It was just a few months since we last wrote about the Winter Editions of Shopify for 2024. Now, we’re back to featuring yet another round of exciting and remarkable updates to the platform – courtesy of the Shopify Summer Editions 2024.
Every time Shopify updates its ecommerce platform, it ensures that the updates will benefit new merchants, long-term users, and even developers. And here’s the thing, these Shopify Editions Summer updates further enhance in-person selling, retailing, and wholesale ecommerce.
It comes with many well-thought-out features that will make each Shopify store more capable of handling not just startup businesses but also enterprise-level global businesses.
We never get tired of writing about Shopify features, and new releases like this Summer Editions for 2024 give us an adrenaline rush because we know that this means yet another win for all Shopify merchants.
So if you’re keen to know more about this update, keep reading.
What Is Shopify Editions?
Shopify is the world’s leading ecommerce store builder. In comparison with other platforms such as Squarespace and Wix which only have 290,000 and 670,000 users respectively, Shopify boasts a massive user base of more than 2.3 million active merchants (Source: storeleads.app).
Shopify editions are bi-annual (twice a year) major platform updates. These updates range from design flexibility to the core code that not just benefits merchants but Shopify developers as well.
If you want to recap all the previous Shopify Editions before we move to the latest Summer Editions 2024, here are the quicklinks:
- Shopify Editions Summer ‘22 - “Connect to Consumer”
- Shopify Editions Winter ‘23 - “Built to Last”
- Shopify Editions Summer ‘23 - “Imagine My Business”
Click here to check the latest updates of Shopify Editions 2024 updates.
Shopify Summer Editions 2024: Here’s What’s New
Source: Shopify
The Shopify Editions Summer ‘24 comes with 150+ new features. And even if we want to talk about them one by one in this article, it could take us hours to do so.
So instead of enumerating them, we’ll pick a stand-out feature under each section, talk about it, and briefly mention the others included in the list.
Sounds good?
Let’s start.
All-New Shopify Markets
The all-new unified Shopify Markets offers merchants of medium to large Shopify stores a versatile and centralized command center for managing their cross-border, in-person, and online retail sales.
Whether you’re a new Shopify user aiming to go international, a scaling B2B entrepreneur, or a large brand with a substantial retail network, the unified Markets simplify the process of managing your sales channels from a single, unified interface in your Shopify admin.
Key features of the new Shopify markets:
- Another key benefit of the new Markets is that mMerchants can create highly customized buyer experiences according to their regions. From product catalogs, store themes, currency, language, and even business entities for specific markets.
- Provides a comprehensive overview of your business expansion activities, allowing you to monitor the performance of your store in several markets that you’re in. It offers detailed summaries of customizations for each market, making it easier to manage your team.
With all these features combined, Shopify Markets enhanced to facilitate rapid but manageable growth without the need for integrations that only add to your operating costs.
Improved Online Selling
Source: Shopify
Merchants’ online selling experience further improved with the Shopify Summer Editions 2024 with some crucial updates.
For one, the Shop app is now more accessible because now, your customers can log in to their Shop with ease. With this, you can track customer details as soon as they land in your shop.
Product taxonomy now has 10,000+ categories and 2,000+ attributes. This massive product information helps Shopify AI better understand your store’s content. And as such, aids in easier product discovery for your customers. Shopify’s Search and Discovery has been supercharged to allow customers to search for products using logos, icons, and images.
All these enhance customer experiences to further increase online store conversions.
One highlight of this new update is that you can now track how events impact your store. Examples of events are app uninstalls, theme updates, etc. This information is crucial to know so you’re not caught by surprise whenever you make changes to your store.
More updates for online selling:
- Product bundles
- New category filters
- AI or manual filter setting
- Semantic search for Shopify and Advanced plans
- Metaobject support for third-party CMS
- Bulk import and export meta fields
New Features For In-Person Selling
Source: Shopify
Shopify POS retailers will be delighted to know that there are significant upgrades in this aspect as well.
Firstly, alongside one tap digital receipts, Shop Pay can now auto-suggest a customer’s email address so they can opt into your email list upon checkout from your retail locations. For better staff attribution, you can require your staff to input their information before they can complete a sale.
Moreover, you can customize the pricing and product catalog for each of your retail markets to avoid digital clutter. More importantly, the Shopify POs automatically inform the staff and the customer about the return policy of your products.
Furthermore, you can now do product bundling in your Shopify POS or offer discounts on top of other discounts to increase customer lifetime value.
More updates for Shopify POS:
- New extensions to track inventory workflows
- Editable orders
- Draft orders from the POS
- New UI
- Remote cash-tracking by exporting register sessions
- Hardwired Android POS
- Shopify POS now supports more countries
Quick read: Shopify POS Pricing: Is It Worth The Try?
Exciting B2B Experience Enhancements
Source: Shopify
The Shopify ecommerce platform gets a series of features to enhance B2B selling. For one, new B2B merchants now get a free theme that’s designed for wholesale. This is the new Trade Shopify theme.
Since you can now manage your Markets in a unified place, you can also publish different versions of your store depending on the market (exclusive to Shopify Plus).
Risks are also further reduced when you’re selling your products on credit. That’s because the Shopify checkout for B2B businesses can now collect partial payment. Also within checkout, shipping rates are accurately computed based on supplier rates.
Have you heard of Shopify Collective? With this feature, you can import products from various suppliers worldwide and sell them in your store. Think of it like dropshipping of branded products.
More updates for Shopify B2B:
- Real-time overselling protection
- Instant price lists on Shopify collective
- Bulk price list curation
- Payment terms in draft order invoices
- Company profiles now support 10,000 locations (exclusive to Shopify Plus)
- Manual payment methods
- Filtering support (exclusive to Shopify Plus)
- Headless B2B storefronts (exclusive to Shopify Plus)
More Tools For International Selling
Source: Shopify
Scaling retail brands who start getting their international footing get more features to back up their businesses’ growth.
International customers won’t be shocked with duties when they claim their products because now, you can include taxes and duties in the checkout price. That way, customers can expect how much to pay.
Selling globally means dealing with different cultures. As such, it is important to know if what you’re selling is legal in other countries. Thankfully, Shopify now nudges you if your products are restricted in other markets.
Even after an order is placed, you can still edit customer orders if needed. Thus giving more control over merchandising.
Furthermore, you can expect faster and cheaper shipping to Canada and Mexico with Shopify’s new partnership with UPS worldwide expedited.
And as mentioned, with the improved Shopify Markets, you can manage several business entities in one store.
Lastly, it is worth mentioning that Shopify places more focus on developing the Japanese ecommerce market using their platform. So if you are launching an online store in Japan, know that you now have more tools in your arsenal
More updates for global selling:
- Unblock payouts and manual payment capture with Managed Markets
- Faster customs clearance courtesy of Managed Markets’ automatic product description enhancement
- The higher payment success rate as Managed Markets tries several gateways if the payment fails
- More language support in the cookie consent banner
- Increase price transparency by displaying price per unit of measure
- Konbini and QR code payments for Japan
- Japanese Yen billing for Shopify merchants
- Local shipping app suggestions for Japan-based merchants.
The World’s Best Checkout Gets Better
Source: Shopify
Shopify checkout benefits merchants in that it improves conversion rates by reducing checkout friction. At the same time, this benefits customers when they get transparent information about their purchases – which enhances customer loyalty.
For one, in instances where the customers’ orders will arrive in several deliveries, you can have them informed right from the checkout page.
Checkout Blocks, which was previously a paid app, is now free. Now, you can customize your one-page checkout without using any code. And speaking of checkout, the thank you page and order status page are now customizable as well.
For customers who buy online but want to pick their products in-store, they can now do that right from their Shop apps.
More updates for Shopify checkout:
- PCI DSS v4 compliance
- More pickup points for checkout (exclusive to Shopify Plus)
- Checkout extensibility
- Address field enhancements including Tax ID
- Shipping options for subscription-based orders
- Discounts on draft orders
- Shop-Pay installments pre-qualification
- Shop Pay default address and iDEAL support
- TikTok checkout enhancements
Shopify AI Improvements
Source: Shopify
With the progressive evolution of AI, Shopify has picked up its pace in improving Shopify Magic and Sidekick and finding more places to integrate AI for commerce.
