Shopify Reunite 2020 Recap & Summary
Wednesday, June 3, 2020Eric Zegarski
A Recap of Shopify Reunite 2020
Shopify took new a direction with their annual
Shopify Unite conference. Calling it Reunite, the conference was geared at merchants versus Shopify Partners. Due to the ongoing global pandemic, the conference was held virtually online. Merchants from all over the globe came together in the comforts of their own homes, some probably sporting their finest pajamas or trackpants. This year’s focus of Reunite was how can Shopify help merchants succeed and break down barriers of getting online. Here’s a look at this year’s announcements:
Financial Services for Merchants
Shopify is launching its own bank, well sort of. They won't be selling Class A stocks just yet. Shopify is offering financial services to help merchants access their finances faster. Dubbed Shopify Balance, entrepreneurs will have access to essential financial products that allow them to start, run, and grow their businesses. Here are some features of Shopify Balance:
- Shopify Balance Account: A spot inside Shopify where merchants can view their cash flow, pay bills, and track expenses. Merchants can now make more sound business decisions.
- Shopify Card: You get access to physical and virtual cards with your name and logo. These cards allow you to access your money faster. You can make purchases or withdraw cash with these cards! Need cash for your till at a t pop-up, now it’s easy with Shopify Balance
- Rewards: Shopify will be offering cashback and discounts, just like credit card providers on everyday business expenses like shipping and marketing.
Shopify Balance will be launching in the USA later this year. Shopify is also looking to launch payment installments. Customers will have the option to split their purchase into 4 equal payments. These payments will be interest free. Merchants will receive the full purchase upfront, minus a fee. Shopify has a partner that will manage collecting payments. This feature is perfect for merchats selling big ticket items.
Fulfill Orders Faster and Easier
Shoppers are looking to support local businesses. Buying local is good for their community, but it also allows them to receive their products faster. Customers also save on hefty shipping fees and duty fees on international orders.
Shopify is now allowing merchants to offer local pickup. Businesses can keep selling online while offering convenient pickup from their brick-and-mortar locations. Here are two features Shopify is rolling out to bridge the gap between online and offline:
- Curbside pickup: Available today, curbside pickup lets customers skip waiting for shipping and pick up their online orders in-store, curbside, or from any inventory location you’ve identified as a pickup spot in your Shopify store. Merchants can also offer specific pickup instructions for each retail location.
- Local delivery: Soon, merchants across the globe will be able to offer a simplified local delivery experience. Merchants can select a local delivery area using zip and postal codes or by radius. In addition, merchants will be able to set local delivery fees and minimum order prices. The Shopify Local Delivery app allows you to make the delivery experience smooth for both you and your customers.
Shopify is rolling out upgrades to the Shopify Fulfillment Network. They're building a network of warehouses to give you, the merchant, access to two-day shipping. Right now, the fulfillment network is open to merchants in the United States who are shipping between 10 to 10k orders a day. Access to this network is granted by completing this application. Shopify is also introducing an artificial helping hand at their warehouses. Robots like Chuck (
AR demo) will help Shopify streamline their warehouses .
Apply today to get access.
Build a Multi-Channel Presence
Shopify is structure to allow you to sell on different channels. Their mission is to allow you to sell wherever your customer is, be that in person or online. Here are all the new updates to Shopify’s multi-channel tools:
- All-new Shopify POS: Shopify built POS to unify offline and online selling and help brick-and-mortar businesses run or reopen their stores in the modern retail environment. More updates are coming soon, including convenient ways to offer contactless checkout, and a "see what's in store" feature that lets shoppers see what's in stock at their local store and choose their preferred fulfillment option. Learn More
- Shopify Email: Email remains one of the most effective ways to reach your customers through a channel you fully control. Shopify built email marketing into Shopify so anyone can send and track beautiful branded emails—no marketing experience required. And it’s completely free to use until October, 2020. Learn More
- Shopify Ping for Android: Shopify Ping is their free messaging app that helps businesses create personal connections through real-time conversations. Currently available on iOS, soon Shopify Ping will be available on Android this summer. Shopify is adding staff accounts to Ping so anyone on your team can message with customers individually and collaborate with other team members over chat. Learrn More
- Facebook Shops: Every day, people all over the world rely on Facebook and Instagram to discover new experiences. Shopify recently partnered with Facebook to bring Facebook Shops to Shopify merchants, a new shopping experience that lets you create a branded store that lives inside the Facebook and Instagram mobile apps. Learn More
- Google Shopping: The Google Shopping tab is used by hundreds of millions of shoppers to find the items they need. With free listings on Google, you can now use Shopify’s Google Shopping app to sync your products in Shopify so they can appear in relevant Google Shopping search results—for free. This is available in the US. It will be rolling out globally later this year. Learn More
- Shop Channel: Shop is a digital shopping assistant that helps your most loyal customers discover (and rediscover) your products, checkout in one-click, and track their orders—all in one place. Shop will soon become the Shop Channel, allowing you to customize how your brand shows up in the Shop app to better own your story and your relationship with your customers. Learn More
Helping All Businesses Get Online
With the recent spike in eCommerce, businesses that have traditionally not have their own dedicated eCommerce website are now pushing to get online. Along with local delivery and curbside pickup, Shopify has made gift cards available on all plans to help businesses get short-term cash flow relief through gift card sales. At Reunite, Shopify announced two more ways they’re empowering businesses to pivot online, which are both available now. These features are fantastic for restaurants.
