Previously, we highlighted the top features of Shopify Summer Editions 2023, showcasing its advancements for merchants. This Summer, Shopify Editions 2024 takes a significant leap forward with its focus on “Unifying Commerce.” This vision encapsulates the goal of helping merchants sell more, scale their businesses, build innovative solutions, and streamline operations, all within a single platform. 

The latest Shopify Summer Editions are designed to empower merchants, enhance customer journeys for both new and returning shoppers, and provide developers with the tools to craft complex and dynamic theme designs and structures, further solidifying Shopify’s role as a comprehensive e-commerce solution.

Today, we’ve picked out our top 5 highlights from Shopify Editions 2024:

1. Shopify Flex Sections

2. Shopify Magic: Revolutionising Store Management with Shopify AI

3. Real-time Shopify Analytics

4. Sign in with Shop

5. Shopify Split Shipping

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Shopify Flex Sections

Earlier this year, Shopify launched Theme Blocks in developer preview. These innovative blocks are designed to be more generic and reusable, enabling developers to create advanced, standout storefronts with ease.

Now, revealed in the latest Shopify Summer Editions, they’re introducing Shopify Flex Sections. With newly introduced features, theme developers can empower merchants to fully customise the layout of sections and blocks quickly and efficiently, from adjusting settings like direction, alignment, or spacing between image blocks in a carousel, to adapting styles for mobile devices without needing separate settings.

Additionally, blocks can now be statically rendered to prevent deletion or reordering by merchants, allowing for the creation of more functionally complex layouts. Conditional logic can also be applied, such as displaying a “View All” button only when there are unseen items left in a collection. Moving towards more reusable blocks with expanded customisation, these blocks can pass resources to their children—like products, collections, or meta objects—making it super simple to integrate data even in complex, nested layouts. For merchants who don’t code, Shopify Flex Sections simplify the customisation process, allowing them to drag-and-drop to resize, group, and edit content effortlessly.

Shopify Magic: Revolutionising Store Management with Shopify AI

Shopify Magic introduces a range of Shopify AI-powered tools designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of managing your online store. One standout feature of Shopify Magic is Sidekick, an AI chatbot assistant that possesses comprehensive knowledge of your store’s setup. Initially revealed last year, Sidekick functions as a support chatbot for merchants, capable of performing tasks like creating discount codes, generating detailed reports about your store, and suggesting blog post ideas. By instantly providing best practice answers to your questions, Sidekick ensures you have the information you need at your fingertips.

Leveraging its understanding of your store’s business data, Sidekick delivers highly relevant responses tailored to your specific needs. Trained on your products, orders, and customer  information, Shopify AI can generate customer segments for personalised marketing efforts. For example, Sidekick can create a customer segment to help you send a personalised email to your most valuable customers and even generate a discount code for that email. Already live on thousands of stores, Sidekick offers a transformative support experience. Merchants can sign up for the waiting list to get early access to this innovative tool. [insert link]

In addition to Sidekick, Shopify Magic also includes an AI Image Editor, introduced in the last edition. This tool has seen tremendous success, with over 1 million AI-generated images saved in just six months. The AI Image Editor allows you to customise media within the online store editor, email editor, and anywhere else you access media. Extending its functionality to the Shopify mobile app, it enables the creation of professional imagery on the go by removing backgrounds or generating new ones for product images. Shopify Magic thus brings advanced AI capabilities to all aspects of store management, empowering merchants to operate more efficiently and effectively.

Real-time Shopify Analytics

Shopify Editions 2024 also revealed a revamped Shopify Analytics to provide businesses with real-time, minute-by-minute data updates, ensuring that the most current performance metrics are always at their fingertips. This immediate access allows merchants to tailor their Shopify Analytics to what matters most. Merchants can now seamlessly drag, drop, resize, and remove Metric cards to create a completely customizable dashboard. By offering this level of customisation, Shopify empowers users to monitor key metrics at a glance and make informed decisions swiftly.

In addition to the customisable dashboard, merchants can edit Shopify-built reports to feature any combination of metrics, providing a more detailed intersection of their data. For those who prefer to build reports from scratch, Shopify allows the creation of new explorations that can be saved as custom reports, giving precise control over the data monitored. Imagine wanting to evaluate the success of a recent promotion; now you can easily view sales alongside sessions to see visitor conversion rates and identify top-selling products during the promotion, all in a single, integrated view. This comprehensive approach ensures full control over how data is presented and utilised, enhancing the ability to drive business success.

Sign in with Shop

Enhance your customers’ Shopify checkout experience by enabling them to sign into various points on your storefront using their Shop account. Customers signed in with Shop can enjoy one-tap checkouts with their saved shipping and billing information automatically pre-filled through Shop Pay, streamlining the purchase process and activating syncing features across their entire Shopify experience. The only requirement is to have Shop Pay enabled on your store.

The sign-in with Shop feature simplifies access for new and existing customers, allowing them to log into your storefront on the customer account page using their Shop credentials, with no password required. By adding a “Follow on Shop” button, you can encourage customers to follow your store in the Shop app, where they’ll receive updates via push notifications, in-app messages, and feed recommendations. Integrating lead capture with Shop further reduces friction by automatically applying discount codes at checkout once customers sign in, eliminating the need to search, copy, and paste codes. 

Shopify Split Shipping

Shopify Editions 2024 also introduced a new “Split Shipping” system in their checkout process, transforming the way customers view and manage their shipping options. Previously, customers only saw a single shipping rate for their entire order, regardless of whether the products were being dispatched from different warehouse locations in multiple shipments. This often led to confusion and unmet expectations about delivery times.

With the new split shipping feature, customers can now see if their orders will arrive in multiple shipments, providing a clearer picture of the delivery process. If multiple shipping options are available, customers can choose their preferred method for each shipment—whether they prioritise the fastest, cheapest, or a specific courier. This flexibility extends to subscription orders as well, allowing customers to see detailed shipping options and timelines for all parts of their order. By providing this comprehensive view, Shopify’s split shipping system ensures that customers have clear expectations about when their items will arrive, enhancing their overall shopping experience and satisfaction.

Summary

In summary, Shopify’s latest updates and features are designed to enhance the merchant and customer experience across multiple facets of e-commerce. The Shopify Editions 2024 emphasises “Unifying Commerce,” helping merchants sell more, scale efficiently, build innovative solutions, and streamline operations within a single platform. With the introduction of Shopify Flex Sections, developers and merchants can now create complex, customisable storefront layouts that are fast to build and modify, empowering merchants to tailor their online presence with ease.

Shopify Magic transforms store management with two key Shopify AI-driven features: Sidekick and the AI Image Editor. Sidekick, an AI chatbot, helps merchants by creating discount codes, generating reports, suggesting blog post ideas, and offering personalised customer segments for targeted marketing. The AI Image Editor, which has already generated over 1 million images, allows merchants to customise media effortlessly across the online store editor, email editor, and mobile app by removing or generating backgrounds. Together, these tools enhance efficiency and effectiveness in managing online stores.

The revamped Shopify analytics provide unparalleled customisation, enabling merchants to tailor their dashboards and reports to their specific needs, offering real-time, minute-by-minute data insights.

Sign in with Shop enhances the Shopify checkout process by pre-filling shipping and billing information, providing a one-tap checkout experience. The “Shop” platform integration enhances the customer journey by allowing seamless sign-ins, one-tap checkouts, and automatic discount code applications. This integration also encourages customer engagement through features like the “Follow on Shop” button. Lastly, the new Split Shipping system further revolutionises the checkout process by providing detailed shipping options for orders dispatched from multiple locations, setting clear delivery expectations for customers.

These comprehensive updates reinforce Shopify’s commitment to empowering merchants and improving the customer experience, ensuring that both parties can navigate the e-commerce landscape with greater ease and efficiency.