On 24.06.2024 it was time again: The Shopify Editions Summer 2024 took place. This time, Shopify presented the latest features, product updates and enhancements in the Shopify cosmos under the motto "UNIFIED". Twice a year, Shopify hosts a digital event where merchants are informed about these innovations.
We take a closer look at some of these features and provide an overview.
The most important new features of Shopify Editions Summer 2024
Expansion of the markets
- New central platform for markets: Merchants can now manage and customize B2B, retail and regional markets more easily.
- Managed Markets: With "Managed Markets", retailers can include customs duties and taxes in regional prices, secure better shipping rates and process orders retrospectively.
Multiple shipping options in the checkout
Customers can see in the checkout when an order is split into multiple deliveries and can choose between the cheapest, fastest or customized shipping options. This feature should provide a clear improvement to the checkout experience and make the already very strong Shopify Checkout even stronger.
The feature will be available shortly. You can find more information here.
Shopify Magic & Sidekick
The already in the Shopify Editions Summer 2023 AI helper called Sidekiuck is now available in thousands of Shopify stores. This includes image and video creation with AI directly on the mobile device and within the Shopify Admin area.
In addition, you can now use the Shopify Inbox chat tool to answer customer queries much more easily with the help of AI suggestions.
New statistics & analytics
The technical basis of the reports, analytics and statistics has been completely overhauled. This makes the statistics faster, more flexible and much more intuitive. The new Shopify statistics give you an insight into your store performance and all important KPIs in real time.
In the future, ShopifyQL will make it possible to make direct queries in your statistics. You can find out more here.
New style settings in the Theme Customizer
We find this feature particularly exciting because, in addition to the Theme Blocks announced by Shopify, it enables further flexibility and an even more unique design of Shopify themes. In the style settings, for example, you can implement spacing, alignment and inheritance of objects and blocks.
This feature is currently in the developer preview and will probably not be ready for live use for some time. You can find an overview here.
Hydrogen Visual Editor - powered by Utopia
For larger, more complex cases where headless storefronts are used, Shopify has introduced the new Hydrogen Visual Editor, powered by Utopia. It allows your entire team to collaborate in one interface and create unique headless experiences. The code remains the single source of truth and changes can be synchronized directly with GitHub.
This is probably a change that won't affect many of you, but we still find it exciting!
Markets Pro becomes Managed Markets
In future, it will be possible to offer customs duties and taxes directly in local prices and currencies. You can also easily hide products that are excluded from sale in certain regions and edit orders that have already been created to further improve the shopping experience in your store.
Managed Markets offers you:
- Local payment methods
- Customs and tax compliance
- Customs pre-clearance
- Restriction management
- Guaranteed exchange rates for foreign currencies
- Fraud and chargebacks are managed by Shopify
You can find out what additional features are hidden behind this announcement directly from Shopify.
Shipping to and from local stores
Allow your customers more flexibility and convenience when receiving their deliveries. Transport the online orders to the preferred local store for pickup or ship the products directly from one of your physical locations with Shopify POS. This feature can be particularly interesting for brands and companies that operate one or more local stores in addition to their online store.
Further features and innovations
Of course, there are also plenty of other features and functions that Shopify has announced in the Summer 2024 editions. Especially for techies and developers, there is once again a lot to discover. From Shopify Flow templates for apps and store campaigns & target groups to various new checkout extensions and API extensions.
Our conclusion
Of course, Shopify is sticking to its tradition of announcing a huge range of features and enhancements. However, it is once again the case that the majority of these features have so far either only been slimmed down, are in a developer preview or are only available for selected Shopify merchants. Nevertheless, it is once again impressive how much is happening at Shopify in a fairly short time.
We have the feeling that Shopify really listens to its users and addresses and addresses extremely helpful and needed features in every new announcement.
As over 150 new features have been announced, we can't go into every single one here, of course. But if you want to get a detailed overview, you can do so as usual on the Shopify landing page for the Shopify Editions Summer 2024. Continue here.
Of course, we have also selected the Shopify video for you:
Questions about Shopify?
Do you have questions about Shopify or are you considering setting up a Shopify store for your brand? Get in touch with us, as a Shopify agency we are happy to advise you on all Shopify-related topics. Feel free to contact us at any time via our contact form or book a non-binding analysis meeting.
