Shopify has released on 07/26/2023 with the Summer 2023 Edition once again a big bunch of new features. After the last Winter Edition, the speed and scope of these new features is really impressive.
Today we'll take a closer look at a few of the features we find most interesting. Of course, there are a lot of other new features that we can't cover all in this post. You can find the official Shopify landing page here.
Sidekick: Your new AI assistant
At Shopify Unite 2023, a feature was unveiled that promises to change the way merchant:s run their ecommerce - Sidekick - a new AI commerce assistant right in the Shopify backend. This AI bot is designed to provide instant help, answer questions, and even do tasks for you to make running your online store + data analytics as easy as possible.
Sidekick can answer a wide range of questions, from simple queries about discount types to more complex topics like test credit card numbers for checkout development. This saves you the time and effort of searching through help or dev documents and allows you to get the information you need quickly and efficiently.
But Sidekick doesn't just provide answers - it can also do tasks for you. For example, you could ask Sidekick to set up a 10% discount on all tennis balls through June 30, and it would do it for you, saving you from manual data entry.
Sidekick's skills even extend to complex tasks. You could ask Sidekick to make your theme summery, and he would redesign your online store accordingly. This feature is especially useful for merchants who may not have design skills or the resources to hire a design team. With Sidekick, you can have a professionally designed website in a matter of seconds.
Sidekick can also generate content. You could ask Sidekick to write a short message to welcome all entrepreneurs to the Shopify Summer 23 Edition, and he would write an inviting and engaging message for you.
Overall, Sidekick is a powerful tool that can save you time, improve your efficiency, and optimize your e-commerce business. Whether you're a new merchant looking for help managing your store or an experienced retailer looking for ways to streamline operations, Sidekick is here to assist you.
Currently Sidekick is still in beta and can be tested here.
Subscriptions with the Shopify Subscriptions app
Finally, Shopify is launching its own subscription app. With it, you can easily set up subscriptions for your products and offer customers, for example, recurring deliveries at a discounted price.
The new Shopify Subscriptions app provides an integrated customer experience that works seamlessly with new customer accounts. Customers can easily log into their account after purchasing their subscription to manage payment information, delivery details, and more.
Further improvements in the checkout
The checkout should also be further improved. According to some studies, the Shopify checkout is currently 15% stronger on average in terms of conversion rates than its competitors.
We assume that the one-page checkout and other small optimizations are behind this announcement. More details are not yet known, so we can remain curious!
The Shopify Bundles app
The Shopify Bundles app is now fully available. You can now create and sell bundles with Shopify. According to Shopify, this is one of the best ways to increase your average order value (AOV). For fixed bundles and multipacks, you can use the free Shopify Bundles app. For more sophisticated needs, such as mix-and-match bundles, you can use one of the updated bundle apps in the Shopify App Store or, if you're on Shopify Plus, use the Shopify APIs to create a custom bundle offer. All apps integrate with the admin area and provide real-time inventory matching to protect against overselling.
If you have any questions about this app, feel free to contact us anytime. As a Shopify agency, we will be happy to help you.
Re-design of the Shopify admin area
Shopify has once again redesigned and optimized the Shopify admin area. Shopify itself says that this is the biggest design adjustment of the admin area in the last 7 years. You will find some points now in new places, the design language has been revised and also the speed has been greatly improved.
In addition, the settings system has been improved so that you can find your way around even better and quickly find what you're really looking for.
Notification feed: Shopify has also updated the notifications feed to make it easier for you to understand and identify unknown notifications.
On top of that, there are a few other small design tweaks that you can check out in Shopify's official video for this update:
New B2B features (Shopify Plus)
For Shopify Plus Merchants, Shopify has now also announced and partly already released more B2B features. It will now be easier for you to combine B2C and B2B in a single store and storefront.
Here is a brief overview of the main features:
Quantity prices
You can easily introduce volume discounts to motivate your customers to buy in larger quantities.
Store personalization
Create optimized websites for your customers and display relevant content in a single store - without any programming.
Quick order lists
You can show your customers a list of product variations so they can easily order sizes, colors and more.
PayPal payments
Customers can easily pay their orders and invoices with PayPal, and you can easily reconcile the payments in the admin area.
Deposited credit cards
From now on, customers can use a credit card previously saved for an order draft when checking out or paying an invoice.
Since this feature is exclusive to Shopify Plus Merchants for now, we'll have to wait and see what it means for merchants:innern on the smaller Shopify plans. We hope that Shopify will soon implement some of the features here as well to make selling through Shopify even easier.
More updates
Shopify Credit
A credit card for entrepreneurs:inside from Shopify. This card can be used to pay anywhere Visa cards are accepted.
A small disclaimer: The credit card is only available in the US for the time being. So it remains to be seen when Europe will also get the option.
Checkout Extensions
The checkout extensions have also been updated. Here are 17 new APIS and updates to customize the checkout available.
Features like custom validation logic in shopping cart & checkout as well as custom delivery options and address verification are some of the announced features. Currently still rather interesting for developers, as these features are in preview. They should then be available globally from October 2023.
Flexible sections in the Customizer (announced)
There are also exciting new features in the Customizer, Shopify's own WYSIWYG editor. With flexible sections, it becomes super easy to create custom layouts for your Shopify online store. You can drag and drop them, resize them, group them and much more.
Unfortunately, this feature is not yet available as of today, but is definitely scheduled for release in 2023. You can find a registration for a notification here
Shopify Marketplace Connect
With Marketplace Connect you can easily list your Shopify products on channels like Amazon, eBay & Co. Currently this app is compatible with Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Etsy. More marketplaces are to follow.
Conclusion
As always, Shopify is churning out lots of features and announcements. This also leads to the fact that it's hard to grasp the totality and details of all these features. We think that there are again a lot of useful innovations that make Shopify even better.
The fact that some features are only available for Shopify Plus Merchants is of course a bit of a shame, but unfortunately unavoidable. Let's just hope that these features will also be unlocked for lower Shopify plans in the medium term.
If you want to get your own picture of the Shopify Editions | Summer 2023, you can find the Official Shopify Landing Page here.
We've pulled out the walkthrough video from Shopify for you again:
