Shopify Winter Edition 2023 Drop

Some of the updates within this update have been long awaited by the development community and it is clear to us that these updates are becoming more and more regular. As we progress with store builds as Shopify Partners we stick to cutting-edge technology with an eye on Boosts in Conversion and faster fulfilment.

So, what are the features and how can they help your business?

1. One-Page Checkout - Based on research and proven conversion rates taken from Shop Pay, Shopify has now decided to introduce an amazing one-page checkout experience. No more going from Step to step! Everything will become one space. What does this mean for general shoppers? Less filling in of fields, fewer page loads and less friction will ultimately lead to better checkout experiences and conversion.
2. Super Fast Page Loads - Shopify announced Global Infrastructure improvements coming real soon to all Shopify users. With performance at the heart of every eCommerce website, this is a huge move and investment from the team at Shopify.

3. New metaobject customisation - Custom Meta Fields have been around for a while, previous to meta fields we used app extensions to gain the functionality to extend our field groups. With the introduction of metaobjects, we can now deliver reusable custom content, product highlights and cart upsells to our storefronts with ease. The introduction of meta objects is huge and adds a tonne of punching power to the Storefront API to create seamless content integrations directly to the storefront for our customers to view.
4. Product Bundles - Hurrah! Something that gets asked a lot by some of our clients is product bundling! We actually built a custom product bundle system with sanity.io in 2021 for one of our clients BYBI which you can see here. However, it was announced earlier today that Product bundles are coming natively to Shopify! We’re unsure of the power of the native functionality yet, but we’re certainly excited to see this is now progressing. You can get early access by visiting this link to the Shopify Bundles App.
5. Shopify Markets Pro - Taking your Shopify store global has been quite problematic over the last 5 years, however, with the launch of markets things at Shopify have progressed massively. Markets Pro offers a comprehensive system that provides capabilities for localisation, cost-effective cross-border shipping and fulfilment, and end-to-end liability management. To read more about Markets Pro you can go to the Shopify Landing page right here.

6. Quantity Rules - One great additional for our wholesale clients! Having the ability to set quantity rules before adding to the cart. The new quantity rules will allow store owners to Increase average order value by adding minimum order quantities for products. It will also simplify the fulfilment process and save on shipping and handling costs by selling particular items in bulk. Being able to set unique rules for different customers is going to be great!
7. Web3 with token-gated experiences - Encourage communities to support your brand by offering incentives. When a customer connects a wallet to your store, provide token holders early access to drops or exclusive access to limited edition goods, experiences, and more.
8. Fulfill and Deliver - One of the most common requests we get as a Shopify Partner is regarding warehouse and fulfilment integration. We spend months of the year developing custom integrations for clients so having a solution directly from Shopify will help the process massive. To learn more about the logistics and how this will work you can read more about it here
9. Improved Reporting and Better Insights - When you’re scaling your online business you need to have a critical analysis of everything that is going on with sales, conversion, retention etc. The improved reporting that ships in the next few months will allow you to view additional metrics to allow you to identify key drivers of improving the overall customer experience, and find the answers you are looking for with the new comparisons feature.
10. Hydrogen 2 - Hydrogen allows developers like us to build performant, dynamic, and unique storefronts faster. Hydrogen 2 features a brand-new Storefront API client to make use of simple querying, and starter templates and brings a complete upgrade Command Line Interface to get building faster-optimised components. You can learn more about Hydrogen here

For additional information on everything that comes with the Shopify Editions Winter ‘23 Drop please take a look at their very cool landing page at https://www.shopify.com/editions/winter2023

Let’s get building!