Another month brings with it another steady flow of updates, upgrades and new features rolled out for the Shopify platform. We've compiled the biggest changes of the last month to let you know what they are, and what they mean to merchants and customers.
June 1st
Use return rules to manage return eligibility
What it means to you: Return rules can be set up by merchants to help prevent returns on items that are not eligible, saving you time and improving the experience for the customer when they use self-serve returns to submit product return requests. You're able to define rules including return window, fees, and final sale items for specific items or collections.
You'll also be able to build customer trust by clearly displaying an estimated refund amount for eligible items during the self-serve returns process.
Shopify Magic can create instant answers in Shopify Inbox
What it means to you: a game-changer for customer service! 'Inbox instant answers' allows customers to get automatic answers 24/7 to questions via chat. Shopify Magic generates answers tailored to your store to help improve the customer experience - and make more sales for you.
To use it on your store:
- Add the free app Shopify Inbox
- In Shopify admin, head to Inbox > Chat settings > Instant answers
- Review the suggested options and click one you'd like to create
- Edit or review what's generated, activate it, and click save
June 7th
Shopify Advanced users have increased API rate limits
What it means to you: The Advanced plan now has double the Admin API rate limits - apps installed on Advanced plan stores now have access to 100 points/second on the GraphQL Admin API and 4 requestes per second on the REST Admin API.
Email marketing automation has new 'thank you' template added
What it means to you: A thank you email can now be created and automatically sent to your customers post-purchase. It will also send variants based on whether it's their first or second purchase from you.
Update: Fraud analysis improvements
What it means to you: Shopify has added recommendations to its fraud analysis so it can help you make decisions about next steps, based on risk levels of the order.
Limited guarantee for Shop Promise orders available in Shop App
What it means to you: Shop Promise helps improve conversion rates by displaying an expected delivery date specific to when your customer placed an order, and where that order will be delivered. Shopify uses your order fulfillment history and reliable transit time approximations to determine an expected delivery date. Additional payment methods have now been introduced (previously limited to Shop Pay).
Subfolders now available for use with country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs)
What it means to you: Until this update, region-specific subfolders were limited to merchants with a primary domain that was a generic top-level domain (gTLD). Now, subfolders can be created using Shopify Markets and country-code top-level domans (ccTLDs).
June 9th
Marketing reports have attribution models available
What it means to you: Reports have been improved to allow you to better understand customer journeys and how impactful your marketing campaigns are being. This is possible through the introduction of the linear and any-click models.
Linear = lets you give equal credit to each click that contributed to a sale. Any-click = gives 100% credit to each marketing channel that contributed to a sale.
June 14th
Customise your analytics dashboard to focus on business metrics most important to you
What it means to you: If you click 'Edit Overview' on your dash, you can choose from a library of metrics cards to add or remove whatever you'd like, and re-order them to further personalise your dash.
June 15th
Discounted DHL Express Rates for Shopify Shipping
What it means to you: If you use Shopify Shipping to send orders abroad, you can benefit from discounted rates of up to 30% with DHL Express.
June 19th
Shopify Markets Pro displays payouts differently
What it means to you: This is now shown via a banner at the top of the page for clarity. The transfer will automatically be attempted again if new banking information is provided to fix the failure.
Payment providers are now also displayed in transaction filters to make it easier to keep track of.
On Shopify Pro Markets orders, you can now change your preferred 'Merchant of Record'
What it means to you: Changing your preferred Mechant of Record on draft orders is helpful where Markets Pro doesn't support an order (for example if you want to sell B2B orders or if you want to sell a product restricted in international markets by Markets Pro).
June 20th
Draft orders have granular staff permissions added
What it means to you: Previously there was one Draft orders permission gating staff access to draft orders. That single permission allows staff to view, create, edit, and delete draft orders, as well as set payment terms and process payments.
Now there are 7 new, more granular staff permissions: View draft orders, Create and edit draft orders, Apply discounts, Set payment terms, Charge credit card, Mark draft orders as paid, and Delete draft orders.
This increased granularity gives merchants more control over access to specific actions on draft orders.
All existing staff members who have previously been given the singular Draft orders permission will automatically have all the new permissions selected by default to ensure backward compatibility. Merchants have the option to select (or unselect) a subset of these permissions when more granular access control is needed.
Changes to pricing for Shopify Email
What it means to you: A new tiered pricing system has been rolled out for Shopify email:
- The first 10,000 emails each month are free
- Beyond that it is $1 for each 1,000 emails up to 300,000 emails
- This drops to $0.65 for each 1,000 emails beyond 300,000
- Finally, it drops to $0.55 per 1,000 emails for everything past 750,000
Wording in Shop Pay checkout can be amended
What it means to you: You can personalise the store experience for your customers.
For those who file tax monthly, enhanced sales tax reports are available
What it means to you: This applies to merchants in the US. Filing taxes can be a long process, ensuring the format and content is correct. For merchants using Shopify Tax, state-level reports make it much easier: select the state, and you can review gross and taxable sales broken down into county, city and tax jurisdiction.
For those filing quarterly or annually, another update is on the way soon. We'll let you know in a future blog when this becomes available.
June 26th
URLs can be manually changed for different languages
What it means to you: It is now possible to manually enter translations for URL handles to show different versions to different customers across languages. For example, you may want your product URLs to be
- example.com/products/en-us/red-shoes for English-speaking customers and
- example.com/products/es-us/zapatos-rojos for Spanish-speaking customers
Simply use Shopify’s Translate & Adapt app to translate your URL handles, then direct customers to the appropriate experience by activating language switchers on your theme or enabling automatic redirection.
The URLs will automatically redirect.
This applies to products, collections, blogs, articles and pages.
June 27th
Shop Pay Installments for Shopify POS now available
What it means to you: This feature brings buy now, pay later options to customers shopping in person (as opposed to online). This will help yo umake more sales and increase AOV.
(This is only available at the moment to merchants with physical stores in the US.)
June 28th
Collabs Network launched to Collabs creators
What it means to you: It's now easier for merchants and creators to work together for the benefit of both parties.
The Collabs Network allows merchants to share their products and brand profiles with all verified Collabs creators. To opt in, merchants set an instant commission offer on either all products or at the collection level, which will be shared with all Collabs creators who complete Collabs Network onboarding. Merchants can also opt into receiving program applications from Collabs Network creators.
Creators on Collabs can now search for products and generate instant commission links to start driving sales for merchants immediately, with no additional approvals.
Shipments to the Republic of Ireland now need a postcode
What it means to you: This change is live on checkout and Shop Pay. Eircodes are required on both domestic and international orders regardless of shipping method selected.
June 29th
New ways to dissect cohorts data
What it means to you: The Customer cohort analysis report displays data about your customer acquisition and retention. A cohort is defined as a group of customers that have similar characteristics. For the Customer cohort analysis report, customers are grouped into cohorts based on the date that they placed their first order.
The analysis report can now be filtered by attributes such as sales channel, marketing channel etc. You can also break it down by location.
And that's it for June. Loads of additional changes to benefit both merchants and customers! Stay tuned for next month's update and in the meantime why not check out some of our other articles. From our SEO guide, to advice about improving Google Ads, we've got a ton of useful information for online businesses. And if you need a Shopify Partner to help with marketing, design or development, drop us a line.
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