During their Shopify Reunite 2020 broadcast event, Shopify announced major new features for its platform that will roll out this year. You will be excited to learn about those releases as they will improve the way you do business.
If Shopify powers your eCommerce, keep on reading this article to see how their upcoming releases will impact you.
Main Features Categories Announced at Shopify Reunite 2020
- Money
- Online store
- Omnichannel and marketing
- Back office
- Shipping
- Performance
1. Money
Shopify is releasing many products and features to empower merchants financially.
New – Shopify Balance
The eCommerce platform will launch Shopify Balance. This new feature will provide merchants access to critical financial products.
Shopify Balance will include:
- Shopify Balance account. A one-stop-shop within the Shopify Admin where merchants can get a clear view of their cash flow, pay bills, track expenses, and make decisions about the future of their business, with no monthly fees or minimum balance.
- Shopify Card. These physical and virtual cards can be used by merchants to access their money faster, when spending in-store, through mobile, or online.
- Rewards. They are working on offering cashback and discounts.
An example of the new Shopify Card.
Update – Shopify Capital
Shopify Capital is a program that helps small businesses access financing. They do so by issuing financing amounts that range from $200 to $1,000,000.
This feature will be expanding to Canada and the United Kingdom.
New – Shop Pay Installments
Shopify announced the launch of Shop Pay Installments. This allows buyers to pay for purchases in four equal payments over time, with no interest or fees. There will be no risk for merchants as they will receive the full sale amount upfront, and Shopify will take care of collecting the remaining payments.
Shop Pay Installments will be integrated into the Shop Pay accelerated checkout. This new feature will be available to merchants and buyers in the U.S. later this year.
2. Online store
Shopify is evolving the online store by adding new tools and avenues available to Shopify Partners.
New – Express theme
Shopify is releasing Express Theme to help businesses get online faster. Express is designed to be a one-page shopping experience and is aimed towards businesses like restaurants and cafes. It will be optimized for mobile and supports small to medium catalogs of products.
New – Gift Cards
Shopify temporarily made gift cards free for all Shopify plans to help merchants who may not be able to sell their products right now.
New – Tipping
Shopify added a new tipping feature in the online checkout. They want to allow buyers to continue showing support for businesses that rely on tipping as another form of revenue.
Food businesses, those offering local delivery, and charities are particularly well-suited to tipping.
New – Selling internationally
Shopify is thinking international by launching two new features that will reduce the friction for international buyers and merchants.
- Language: Local domains will soon be made available to merchants. They will be able to assign individual domains to a country or currency, as well as a language or set of languages.
- Currency: Coming later this year, Shopify will make it possible for merchants to have a stable price for products when using multicurrency. In other words, wherever the country merchants are selling in, they will get paid in their own currency, and still be able to show a stable price to shoppers.
Update – The new online store design experience
Shopify will be releasing a feature that allows merchants to customize all the pages without writing a single line of code. It will be made possible via a drag and drop interface through app sections.
The new online store design experience will launch to merchants later this year.
Update – Checkout and subscriptions
You can expect to see more improvements coming to checkout soon, including subscriptions and upsell functionality.
3. Omnichannel and marketing
Shopify will give more importance to an omnichannel approach by releasing several features.
New – The all-new Shopify POS
Shopify launched the all-new Shopify POS globally. They created a redesigned, rebuilt, and extensible point-of-sale system. This will bridge the gap between merchants’ physical storefronts and online store.
The main features of this new POS consist of:
- Contactless checkout: They are introducing an additional contactless payment method: QR codes.
- See what’s in-store: This feature will soon allow buyers to see the live inventory in-store via the online website. It will also be possible for shoppers to select different fulfillment options, such as local or curbside pickup.
New – Shopify Email
Shopify launched Shopify Email in April 2020 and announced that it would be free for all merchants until October 2020. They are launching additional features, such as email templates and email automation.
New – Facebook Shops
Merchants over the world will soon be able to use Facebook Shops over the coming months. This new feature allows merchants to build a simple, branded version of their online store within Facebook and Instagram.
New – Free listings on Google Shopping
Merchants will be able to list their products for free on Google Shopping through Shopify’s Google Shopping app. This option is only available in the U.S. but will be rolling out globally by the end of the year.
Update – Shopify Ping
Shopify is updating its free messaging app: Shopify Ping. Merchants should expect to see an Android version this summer, and a web version this fall. Merchants can also expect to see a feature that will allow multiple staff management on one account.
New – Shop and Shop Channel
Shopify created the Shop app: a free channel inside of Shopify that acts as a personal assistant. Shop will allow merchants to enable features such as nearby localization, customized product recommendations, and delivery tracking.
4. Back office
Shopify is also working on the admin part of the platform to help merchants work faster and smarter.
New – Product states
Shopify plans on giving more flexibility to merchants when it comes to product catalog management. Product states will allow features such as creating a product and saving it for later as a draft. This allows many team members to work on a product and archive products.
New – Faster product creation
Shopify’s goal is to accelerate and simplify the product creation process. Therefore, merchants will be able to create products directly from their phones and create products in bulk.
An example of creating a product via mobile
New – Purchase Orders
Update – Orders list page
Shopify redesigned the orders list page with more added relevant information about the orders to make this process better.
5. Shipping
The eCommerce giant is also making shipping a priority by building new shipping and fulfillment features.
New – Delivery and pickup methods
Merchants will soon have access to many delivery options from curbside pickup to a more optimized local delivery system thanks to the new Shopify Local Delivery app.
Update – Shopify Fulfillment Network
After announcing this project last year, Shopify has been working to improve its Fulfillment Network with an additional $1 billion investment over the next four years. They are building a network of fulfillment centers across North America with robotics-driven warehouses to help merchants fulfill fast and affordably.
6. Performance
Shopify is making website speed a priority.
New – Storefront renderer
Shopify has made changes in the engine that powers the storefront Liquid theme, which will considerably improve load times and conversion rates.
New – Online store performance dashboard
Merchants will be able to access an online store performance dashboard. The online store performance dashboard will allow them to troubleshoot performance issues better. This feature will be available this summer.
For more information, visit Shopify’s website or watch the Shopify Reunite recording here.
Our Shopify solutions may be the answer.
At Le Site, we are excited to see all these innovations coming to Shopify to help businesses grow and make eCommerce more efficient and easy. We believe that businesses of all sizes should have access to great technologies. Talk to our experts today to see how we can help you build your online presence with Shopify!