100+ updates that make Shopify's foundations even stronger – highlights from Winter ’24 Edition

Great software comes from careful craftsmanship and nailing a million little details that work perfectly together. Today, Shopify is releasing 100+ more of those little (and large) details. It’s Shopify Editions, where Shopify takes you to the cutting edge of commerce. For Shopify's Winter ’24 Edition, the focus is on strengthening the world-class foundations of Shopify's software.

These commerce foundations largely determine what and how users can build on Shopify, so the focus here is essential. Shopify wants users to be able to architect exactly what they want and need.

The full Winter ’24 Edition is live now, but TL;DR, the latest upgrades span four categories that are critical to merchants’ success: conversion, channels, marketing, and operations.

1. More ways to convert buyers

Shopify has done a ton of work to better support the products users sell and to turn more shoppers into buyers.

Merchandising:

How products show up in the store is really important. It’s one of the top factors that drive conversion for businesses. Shopify has made the biggest upgrade to its platform’s foundation in 10 years, including:

• 2,000 variant limit: Shopify's new GraphQL APIs increase Shopify’s variant limit from 100 to 2,000 per product. This will help those with complex product catalogs and lots of colorways, sizing, and SKU options.
• Combined listings: If there's a product that comes in multiple variations (like color or style), buyers can now purchase any of them from a single product listing. Each variation will have its own description, media gallery, and descriptive URL.
• Better product classification: Shopify's new taxonomy reduces the time and effort it takes to create product listings. The product page now automatically applies standardized categories and category-specific product attributes (like color, age group, or size) across different variants so users don’t have to do it manually over and over and can make products more discoverable when they are published to social and marketplace channels.

Storefront performance

Speed = conversion. With Shopify's new Web Performance Dashboard, Shopify now shows industry-standard Core Web Vitals for loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability — 3 stats that can help impact store page ranking and ability to sell more.

Notice the shopping experience becoming faster? Over the past year, Shopify has worked to make its infrastructure 35% faster, and Shopify has expanded its global points of presence to nearly 300. Users are now within 50 milliseconds of everyone on the planet.

Semantic search

Shopify communicates by understanding the meaning behind what is being said, not just the literal words. In search, that means keyword matching isn’t enough to get people what they’re really looking for.

Semantic search, Shopify's new AI-powered storefront search feature, goes beyond keywords to better understand a shopper’s intent. This gives them more relevant search results that they’ll be more likely to buy from.

Someone might type “warm clothes for the winter” and the algorithm will recognize they’re looking for sweaters, beanies, woolen socks, etc., even though they didn’t use those specific keywords.

Checkout upgrades

Shopify Checkout is the highest converting checkout on the internet, and it becomes even more powerful when Shopify makes it more flexible. That’s why Shopify launched:

• One-page Checkout: Shopify has streamlined the checkout experience from three pages to one, reducing buyer completion time by 4 seconds on average.
• Checkout Extensibility: Shopify has added 14 new APIs and updates to customize Shopify’s checkout, plus more than 90 new apps that unlock powerful features like upsells, loyalty programs, post-purchase surveys, conversion tracking, and custom content.

ButcherBox recently migrated to Shopify and has seen increased conversion rates on their store, even though they kept the UX the exact same.

“We had an awesome Q4, I think in part because of Shopify, in part because of the technology under the hood. As an engineer, that makes me really happy,” said David House, ButcherBox’s Principal Engineer who led the migration to Shopify.

Subscriptions

Shopify's new free Subscriptions app lets users set up and manage subscriptions directly from the Shopify admin.

2. More channels to sell more around the world

• Users should be able to expand into a new market or channel as simply as they can add a new product. Whether they want to sell in a new region, marketplace, social channel, or retail location, Shopify is building features to make it easier.

POS Ship from Store

Users will soon be able to select a retail store as the fulfillment location for an order so their staff can pick, pack, and ship that order right from the shop. Shopify hears users when they say they want streamlined POS fulfillment, and that in-store fulfillment can increase efficiency, reduce warehouse load, and lower shipping costs.