- Merchant tipping: Give your customers a way to tip a percentage of their total or a custom amount at checkout. You can customize the experience to offer a variety of tipping options, from collecting donations, thanking your delivery drivers, and more.
- Express: Express is a free Shopify theme designed specifically for restaurants and other food and beverage businesses to quickly create a simple online store. Together with our new tipping and local fulfillment options, we hope to make it as easy as possible for these businesses to shift their sales online.
Getting Local in International Markets
Selling effectively in international markets means serving up shopping experiences that still feel familiar to your cross-border customers. During Reunite, Shopify shared a few ways they’re helping sellers create localized experiences as they scale their business internationally:
- Local Domains: Shopify is expanding their domains feature to enable merchants to set up local domains, each with its own assigned country, currency, and languages. Local Domains help merchants scale their business to different parts of the world by tailoring their online store to match the needs of international buyers. These features will be available to all merchants worldwide later this year.
- Shopify Payments: Payments now supports 133 currencies: You can now sell in 133 global currencies if you’re using Shopify Payments, helping you reach new international customers with product prices that display in their localized currency.
- Custom Foreign Exchange: You’ll soon be able to create custom pricing rules to convert your prices into local currencies, offering more transparent pricing for your international customers. It means greater control over your product prices, enabling you to market and advertise effectively. This will be available later this year to all merchants using Shopify Payments.
Shopify is Making You More Productive
Shopify is always looking for ways to simplify routine errands that come with running a business. They’re releasing key improvements that will reduce the amount of time you spend on back-office tasks, so you can spend more time growing your business.
- Faster product creation workflows: Later this year, Shopify will release workflow tools to help you add new products to your store more quickly. You’ll be able to add products in bulk by entering key details like titles, prices, and variants from a single page, and even take photos for different variants through the Shopify mobile app and upload them directly to your product page.
- "Draft" state for products: Products in Shopify will soon have a draft state, so you can finalize, preview, and collaborate with teammates on your product pages without worrying about publishing them to sales channels before they're ready. You’ll also soon be able to archive products to make managing your product catalog easier.
- Improved order management: Shopify rebuilt the Orders page to make all relevant information available at-a-glance, including order items, delivery methods, customer details, order notes, and more.
- Purchase orders and inventory reports: Track, order, and receive inventory from your suppliers directly in Shopify. Soon, you'll also be able to receive products by scanning them with the Shopify mobile app.
- Centralized product returns: Returns have traditionally been managed using multiple tools and systems, but Shopify is centralizing all of that with a new built-in returns workflow.
Lightning Fast Load Times
Customers want to experience a fast browsing experience whether the’re shopping on mobile or desktop. Slow load time lead to frustrated shoppers and poor performance in search engines. Shopify is always working hard to make sure the platform is lightning fast.
Their team has been busy rebuilding their online store engine to accelerate load times. Some stores have already experienced load times twice as fast as before. Shopify is rolling this new engine out to their plus merchants first. It should be available to all merchants by the end of the year. Shopify is also releasing a new online store performance dashboard that gives you a more transparent look at your store’s performance. You’ll be able to see how recent changes are impacting your stores performance. Some merchants will have early access to this feature in June, Shopify will roll this feature out to everyone later this year.
eBridge is Here to Help Your Shopify Store Grow
Whether you’re a Shopify or Shopify Plus merchant, we can help you scale your business. EBridge's integration solution provides bi-directional data flow between Shopify and your ERP solution. With integration, you’ll eliminate the need for manual data entry. As a result, vital data like orders and inventory will automatically post in your ERP. You’ll save time and money, plus eliminate the need for manual human entry, mitigating the risk of human error.
eBridge Connections also has pre-built connectors for
Shopify and leading
ERP solutions. Therefore, we can execute an integration project in a timely and cost-effective manner. In addition, eBridge is hosted on Microsoft Azure, therefore ensuring an almost 99.9% uptime and industry leading security. With an integration solution from eBridge, you can ensure that your commerce network is connected and communicating data bi-directionally.