Everything You Need to know From Shopify Unite 2019
Tuesday, July 2, 2019Eric Zegarski
Here's What Shopfy Announced at Shopify Unite
The announcements at Shopify Unite were HUGE this year.
Shopify announced numerous new features that are geared at helping merchants offer a better experience for their customers. These features are designed to ensure that a user experience is flawless on both the merchant and customer side. With these updates, merchants will be able to design and update their stores with ease, showcase their products with 3D VR capabilities, and fulfill orders faster with a 99.9% accuracy rate. In addition, since commerce is now a global 24/7, 365-day hustle, Shopify is making it easier to go global too.
An Enhanced Design Experience
When it comes to their idea store, merchants often have the perfect store layout planned out in their minds. Now Shopify makes it simpler to achieve your ideal look and feel for your brand. These updates are focused on increasing your ability to customize your store without having to know how to code.
The use of sections was limited to select pages of a Shopify store before. Sections allows merchants to customize the look and feel of their theme by adding content wherever they feel it is necessary. This feature is now available across all pages. Merchants can now leverage this powerful tool on product pages. Since no two merchants are the same, now those that require more information about their products have the option to offer it to their customers.
Shopify now has instantaneous content migration. This means that merchants will no longer have to create a duplicate version of their theme when running an update. In addition, it will allow merchants to try out a new theme without having to move content over manually.
Finally, Shopify has a treat for all of you perfectionist. Merchants can now make changes to their stores and save them as drafts. This allows them to play around with the layout, photography, and text copy until they’re satisfied with it. Previewing updates before publishing allows merchants to get a second eye on their changes before publishing.
Product Videos and 3D Models
Shopify’s product pages will now support videos natively in the product images sections. This means no more YouTube embeds in the description section. Product videos are a great way to showcase an item’s usability or quick how to set up guides. In addition, merchants will be able to showcase 3D models of their products. This will allow the customer to get a full 360 degree look of the product. This feature will also have an AR feature which will allow customers to see the product “live” in the real world.
Leveraging Headless Commerce
Headless commerce in a nutshell is freeing your front-end customer experience from the back-end tech that that powers your operations. It allows you to build the commerce experience you want. Shopify’s storefront API is fantastic for complex and niche businesses. It enables them to offer a unique, above and beyond shopping experience that they require for their products.
This storefront API allows merchants to essentially have creative freedom, however some developer assistance is required. Merchants can do things like connect microservices to offer personalized experiences, such as shipment alerts from 3rd party services. Merchants can take things to the next level and offer things like live streams and smart mirrors that take advantage of a user's mobile device. The best part, Shopify’s flexible architecture enables multiple development teams to work alongside each other.
Leverage Loyalty Points on Retail POS
Shopify’s POS solution keeps getting better and better, especially now that Shopify is rolling out loyalty points for their POS. This feature allows you to use Shopify’s catalogue of rewards-based apps are already providing rewards programs for online customers. The loyalty point apps seamlessly integrate with the checkout process, therefore limiting the amount of time it takes to complete and in person transaction. Now merchants can reward their customers whether they shop in-store or online. In addition, once a customer’s identity is confirmed, staff gets updates if it's their birthday as well.
Offer Seamless Cross-Border Selling
Shopify is on a mission to make global commerce more personal. Last year they announced a multilingual beta for 8 languages beyond English. This year Shopify is adding another 11 languages including; Dutch, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Malay, Hindi, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, and Thai. But it doesn’t stop there! Having the ability to sell in multiple currencies used to be a feature available to Shopify Plus merchants. Shopify is begging to roll this feature out for all merchants gradually this year. Currencies that will be initially available are; GBP, AUD, CAD, EUR, HKD, JPY, NZD, SGD, and USD
Shopify Fulfillment Network
Wouldn’t you love to offer your customers in the continental USA 2-day shipping? If so, then you’re in luck! Shopify announced that they will be launching their own network of fulfillment centers. The network is a dispersed network of fulfillment centers that use machine learning to automatically select the optimal inventory levels per location as well as the closest fulfillment option for each of your shipments.
As a merchant you’ll be able to eliminate the complexities of fulfillment logistics while maintaining the ownership of your customer data. Offering fast delivery will ensure you are able to offer a top-notch customer experience from the moment they reach your website to when they receive your package. This fulfillment system will boast an accuracy rate over 99%. In addition, you will be notified when you must replenish your stock as specific hubs to avoid stockouts.
Automation and Integration Are Leading Innovation
These announcements make it clear that Shopify wants its merchants to be able to offer a unified shopping experience. These updates are being driven by automation and integration. We at eBridge believe that an integrated commerce network allows merchants to fulfill faster, create a seamless shopping experience, and ensure data integrity across all commerce touchpoints. We are proud to be a certified Shopify Partner. We take pride in rolling out updates to our cloud-based integration solution on a regular basis to ensure our
Shopify merchants are empowered to sell more and fulfill faster.