Markets Pro

Worldwide e-commerce sales are expected to grow 9.4% in 2024, and selling cross-border allows users to access more of that growth. Markets Pro is designed to help users do just that, and it’s now available to all US businesses. This product bundle takes the complexity out of selling internationally, simplifying things like global taxes, duties, restrictions, international shipping labels, customs, fraud, and foreign exchange.

3. Maximize marketing to buyers, wherever they are

Shopify Audiences

Shopify built Shopify Audiences to help users find more customers, lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), and improve return on ad spend (ROAS). With Shopify's app, users can pull custom targeting lists to use across ad platforms like Meta, Google, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok. Because of the sheer scale and volume of commerce on Shopify, Shopify is uniquely positioned to use machine learning to improve digital advertising for users.

In this Edition, Shopify launched smarter retargeting algorithms, and most merchants are seeing at least 2x retargeting audience sizes as a result. Shopify has also added benchmarks for measuring performance, so users can compare ad results to similar stores or industry groupings to pinpoint where to make improvements.

Shop Campaigns

Shop Cash offers, Shopify's risk-free customer acquisition program, has already helped merchants acquire more than 1 million new customers since launching last year. This Edition, Shopify is rebranding Shop Cash Offers as Shop Campaigns, and adding estimates and analytics to maximize the impact of those dollars for buyers.

Users can launch their campaigns across multiple surfaces with one click without having to build audiences or create assets. Plus, they only pay for converting customers.

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Kitsch, a beauty and hair accessories merchant, has seen big results from using Shop Campaigns. “In November 2023, we saw a 143% month-over-month increase in new customers acquired on Shop,” Kitsch’s VP of Growth Yingying Kuang said. “The campaign effectively and effortlessly helped us acquire new customers.”

4. Streamline business operations

Shopify built new financial solutions and AI tools to make hard jobs easier.

Shopify Magic

Shopify has built AI into the foundations of its platform with Shopify Magic, Shopify's suite of free AI-enabled tools. To keep businesses on the cutting edge, Shopify is working on:

Media Editor

Building an online store requires tons of high-quality media assets, which can cost hundreds of dollars per image and weeks to produce. Shopify's new Media Editor lets users use generative AI to DIY their product images instantly and for free, directly within the Shopify Admin. Create original images and professional-level edits with

Sidekick

Sidekick will be the world’s most useful AI-enabled assistant for commerce. It allows users to use AI to increase productivity, improve workflows, make smarter decisions, and spend less time on operational tasks. Shopify has rolled out Sidekick to a select number of merchants in early access, and Shopify will let users know when it’s fully live and ready for them to try.

Shopify Capital

For more than 7 years, Shopify Capital has injected more than $5 billion into merchant businesses when they need it most. Shopify's offers range from a few hundred dollars all the way into the millions.

As businesses grow, their needs diversify, and they want more flexibility in their lending options—so Shopify is growing its suite of lending solutions with two new products.

Line of Credit

When it comes to financing options, users shouldn’t only have access to a large lump sum of money that they need to start paying off right away. With Shopify Line of Credit, users can access only the funding they need (not necessarily the full limit), right from their admin, and only pay interest on the amount they withdraw. Their credit limit replenishes as they repay. There are no origination or draw fees; no hidden fees at all.

Term Loans

Another flexible financing option for users: Shopify Term Loans lets users make static payments over a fixed payback period. Tailor loan amounts, rates, and repayments to align with specific business needs. Like all of Shopify's financial products, users will get transparent pricing without surprises like monthly service or late fees.

And that's a wrap!

That’s the rundown on Shopify’s Winter ’24 Editions. Shopify hopes users will take a look at Shopify Editions for the full experience detailing the 100+ updates.

As for Shopify, after this massive round of show and tell, Shopify is getting back to shipping more updates that Shopify can show users in another six months. 🚀

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