In this regard, it can be stated that ‘the game’ must constantly be outplayed for e-commerce businesses which are working to succeed. Being one of the key suppliers among the online merchants, Shopify has been continually demonstrating the true nature of a company that creates value and evolves for the better.
As Shopify and Shopify Plus entered the year 2023, there have been many features released to completely change the way that companies and enterprises function, deliver to clients and increase operational velocitas.
Whether you are a start-up business newbie who wants to create a new store or a large-scale business that needs to optimize its Shopify flow, you are guaranteed to be interested in using these features and they will help you plunge into a new world of opportunities.
Therefore, it is time to explore Shopify and Shopify Plus, to see what new features and functionalities are available in the market and are currently revolutionizing the sphere of e-commerce.🎯
Shopify Vs. Shopify Plus Current Features in 2023
Here are many transitions on the way ahead. Thus, the further prospect of development in the sphere of an e-commerce online presence as well as a progressive year in technological and customized features are designed by Shopify and Shopify Plus.
With the help of these tools and the given technology, businesses are enabled to provide the best online shopping experience. Unlike many Shopify partners or apps that are external to your business, their solution is built-in within Shopify Plus, taking your store to the next level.
This year to empower the merchants Shopify has come up with the new integrated e-commerce Functions, Shopify Magic, better returns, and parts of commerce. Well, did we also bring to the attention of the readers and viewers some of the influential marketing automation instruments?
Nonetheless, there are some new novelties in Shopify Plus development, which are quite fresh.
⭐Shopify New Features
- Shopify Functions,
- Product Bundles,
- One-page checkout,
- Commerce Components,
- Shopify Magic,
- Optimized image rendering,
- Marketing automation,
- Advanced returns functionality.
⭐Shopify Plus New Features
- Customizable checkout,
- Streamlining B2B and wholesale operations,
- Themes.
Some of the features include, Shopify targets and accommodates prominent businesses, integrated flexible APIs for business to business and business to wholesale, business to custom checkout and infrastructure.
Latest Updates for Shopify Merchants and Customers in 2023
#1 Revolutionizing Customization: New Checkout Extensibility Update: Get to Know This Essential App on Shopify
This update about Shopify checkout is a massive one for online stores. This gives more flexibility and personalization to the customers and revolutionizes the functionality of the checkouts. Thanks to removing Checkout. Liquid and Shopify Scripts, promote and discounts can be properly entered to meet the individual business’s agenda.
The update introduces features like:
- Global cart,
- Branding API,
- One-page checkout,
- App extensions,
- And Shopify Functions, Streamlining the process for businesses, customers, and developers.
Streamlining the process for businesses, customers, and developers.
🥇 What are the advantages to merchants?
These updates are generic, and they afford all merchants a way to customize the experience in the checkout area for their customers. Indeed, it is worthy to become interested in this new technology since the old checkout will be depreciated by August 13, 2024.
#2 Next-Level Commerce: Now Revealing Enterprise-Grade Commerce Components
Shopify has also unveiled new enterprise commerce components for all the owners of enterprise stores. The Commerce Components split many of the pre-incorporated aspects into granules which can be effortlessly used to create micro solutions that then can be integrated into more considerable tech stacks and giving the best flexibility to the enterprise level brands beyond the “out of the box.”
Key features include:
- Headless capabilities for immersive user experiences,
- Flexible checkout and payment options,
- Open API access for integrations,
- And robust Omni channel capabilities for cross-channel selling.
These updates testify the ‘hearts and souls’ of Shopify where it is striving for small, medium, start-ups, and now it is catering to the enterprise-level brands as well which makes it at par with the other enterprise platforms like Magento and Salesforce.
Such concentration on flexibility and personalization enables the large brands to manage their online stores according to specific needs, incorporating outsiders into technical solutions of the commerce suit.
🥇 What is in it for merchants?