For one, Shopify Magic can now be used for media editing and AI image generation. As such, you no longer need another tool to edit your photos and import them to your Shopify store.
Instead, you can now directly enhance your product’s appearance right from your online store admin. You can remove backgrounds or replace them with any idea that you have in mind. All it takes is a simple prompt of what you have in mind and Shopify Magic will do it for you.
What’s more impressive is that you can also do it using your smartphone or tablet.
More improvements for Shopify Magic include more intelligent Shopify Inbox suggestions. Additionally, Shopify AI now gains a deeper understanding of your store’s content. As such, it can also suggest product categories and attributes, thus contributing to a more refined store search.
More updates for Shopify AI:
- More stores gain access Shopify Sidekick early access
- Shopify Magic now translates the ShopifyQL code for a segment into a simple description for easier understanding
Wider Marketing Reach
Source: Shopify
Shopify Plus users such as enterprise-level stores and large brands will be delighted to hear that Shopify took significant strides towards optimizing the platform to get your money’s worth for every dollar spent on marketing campaigns.
Firstly, Shop Campaigns is now available in Canada. Aside from wider marketing reach, running ads on the Shop App has now become cheaper.
In fact, it’s zero risk for Shopify merchants. That’s because when you run Meta or Google ads via Shop Campaigns, you will only be charged when new customers convert.
Moreover, Shopify now makes ad performance data right from your online store admin so you can measure the return on your ad spend.
Additionally, the Shopify Flow unlocks more triggers. With Flow, you can now automate emails and other actions when customers join or leave a segment. You can also check if they’re in a segment via the new customer lookup on flow.
Furthermore, Pixels on Shopify improved its customer consenting policy to protect their privacy without compromising ad targeting.
And speaking of social media, Shopify Advanced and Plus users can expect to get an update that will allow them to tap into YouTube creators to increase their sales with the upcoming YouTube Shopping affiliate program.
Lastly, with the introduction of Shop Minis, dedicated apps for the Shop app, you can now increase your conversions via product bundling or cross-selling.
More updates for Shopify marketing:
- Enhanced staff permissions
- Email insights and you can now embed videos on Shopify Email
- More metaobject inclusions
- Shareable marketing automation
- Richer customer data on Pixels
- New Shopify Pixel Helper
More Efficient Shipping & Fulfillment
Source: Shopify
In-store retailing via Shopify gets more updates. Now, you can transfer online orders (or ship physical products) to any of your stores depending on the preferred pick-up location of your customers.
At the same time, you can now ship online orders from any of your stores to save on shipping costs and to fast-track order delivery. The Shopify POS can now print shipping labels to support more accurate inventory management.
Moreover, Shopify now flags potential address errors to reduce failed deliveries. When flagged, you can edit these addresses to improve delivery accuracy.
Since your retail stores can now act as fulfillment locations, you will get automatic fulfillment locations based on your delivery and order routing settings – thus allowing you to further save on shipping.
Of course, with all these automated processes, Shopify Flow gets a new fulfillment action.
Lastly, if you’re selling your products on marketplaces like Amazon, you’d be delighted to know that you can also list your products on Target via the Shopify Marketplace Connect app.
More updates for shipping and fulfillment:
- Shop Promise badge approves more US stores
- Product categorization on Amazon
- Improved Shopify Order Printer
- Better location management via filtering
- Integrate custom APIs to manage exchanges, returns, restocking fees, and more
- New pickup points in the UK and Spain
Centralized Operations
Source: Shopify
There are a lot of things going on at once when managing an online business. Especially if you have a multitude of products as well as physical retail stores. With that, keeping track of everything could be a nightmare.
But not with Shopify. With the Shopify Editions Summer ‘24 update, all analytics that you need to see are in one central location. The update also goes beyond just visual improvement because Shopify updated their analytics tech stack to make tracking faster.
