Shopify Summer Edition 2024: Key Features & Updates

Whether you’re a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, these enhancements are designed to make your life easier and your business more successful. Let’s dive into the must-know features and see how they can help you create a better shopping experience for your customers and boost your sales.

Quick Overview of Shopify Summer Editions 2024

1. Shopify Markets: Easily sell your products in multiple countries with localized settings for currencies and languages.
2. Split Shipping: Ship different items from a single order separately to reduce costs and speed up delivery.
3. Shopify Magic: Use AI to help with tasks like product descriptions and sales insights.
4. Rebuilt Analytics: Get clearer and more detailed reports on your store’s performance.
5. Theme Style Settings: Customize your store’s look without coding.
6. Hydrogen Visual Editor: Design custom storefronts using an easy drag-and-drop interface.
7. Managed Markets: Get extra support for localizing and managing international sales.
8. Ship to & from Store: Offer customers flexible shipping options, including store pickup.
9. Easy Retail Checkout: Simplify and speed up the checkout process for customers.

1. Shopify Markets

Markets is a powerful new feature that helps you quickly sell your products to customers worldwide.

Key Features:

• Sell in multiple countries: With Shopify Markets, you can set up your store to operate in different countries without creating separate stores for each one. This means you can reach more customers globally with just one store, making it easier to expand your business.
• Unified dashboard: You can see all your international sales, orders, and customer data in one place, which helps you keep track of everything without switching between different systems.
• Local currency and language: Markets allows you to show prices in different currencies and translate your store’s content into various languages. 
• Custom pricing and promotions: You can set different prices and special promotions for different markets. For example, you might offer a special discount in one country while keeping regular prices in another. This flexibility helps you tailor your offers to different customer groups and regions.
• Localized domains and subfolders: Create specific URLs for different markets, such as example.com/en-ca for Canada or example.ca for a Canadian-specific domain. This helps with SEO and provides a more localized shopping experience.

2. Split Shipping

Split shipping allows you to send different items from a single order in separate packages. This means if a customer orders multiple products, you don’t have to wait until all items are ready to ship them together. Instead, you can ship each item as soon as it’s available, even if they come from different warehouses or locations.

Key Features:

• Multiple locations: If your products are stored in different warehouses or stores, Split Shipping lets you send each item from the closest location to the customer.
• Faster delivery: Since items don’t have to wait for other products to be ready, you can ship them out as soon as possible. This means customers receive their orders faster.
• Separate packages: Each product in the order is shipped in its own package, which can help lower the risk of items getting lost or damaged during delivery.

Imagine a customer placing an order for three items: a book, a T-shirt, and a coffee mug. Here’s how split shipping can help:

• The book is available at Warehouse A.
• The T-shirt is available at Warehouse B.
• The coffee mug is available at Warehouse C.

With split shipping, you can send the book from Warehouse A, the T-shirt from Warehouse B, and the coffee mug from Warehouse C. Each item is shipped as soon as it’s ready, and the customer receives all three items quickly, even though they come from different places.

3. Shopify Magic & Sidekick

In this shopify editions, two exciting features stand out: Shopify Magic and Sidekick. These tools are designed to make running your online store easier and more efficient, especially if you’re new to e-commerce or looking for ways to save time.

Key Features:

• Adjust product image backgrounds: Shopify Magic allows you to instantly create, remove, or match the background of product images in a few clicks or keywords.
• Write product descriptions: Just provide some basic details about the product, and the AI will generate a well-written description. This saves you time and ensures your products are presented professionally.
• Promote customer service: The AI can quickly help you answer customer questions. It can suggest replies based on common queries, making customer service more efficient.
• Sidekick: It’s like having a personal assistant for your store. If you’re unsure how to do something, Sidekick can provide step-by-step instructions. Whether setting up a new product or creating a discount code, Sidekick walks you through the process.

4. Rebuilt Analytics

This feature is designed to give you better insights into your online store’s performance. It provides more detailed reports on various aspects of your business, making it easier to understand what’s working and what needs improvement.

Key Features:

• Clearer reports: The new analytics tools provide you with easy-to-read reports that show important information about your store. You can see data on sales, customer behavior, and traffic sources.
• Detailed insights: Rebuilt Analytics gives you more detailed insights into your store’s performance. You can identify best-selling products, track conversion rates, and monitor customer retention.
• Customizable dashboards: The new analytics tools allow you to customize your dashboard to show the information that matters most. 
• Real-time data: The updated analytics tools provide real-time data so you can see what’s happening in your store.

