming to understand the context behind customer searches. The feature uses product descriptions and information in searches to provide higher-quality product recommendations. This feature is available only for Plus merchants, and English language proficiency is currently a prerequisite.
B2B
The highly developed Shopify B2B, introduced in the previous edition, offers opportunities for more versatile sales processes. With updated employee rights, you can grant sales representatives the rights to place orders and view customer-specific information only for their assigned customers. This gives salespeople a tool for managing customer relationships and agile sales. Additionally, due to the increased popularity of Shopify B2B, a theme designed specifically for B2B business requirements, Trade, will be released for theme stores.
World's Most Powerful Checkout
The globally acclaimed checkout system has evolved further. The new Shopify Checkout extension provides better customization options. In this update, the checkout received 14 new APIs and UI components. Moreover, you can customize your checkout with over 90 new ecosystem apps, enabling features like upselling and loyalty programs. Customization has also expanded to thank you and order confirmation pages. As before, this is available only for Plus licenses.
Features for Most Merchants
The release included many lighter enhancements from a user perspective. Often, major new features are initially available to Plus customers or, upon request, to businesses, with expanded usage rights for a broader audience. The previously released Shopify Subscription app is now available with full efficiency, and the product offering of Shopify Bundles has been expanded from 10 to 30 products. Additionally, Shopify Winter Editions '24 brings new, more versatile opportunities for our more technical partners to create automations and enhance the user experience for your organization and customers in relevant channels.
Each Shopify Editions update reflects the company's commitment to innovation and user-centered development. Merchants can expect better tools, increased efficiency, and new opportunities to create a successful online store. Shopify is an excellent partner for ensuring success for both online merchants and agencies. Let's start the collaboration towards a more competitive business!
