Another month brings with it another round of new features, updates, fixes, improvements and tweaks to make ecommerce better for Shopify businesses and their customers. Here's our monthly rundown of what's changed!
July 4th
Customise your Headless Store with Shopify Search and Discovery App
Headless stores can now use the app to do things like:
- create synonym groups to match to the terms your customers are using
- promote products on the search results page
- edit collections and let customers filter by product availability, price, colour etc
July 5th
Deliver Products More Quickly with Smart Order Routing
Smart Order Routing makes it easy to streamline fulfilment operations and get products to customers faster. This new feature, available to all merchants with 2 or more locations, will automatically prioritise where an order gets fulfilled from based on a set of rules that you are able to determine.
This means you can:
- reduce shipping delays and costs by assigning orders to a fulfilment location close to the customer
- get products to customers more quickly
- fulfil orders faster and in a more automated way
- gain control over your fulfilment ops by creating rules that suit your business
July 6th
Smart Grid Management for POS
The Admin API can now be used to manage Smart Grid for Point of Sale. This allows the creation and naming of smart grid layouts not yet linked to any location.
The API facilitates the assignment of a layout to single or multiple locations and means that future individaul manual adjustments are no longer needed.
July 10th
Change to New Alerts
The new alerts in the red badge on the bell icon will clear when you open the feed to make it more obvious how many new alerts you have. Unread alerts are identified with a blue dot and you can mark them as read or unread.
Shopify App Store Reviews Have a Delay Prior to Publication
This new slight delay will allow reviews to be assessed to reduce the incidence of fake reviews.
July 12th
Longer Options for Order Processing Time
Longer processing time options are now available via the Shipping and Delivery settings - up to 40 business days (or up to 8 weeks). This setting is used to calculate expected delivery dates at checkout for your customers. This makes it clearer to customers exactly when they can expect to receive their items.
Enhanced Notification System for Apps
It's now easier to see important updates in the status of apps: for example statuses including 'action required', 'least used', 'unsupported' and 'incompatible'.
It's then easy to action these notifications in the app setting details page.
July 13th
Markets Pro Automatically Identifies Incompatible Draft Orders
Merchants using Markets Pro will be made aware of incompatibilities between their draft orders and Markets Pro.
It will flag issues such as incomplete addresses, if the customer is a wholesale customer, if the order has zero value or if it contains items restricted by Shopify Markets Pro.
(It is possible to manually complete those orders if you wish.)
July 14th
Visibility on Shopify Protect Protection Status
There are now 3 statuses with regards to the protection status of Shop Pay orders: 'Protection Active', 'Protected' and 'Not Protected'.
This will save you money as a Shopify business: if you already have Shop Pay protection, there's no need to pay for it from another provider.
July 18th
Change Fulfilment Location and Status at 'Order Item' Level
This update means that Shopify merchants can now change the fulfilment location for individual line items - prior to the change it was only possible to do so for the full order.
This helps you tailor the fulfilment process that best suits your business.
Split and Merge Items
This allows you to fulfil partial orders, items across different locations, and for B2B, split orders into separate shipments.
July 20th
Improved Marketing
Improved reporting allows more granular views of marketing campaigns to identify what is working well and what needs improvement. It provides metrics including average order value, conversion rate, top selling products and overall sales.
July 21st
Custom Pixels Show Previous Saved Versions
In the Admin settings, it's possible to switch between previously saved versions of your pixel code.
July 26th
Shopify Audiences v2.0 Launched To Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs by 50%
Shopify Audiences uses algorithms to improve ad performance using intelligence from millions of purchase intent signals which it analyses to target and sell to the right people, reducing the cost of acquiring them.
The latest version has shown superb results in terms of creating the highest number of conversions and is available now.
Shopify Flow Now Available with 'Basic Shopify'
Flow has been extended so it's available to merchants on Basic. (It is now available on Basic, Shopify, Advanced and Plus.)
Shopify Search and Discovery App - New Filtering Capabilities
Following the improvements made on July 4th, the app now has enhanced filters. It enables customers in the store to enjoy an improved navigation and easily find the products they're looking for.
Native Support For Product Bundles
The new Shopify Bundles app helps Shopify merchants increase order value by creating bundle offers with rules that you can create.
New Ways to combine Discounts
Discounts on a single product can now be combined with discounts that apply to the entire order. Multiple discounts can also be applied to the whole order.
'Built for Shopify' Apps in the App Store
This accreditation means that an app has met Shopify's standards for quality and performance.
Block Orders with Fraud Control
This feature empowers you to block orders right in the checkout, eliminating the need to deal with unwanted orders post-checkout.
Along with this feature, Shopify is providing insights into how many orders are being blocked. These analytics will help you assess the effectiveness of your rules and fine-tune them as needed.
App Review Summaries
Shopify Magic has enabled summaries of app reviews to make it quicker for merchants to decide whether or not a particular app is right for their store.
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