Last week some of the The Taproom team headed to Toronto for Shopify’s fourth annual conference - Shopify Unite. We had an incredible time learning about what’s to come for our favorite ecommerce platform and we can’t wait to see some of the fantastic announcements roll out. But if you’re feeling a bit of FOMO over not joining us at the conference, then fear not – we’re here to dish out the most exciting developments announced at Shopify Unite 2019.
An All-New Theme Customizer Experience
Sound the alarm - it’s really happening! Shopify is bringing Sections to interior pages, meaning you’ll soon be able to edit any page on your website the same way you can your homepage. This will be a game-changer for merchants, being able to make every page on your site a unique experience for your customers.
They’re also making it easier to move content by making all content on your site fully portable - so if you want to try out a new theme or change it, your content will automatically move with you. Plus with an all-new workspace, you can draft changes with confidence knowing that what you make live on your site will appear exactly as it does in your draft.
But wait – here’s more! Master Pages are also coming to Shopify, which means you’ll be able to control ONE base template for each of your pages so you don’t have to manually add a section to each individual template. Think of it this way - if you have 8 unique product page templates but you want to add a size chart to all of them, you’ll only have to update one single template rather than 8.
New Product Page Media Options
The days of only being able to display static images on product pages are over. Shopify has introduced both video and 3D models to product pages so you can give your customers a richer experience of your products before clicking “Add to Cart”. The trade-off with online shopping has always been that you can’t touch or properly see a product from all angles, so 3D models and video will help mitigate that trade-off making the decision making process a breeze for customers.
To help make these new media options straight-forward to use, they’ll be stored in the same place as your images. The “Images” section on the editor will soon become “Media,” meaning you can upload, store, and use all your media from one single location. There will also be a new native Shopify video player, so you can easily display your shiny new videos and 3D Models with confidence.
Order Editing
Something that will be very exciting for so many merchants is that Shopify are introducing order editing to the platform. This means within Shopify you’ll be able to edit the quantity, variant, products, or shipping method in an order—as long as it’s after a customer has paid, and before the order has been fulfilled. And yes - you can even use this to upsell to customers AFTER they place an order. With Shopify Plus, you'll be able to use Flow to automatically add free items to their orders as well! The opportunities are endless for putting order editing to use - not just for that customer who wants to change their order. We have so many ideas on using this new tool for a solid upsell strategy and can’t wait to tell you more.
Easier Cross-Border Selling
Last year at Unite, Shopify announced their first ever multi-lingual beta which brought 6 new languages to the platform opening the door for more merchants around the world. This year they’ve announced plans to add an additional 11 languages, collectively spoken by over 2 billion people! This will make the platform even more accessible to international merchants and we can’t wait to see what unique stores pop up as a result once this goes live.
The other exciting international announcement was the introduction of multi-currency options to ALL stores (previously only available to Shopify Plus merchants), which will allow your customers to pay in their native currency (provided it’s one of the initial 9 currencies being rolled out). Displayed prices on your store will use simple rounding rules in conjunction with current foreign exchange rates which will carry through from product page to checkout so your customer can buy with confidence without the need to go checking exchange rates for their currency. The initial currencies being rolled out are USD, GBP, CAD, AUD, EUR, NZD, JPY, HKD, and SGD.
And lastly, coming soon to all stores is native support for internationalizing your store by language. No more using clunky apps to let your customers browse your shop in their own language – soon you’ll be able to add these translations directly within Shopify, making it much easier for you to support ALL customers.
Shopify Fulfillment Network
Now this is the one we were very excited about! We all know the pains of packing and shipping products, and we know how expensive it can get, especially if you're a mid-sized business. To make your life a million times easier, Shopify is creating their own fulfillment network - meaning you'll never have to pack and ship your own products again. The process is simple:
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Install the app (soon to come)
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Select which products you'd like Shopify to handle for shipping
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You'll receive an instant quote, and once accepted, you follow the instructions to ship it to one of the fulfillment centers and that's it!
And even better yet - Shopify handles the returns and exchanges for you as well. You'll get 2-day shipping at a very reasonable cost, which is to be revealed at a later date.
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Unite has always been our favorite conference of the year, and we always come back excited and ready to continue working with this forward-thinking, innovative ecommerce platform. We already can’t wait for Unite 2020!