This update provided below is more flexible and convenient to use for merchants. Shopify published more than 100 product updates, and its ultimate goals – to help merchants and developers build for the long term with deeply integrated sales channels, faster page loads, and one-page checkouts.
#3 Shopify Improvements in Building Enticing Bundles & Flexible promotions
You will come across another update on the logic of creating the bundle and sophisticated discounting functionality.
The update comprises new discounting applications, which are developed taking into account the Functions preferred by the merchants, which will allow them to make use of rather complex tools to develop attractive promotions. Shopify has also developed bundling apps which they plan to release in the market shortly, to people who have shown interest in it.
Further, the features like channel-specific discounts and multiple codes together along with the next versions will boost promotional strengths. Features like these are important for all those who want to win the battle in promotions.
The increased flexibility in creating campaigns enables merchants to:
- Curate discounts to target specific audiences,
- Attract the right customers to their store,
- And drive sales revenue.
Shopify’s new approach of how it delivers and manages the coupons will make it easier for the companies of all sizes to align the offerings with their needs, therefore making it easier for them to cope with the competition within the sphere of end-credit consumerism.
🥇 What is in it for the merchants?
This feature provides more options for the merchants and they can configure and deploy it easily; also merchants can create more products bundles; also to the customers, if they are purchasing more quantities, the merchants can offer them with discounts. And as such, the level of sales as well as the level of revenues are boosted.
Evaluating such updates may help important business dynamics that deliver value and prosper in the e-commerce domain.
#4 Shopify Magic: AI-Based Write-ups to Fetch Unmatched Selling Point
What would the AI product descriptions look like? Indeed, you can find them also! AI-Powered Product Descriptions of Shopify that uses their Shopify Magic, artificial intelligence for commerce were highlighted by the former.
There are tens of millions of items on Shopify for which description is critical and can significantly influence customers’ choices yet many of them lack this information. Through entering a few product details, or relevant keywords, descriptions can be autonomously generated beneath the product setup page in the admin area of merchants’ store.
This is not to mention the mobile application that allows merchants to generate descriptions or revise or expand them on their mobile phones.
Also, it was found that Shopify envisions incorporating the given functionalities to other tools in the platform with the help of Shopify Magic in the future, which will bring even more AI advantages for merchants.
🥇 What are the benefits merchants stand to gain from adopting this format of doing business?
This feature enables the merchants to come up with high quality and persuasive description of the products within a short span of time. Since product description and product page is a vital element in the initial stage of sales execution, this tool will assist in reducing such time consumption, drive more traffic, as well as better your conversion rate. The merchants can make use of large product catalogues, thus, they can create attractive and consistent product descriptions with ease. Through the use of AI, the role of writing is delegated thus relieving the merchants to concentrate on managing their businesses.
#5 Optimizing B2B and Wholesale Subsidiary for Shopify
Most of its recent upgrades make Shopify Plus centred on B2B and wholesale segments, mostly essential for commerce businesses.
Now you can meet the needs of your B2B customers with:
- quantity rules,
- curated catalogues,
- And customized checkout options.
Quantity rules help the company to set the desired quantities for orders, while the catalogue helps merchants to set up restricted catalogues according to the needs of B2B clients. One of the advantages is the flexibility of the check out where clients can get options such as POs and net terms, which are typical in B2B.
Further improvements like custom product publishing, simple reorder of products, metafields for customers and location, give the commerce businesses a better way to sell most of the products wholesale.
🥇 What are the benefits for merchants?
Shopify B2B tools assist merchants to enhance their functionality in the business to business segment and offer their buyers and customers the right level of satisfying their needs.
Through this, the merchants hope to meet the expectations of the B2B buyers and provide DTC like experiences so as to prolong loyalty and gain more ground in the very competitive B2B market.
#6 Adding Hydrogen 2 to a New Level of HC (Headless Commerce)
Hydrogen 2, introduced by Shopify as a headless commerce framework is a leap for the brands being enterprise level.
