The end of 2023 draws near, but there is no end to the regularity of updates Shopify rolls out to the platform. The month of October saw no less than 21 enhancements, new features, functionality improvements and new releases. Without further ado, let’s see what was new with Shopify in October 2023.
October 2nd
One-page checkout becomes default Shopify checkout
Shopify has refined the old 3 page steps to a more streamlined process which is faster and easier for customers, and will increase conversion rates for merchants.
October 5th
Ability to preview gift cards before sending
This new feature allows merchants to preview gift cards in the Shopify admin, before they’re sent via email or SMS. This means businesses have more control and visibility over what’s sent out to their customers.
October 11th
Set fixed discounts for ‘Buy X Get Y’ discounts
This new flexibility in discounting has been rolled out to all merchants, and helps incentivise customers to spend more, while improving profit margin.
An example promotion where this would work might be ‘buy 2 items and get £10 off’. These can be created in the store as discount codes, or as a discount that is automatically applied when the correct conditions are met.
New ‘Stocky’ transfers extension for the Smart Grid
Shopify has a new POS UI (Point of Sale user interface) extension to create native-like inventory management workflows accessible in one click. This is being rolled out initially for stock transfers.
The new Stocky inventory transfers extension on the Smart Grid allows merchants to manage stock levels and movement, and inventory costs. It allows staff to see and receive incoming transfers from other retail locations directly in POS. This extra visibility will help manage stock and improve daily operations.
October 12th
POS Terminal - new payment device now available for Shopify POS
A brand new payment device for Shopify POS, POS Terminal, has been released in the US and Canada.
It’s the most powerful payment device yet and features:
- Tap payments
- Chip payments
- Swipe payments
- Solid WiFi and ethernet connectivity
- Customer display to take people through checkout, payment, PIN entry, tipping and receipt options
- Screen can be customised with logos and images for a fully branded payment experience
October 13th
‘Subscriptions’ and ‘delete’ tasks are available in Shopify Flow
The following triggers are now available:
- ‘Subscription contract updated’: The Subscription contract updated trigger starts a workflow when a user in the business or a third-party app updates a subscription contract
The following actions are available:
- ‘delete customer’
- ‘delete product’
- ‘delete product variant’
The following ‘get data’ actions are now available:
- ‘Get subscription contract data’: In workflows that use subscription contract data, you can use the Get subscription contract data action to retrieve subscription contract information from your store. You can use this action in any workflow, including the Scheduled time trigger. In a workflow that uses the Scheduled time trigger, the workflow starts at a time that you've specified, rather than as a result of an event. Because there is no specific event in your store or from an app that starts the workflow, there is no data automatically included.
The following changes have been made to triggers and actions:
- ‘Inventory quantity changed’ has changed name to ‘Product variant inventory quantity changed’
- ‘Add order line item’ - you can choose a product variant with a ‘resource picker’ as well as entering the GID
October 16th
Shop Pay redirects to the post-purchase page on the merchant’s domain
The post-purchase page is the one that’s presented to shoppers once they’ve bought their product. Now, customers will be directed to the merchant’s domain (previously it was to a page on shop.app). This helps post-purchase conversion tracking and analysis.
October 18th
Customer data collection - update
This update relates to privacy compliance. Shopify announced that as of October 31st, there is a change to how online stores collect customer data.
In the EEA and UK, marketing and analytics will now be collected ‘only before or after consent’.
Any merchant that was partially collecting data before consent, is now collecting data after consent.
Customers can set their preferences around this from the store’s cookie banner.
October 19th
Reducing permissions required for initial POS login
This change basically makes it much easier to set up Shopify POS on a new or updated device - previously staff needed to be granted over 20 admin permissions. Now they can be granted permission to set up POS with one checkbox, without giving them access to sensitive information.
October 20th
New search capabilities in the Shopify Translate and Adapt app
Boost traffic, improve your SEO, and build trust with audiences around the world by localising the content on your Shopify store for different markets. Translate & Adapt lets you auto-translate up to two languages for free, and manually add as many translations as you wish.
This change means that users will see an improved navigation to make it easier to find resources for translating and the app now supports global search across all languages for store resources.
Checkouts enforce local currency based on shipping address
If you sell in local currencies and have access to one-page checkout, customers will checkout in the currency you've set for the country of their shipping address.