In addition to analytics improvement, all Shopify plans will soon get a new organization setting that will enable them to manage billing and staff access on multiple Shopify stores. You can also assign staff access with roles, and if you’re in Shopify Plus, you can do this in bulk.
For developers, this centralized operation also means faster curation of new online stores or enhancement of existing ones. That’s because you can now import more data from existing stores – data like products, variants, collections, and their associated metafiles. (Exclusive to Plus)
Finally, context-aware top navigation for pages was introduced to allow more control from your Shopify admin.
More updates for operations:
- New discover entry points in the Shopify admin to speed up app lookup
- Flow can now access meta field values by namespace and key
- Manual reruns in Flow and easier troubleshooting
- Automate almost any task in Flow using the Send Admin API
Exciting Features For Online Store Developers
Source: Shopify
Since the Shopify Editions was launched way back in 2022, each new update does not only enhance merchant functionalities. Shopify also enhances the experience for developers to create a more robust platform that empowers both the users and the developers behind each app.
And that’s why the Shopify Editions Summer ‘24 launched some substantial updates for Shopify developers.
Firstly, developers can now build headless Hydrogen storefronts using Utopia. Utopia is a visual editor. This means that the experience of creating headless ecommerce stores is now comparable to that of theme editor.
Furthermore, the Hydrogen platform gets a dozen UX improvements including a new optimistic cart, predictive search, Shopify Analytics, and more.
With the new Storefront Cart API, developers can help you create a store that speeds up customer checkout by pre-filling their delivery address, delivery method, and pick-up locations.
The liquid theme also gets more layout flexibility so merchants can build opinionated sections with static blocks and block targeting.
More updates for developers:
- Customer account extensibility
- Storefront and Customer Account APIs for Headless B2B storefronts
- New Admin Print extension to allow merchants to print branded invoices
- Unified checkout, admin, and POS extensions
- Flow templates for apps
- Admin action and block extensions in more places
- UI extensions for thank you and order status page customization
- More styling options for checkout via the Checkout Branding API
- Build customer apps to fetch pickup points
- Optional tax ID fields for more countries, and more
Further Growth For App Developers
Source: Shopify
Shopify app developers will be happy to know that the Shopify app store was also optimized to increase their conversions.
Firstly, those who run ads can now target specific Shopify plan users for a more targeted campaign.
“Built for Shopify” apps are now easier to find with a new prominent search filter in the Shopify app store.
Secondly, new app developers can now enjoy a faster app review that’s 30% faster than the previous process. This means faster deployment so the apps get new users early on.
Furthermore, no coding is required to update and manage app pricing and billing right from the partner dashboard.
The refreshed taxonomy and structured data on app features now contribute to better app discoverability that’s tailored to each merchant.
More updates for app developers:
- GraphQL and REST parity to be deployed soon
- GraphQL search syntax debugging
- Shopify-managed webhooks
- Customizable webhook filters and payload mods
- Log streaming and replay for functions
- 50% faster batch execution of Shopify Functions
- Shareable Function logs
- One CLI for apps, themes, and storefronts
- Console.log is now in Run Code action
- More automation via Admin API
- Subscription error code insights.
Read the full report: Shopify Editions | Summer ’24
Maximize The New Features Shopify Editions Summer ‘24
Shopify does not fail to impress us every time they launch new Shopify Editions because these updates include improvements that we never thought would be needed in ecommerce.
This shows Shopify’s extreme dedication to creating a robust platform that is designed to keep up with the fast technological evolution.
With that in mind, if you are an existing Shopify user, you can rest assured that you are on the right platform whether you’re just starting. Especially when you grow your business, you’ll get access to more tools that could help you create a global brand.
And to maximize all Shopify has to offer, we highly recommend keeping yourself updated with the platform’s features and updates such as this Shopify Editions Summer ‘24.
If you want to further enhance your knowledge in Shopify, learn new business ideas, and acquire more marketing skills, we recommend reading our blogs.
Read more: Shopify Winter Editions 2024: Everything You Need To Know