Therefore, by separating the front-end and back-end operations of the online stores, Hydrogen 2 allows the businesses to integrate external front-end CMS technologies. It is more versatile in terms of design and creating engaging experiences for the customers while using all the benefits of a well-developed Shopify store, such as order management and payment gateways.
Hydrogen 2 is not fully developed, but taken together the platform clearly offers a new possibility for large businesses who want more control over their web presence.
🥇 What are the benefits for merchants?
The integration of the external CMS technologies offers the merchants more options over the front end and thus more chances to design customer friendly interfaces.
Hydrogen 2 allows businesses to be on par with modern e-commerce experiences as the platform continues to grow and shift.
#7 Unlocking Endless Possibilities: Towards Understanding the Concept of Shopify Functions
Shopify has officially stated that Shopify Scripts will no longer be functional starting August 13, 2024, and will be replaced by Shopify Functions. Merchants utilizing the Shopify Scripts apps will have to migrate to the apps based on Shopify Functions before the set date.
These are biased as they provide higher levels of flexibility and business practicality for firms, users and application developers.
Functions now provide customization options for:
- Product Bundles,
- Order Routing logic,
- and Checkout Validation rules,
Expand to complementing other customizations commonly used that follow the Discounts, Delivery, and Payments fields.
Shopify Functions presents a brand story of a new way of creating a distinctive commerce experience since it enables developers to enter custom code into the Shopify application’s backend processes. Since they are built with Functions running on the Shopify’s infrastructure, it is possible to meet the scale of sales events, at the same time keeping the speed of their execution high.
🥇 What are the benefits for merchants?
This transition is convenient for merchants that want to be able to build custom development without having to know how to write code.
#8 Shopify’s Optimized Image Rendering and the Focus for the Visual Perfection
There was a change in the interface of the recently released update of Shopify, where the emphasis is made on the optimization of image display, including the quality of images and their size. That is due to the optimization of images and it positively affects the speed of your store therefore conversions.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, merchants are now able to choose a focal point on images. While uploading images on Shopify, it scales the images and compresses the data size for the appropriate image size which makes the page load very fast.
The application also determines the recognized file formats on the client side and delivers an optimized option like image formats that are converted to WebP or AVIF where supported, while having JPG for the other clients. New here, one is able to crop and transform images using URL parameters but the actual file is not affected.
🥇 What are the benefits for merchants?
These enhancements provide merchants with greater control over image optimization, leading to improved user experience and website performance. They can ensure that their products are prominently displayed and have high quality.
#9 Win Back Your Customers: Discover Shopify’s New Re-engagement Automation
Shopify has also introduced updates to enable automation for re-engagement, empowering merchants to reach out to customers who have abandoned their carts efficiently, left the checkout process incomplete, or browsed products without making a purchase.
These marketing automations can be seamlessly integrated into existing workflows using Shopify Email. With a user-friendly trigger-condition-action interface, merchants can create custom automation tailored to their specific business requirements.
Ready-to-use templates are available, covering various scenarios such as:
- welcome emails,
- winback campaigns,
- and first-purchase upsells.
Leveraging Shopify’s infrastructure ensures the timely delivery of messages, and conditions can be set to optimize targeting.
The automation process includes customizable email templates that reflect the merchant’s branding. Actionable reports provide insights into email engagement and sales performance.
🥇 What are the benefits for merchants?
Utilizing these automations gives more insights and lets merchants save time and effort by streamlining their email campaigns while effectively re-engaging customers and driving conversions.
#10 Returns Made Easy: Introducing Built-in Return Functionality on Shopify
And, of course, Shopify has introduced updates to its returns process, offering several benefits for merchants. This new feature aim is to streamline returns by providing built-in functionality for faster processing.
With the integration of Loop Returns, instant exchanges, and credits can be offered to customers, enhancing their experience.