If a customer chooses to ship to a country or region that differs from the one that they selected on the storefront, then the currency will change to match their shipping destination at checkout. Your customers will see the total cost of their purchases in their local currency, including currency conversion fees.
GeoIP now a part of Automatic Redirection
This change will affect GeoIp functionality for Plus merchants who have the GeoIP setting enabled. From October 20th, they have been rolled into the ‘automatic redirection’ setting.
This means pages will automatically show region-specific content based on where your customer is viewing it from.
For example, if your primary market is the US and you have an additional market set up for Canada, a Canadian visitor will be Canadian pricing.
October 23rd
Shopify Flow - ‘publish product’ and ‘hide product’ works on any channel
Improvements have been made to the ‘Publish Product’ and ‘Hide Product’ actions.
They now support being able to choose one or more Sales channels as part of the action. This means that you can use Flow to automate publishing and unpublishing for all of your sales channels.
October 25th
POS Checkout update affecting shipping lines
POS checkout infrastructure has been updated which means there is a change to the display of shipping methods for POS orders. ‘Retail - no shipping required’ will now be displayed as a shipping method for POS orders. Previously, a shipping line was not assigned to POS orders.
This change may potentially require workflow updates for shops with integrations that rely on the presence or absence of a shipping line, or those who use shipping line information as input for other systems. For example: if you are using a third-party fulfilment integration that automatically fulfils orders based on the presence of a shipping line, your workflow should be updated so that automatic fulfilment does not happen if the shipping line is ‘Retail - no shipping required’.
(If your shop has an integration that may use the shipping line, Shopify recommends contacting your third-party provider to discuss possible workflow changes.)
October 26th
POS Checkout update affecting split payment third-party integrations
POS checkout infrastructure has been updated which means there is a change affecting split payments. Orders with multiple payments will briefly appear in the database as ‘partially paid’ while being created, until updated with the final payment, which will appear as ‘paid’. The partially paid state will be visible to any apps or integrations querying the order at this moment. It will also result in a webhook firing for each payment, instead of one for the entire order.
This change may potentially require workflow updates for any stores with integrations that rely on the split payment webhooks. As an example, if you are using a third-party fulfilment integration that automatically fulfils orders based on the first webhook firing on a partially paid order, your workflow should be updated so that fulfilment only happens when the order’s ‘financial_status’ is ‘paid’.
If you think your shop has an integration that might be impacted, as with the previous update, Shopify recommends contacting your third-party provider to discuss possible workflow changes.
October 28th
Markets Pro: Shipping label price adjustments
This update means if you provide incorrect information to a shipping carrier, they will certify the correct price and either credit or debit you the difference. Packages may still be delivered in this scenario.
October 30th
New POS User Interface extensions activation in admin
The new Extensions settings in the POS sales channel will help you streamline POS UI extension activation and management across store locations.
This new Extensions setting allows you to add and remove third-party app POS UI extensions to the Smart Grid from Shopify admin. This ensures a consistent Smart Grid experience and reduces the time required to manage multiple app extensions across multiple store locations. Shopify Payments now supports multiple payment capture for the same order Before this update, merchants could only capture payment once per order.
Now, partial payment can be captured multiple times directly from the Orders page or using the GraphQL API.
This is helpful if items in an order are shipped from different warehouses with different fulfilment schedules; if your customers expect to be charged when items are fulfilled as opposed to at checkout, and to help your accounting team maintain more accurate records.
October 31st
‘Send cart’ POS attribution
When a customer completes a checkout from the email link they received from the retail store, the Send Cart feature attributes the sale to POS channel, retail location and staff member.
This can help understand staff performance when it comes to sales, and enable you to incentivise them to make more sales and get credit for them. Structured return reasons Staff can now select from a list of reasons when managing returns which will enable your business to gather more insights into why returns happen so you can improve processes or products to reduce returns.
Hydrogen v2023.10 released
The latest release of Hydrogen includes upgrades to Remix 2.0, a new built-in Customer Account API client, and more. Check out this technical update for more specific details about what the updates in Hydrogen v2023.01 mean.
And that wraps up October’s updates and enhancements. As ever, there’s something in there for everyone, as Shopify continues to improve the platform for merchants, staff and customers.
If you need any support with our Shopify store, message us for a chat with one of our Business Development Managers.
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