5. Theme Style Settings

This update introduces a fantastic new feature called Theme Style Settings, designed to help you easily customize the look of your online store. You can pick various colors, fonts, and layouts to make your store look just the way you want.

Key Features:

• Color customization: You can change the colors of various parts of your store. For example, you can set the color of the background, buttons, text, and more. This helps you match your store’s look to your brand’s colors.
• Font selection: Choose from various fonts to use in your store. You can select different fonts for headings, body text, and special sections. This allows you to give your store a unique and consistent style.
• Layout adjustments: You can change the layout of your store’s pages. This means you can decide where elements like images, text, and buttons are placed. You can create layouts with static blocks & conditional logic.
• Preview changes: Before making your changes live, preview them to see how they look. This way, you can experiment with different styles and choose the one you like best without affecting your live store.

6. Hydrogen Visual Editor

This tool allows you to design and edit your online store’s layout and content in real time. It’s powered by Utopia, an open-source platform now integrated with Shopify. This means you can see changes as you make them without writing any code.

Key Features:

• Real-time editing: You can directly manipulate every part of your storefront. This includes rearranging sections, editing text, and tweaking small details like the shape of buttons.
• WYSIWYG editor: “WYSIWYG” stands for “What You See Is What You Get.” This editor lets you make changes visually, so you don’t have to worry about coding.
• Collaboration: The Hydrogen Visual Editor creates a space for your team to work together. You can leave comments for your team members directly in the editor.
• Integration with your code: Even though you’re making changes visually, the underlying code remains the source of truth. Any changes you make in the editor are synced with your codebase. This means developers can still use their tools like GitHub and VS Code, and all changes are tracked properly.
• Shopify API integration: Any edits you make are saved and synced back to your Shopify store. You can also seamlessly integrate third-party content sources.

7. Managed Markets

Managed Markets is an upgrade to Shopify’s tools for selling internationally. It helps you handle all the complex tasks in selling to customers in other countries. 

Managed Markets offers additional features powered by Global-e to help manage your international sales. Global-e becomes the merchant of record, meaning they’re legally responsible for selling your products in other countries and following local laws and regulations. This takes a lot of the burden off your shoulders.

Key Features:

• Tax registration and remittance: They handle registering for taxes and sending the required payments to local authorities. This means you don’t need to worry about tax compliance in the countries you sell to.
• Local payment methods: They set up ways for your customers to pay using popular methods in their country. This can make it easier for customers to buy from you.
• Duties and import taxes: They manage the payment of duties and import taxes, so your customers don’t face unexpected costs when they receive their orders.

Note: Managed Markets is currently only available to merchants based in the Continental United States. If you meet this requirement, you can use the feature to expand your business globally.

8. Ship to & from Store

This feature gives your customers more flexibility and convenience regarding how they receive their orders.

Key Features:

• Ship to store: Customers can choose to have their online orders delivered to a nearby physical store. They can then pick up items at their convenience.
• Ship from store: Instead of shipping items from a central warehouse, you can send orders directly from a physical store with the items in stock. This can be quicker and cheaper, especially for customers close to that store.

9. Easy Retail Checkout

Shopify has made it easier for your customers to buy things in your store with the new Easy Retail Checkout.

Key Features:

• One-tap digital receipts: Your customers can quickly get their receipts sent to their email or phone. This is especially easy for customers who use Shop Pay, Shopify’s secure payment system. They just tap once to get their receipt and can also choose to receive marketing messages from your store.
• Automatic customer information capture: The checkout process now automatically collects customer information, like their name and email, during the purchase. This helps you keep track of your customers and their buying habits. It also helps your staff know who’s buying what and how they’re performing, making it easier to provide personalized service.
• Streamlined return rules: The system automatically checks if a product can be returned and provides all the necessary information to your staff. This makes the return process faster and more straightforward for both your employees and customers.

Conclusion

This update brings many exciting new features to help your online store grow. These updates will help you stay ahead in the competitive e-commerce world and make your store more successful. 

Keep an eye on Shopify’s updates to get the most out of these new features and boost your business. And don’t forget that Mageplaza is always right here to help you rocket sales!