Based on product-level preferences, merchants can determine whether returned items should be restocked or disposed of. This empowers them to set their own return rules, track orders and the status of returned items, enabling them to provide smooth and prompt refunds, build customer trust and minimize return costs.
Undamaged products can be restocked as sellable inventory after passing an inspection based on merchant guidelines.
🥇 What are the benefits for merchants?
These updates help to get higher efficiency of money returns for merchants and enhance the customers’ satisfaction. Consumers are now able to request for return directly from the online shop and base on that, merchants can easily address these returns from the Shopify admin.
Adapting Shopify App Store and the Personalization Attributes for Your Web Store in 2023
New features, design, layouts, and more options for customization, also in 2023, Shopify has made amazing changes for online stores accessed in the Shopify App Store.
It shows that these update are meant to increase conversions and improve the total customer shopping experience. Improving your Shopify website design is now a piece of cake.
However, in the new version navigation and application categories contain more product content, allow you to solve the specific problem in business. Built for Shopify is a specific designation that is applied to apps showing the best performance meeting Shopify high expectations for outstanding commerce experiences helping apps gain more visibility and promote their growth.
Some of the most used apps by the merchants across Shopify include Shopify Email app, Google & YouTube app, Pinterest app, Shopify Search & Discovery app, Shopify Translate & Adapt app, TikTok app and so on, depending on the quality of your account, you are likely to get better access.
What’s the benefit to merchants?
Merchants can use information on creating outstanding apps for customers and enjoy optimized tracking of numerous performances. Since there are recommendations, searches of related products, better ranking of the shop app, it is easier to identify apps of relevance in order to achieve aims and objectives for every fastest-moving commerce organization.
Shopify New Themes and New Designs
Are you in need of a new theme or design? If so, I would like to inform you that you do not need directly edit the theme files in order to make the change to the online store theme. Moreover, one can define a color style to a theme.
This update brings clarity and flexibility to Shopify theme development as it:
- enables theme-defined and merchant-defined color schemes,
- adds a visual preview that makes updating theme colors a lot easier,
- And allows theme changes to be implemented at the global, section, and block levels within a theme.
So, later this summer, theme developers will be able to specify how to migrate merchants’ theme data during the update process (ex: changing settings scope, modifying schema structure in other ways, etc.).
Custom Apps Development Trends to Watch for in Shopify
#1 Great Mobile Checkout Experience
The emphasis has been put more on improvement of the mobile commerce and checkout. Checkout UI Extensions and Functions in Shopify are helpful for changing the discount and checkout processes for Plus and non-Plus merchants.
These options allow the Shopify Partners to build effective apps for sale in the Shopify App Store hence fast development and quality experience to the customers.
#2 Ready-made Themes
Secondly, the use of themes as an optimization of the labor process is expanding currently. When it comes to themes you can see that sharper personalities adopt add functionality components to beef up existing themes that are increasingly used by Shopify developers.
With an application of this method of creation, code modifications are easily achievable and incorporation of addition/change of custom sections together with other ready-made sections are less complicated in the long run thus making the maintenance easier and costs of technical debt low.
#3 Headless Commerce
Then there is headless commerce, especially the use of the firm’s Hydrogen and Oxygen platforms, which is believed would grow further. This involves the creation of templated storefronts with Hydrogen and Oxygen as the hosting service.
Another area that comprises composable architectures is unifying content platforms and embedding a personalization/recommendation system into a content creation process. Improved A/B testing and feature flagging also generates useful insights into the buying behavior of the clients.
Therefore, using these trends, Shopify app development is beneficial in regard to improving the application’s interface and stimulating business’ growth.
Influence of the New Features on Ecommerce Outcomes
As is clear, you’re online store could benefit much if you consider utilizing more functions. Every Shopify merchant and any of its partners can enhance the customer experience, create flash sales, enhance mobile commerce, and much more with new options.
If you need any assistance regarding that Shopify store, feel free to contact Inspler and we will assist you like a true partner to help you touch the sky.
