Shopify, a leading commerce technology company, has unveiled the Boring Edition for its Winter ‘25 Edition, the semi-annual showcase of its latest products and innovations.
Shopify takes the responsibility of building great quality software seriously as millions of businesses globally depend on its platform integration, stability, and performance every single day. This Edition is about polishing our current solutions, optimising performance, and making sure every facet of Shopify works well together. It’s shipping updates relating to AI, shipping as well as checkout – with a focus on ensuring excellence in the mundane and a dedication to making commerce simple, so merchants can lean into their vision and propel their business forward.
The Edition represents Shopify’s commitment to driving growth in Europe, with vital product updates now in market for the first time. As the company’s largest region outside of North America – which has seen five consecutive quarters of over 30% growth – delivering product innovation to make commerce simple for European merchants is a priority focus for Shopify in the region.
“Each Edition is a fresh version of Shopify that visualizes our latest launches and updates,” says Deann Evans, Managing Director, EMEA, at Shopify. “But this time we’re smoothing the rough edges, improving performance, and focusing on fulfilling the needs of our merchants. Those outside of commerce might think it’s boring, but these are improvements made by directly listening to what our merchants need and want.”
Smoother in-person selling functionality
Black Friday 2024 saw sales via Shopify POS grow 31% year-on-year globally. To empower continued in-store growth, POS updates in this Edition include:
- Shopify POS for Bundles: Merchants can now manage and sell bundles directly through Shopify POS.
- Split screen selling: POS search results now display via a split screen view so results are always visible alongside the cart.
- Metafields in POS: Retail offers one of the most personalised channels for merchants to capture customer data. Now, metafields are available through POS, leveraging first-party data to create more relevant and efficient marketing communications.
Commenting on the POS updates, Ben Buxton, head of e-commerce at Fairfax & Favor says: “We have 9 stores currently – 3 of which have opened only in the last month – as well as 15 event locations, and a further 14 more in the United States. Shopify POS has been crucial to supporting the growth of the business, not only by offering in-person sales through a range of devices, but also timing in completely to the rest of the Shopify eco-system. Supported by Flow and Shopify Admin, we can offer a seamless in-person sales, order management and payment system that links directly to our existing ecommerce set up – as well as allowing for targeted information to be drawn from the order information for use in Klaviyo, our ERP, social funnel and more.”
Unified customer accounts
The best customer journeys begin with a simple login. To enable that to happen, new Customer Account Extensions offer a unified experience across platforms, are fully controlled by merchants, and powered by high-quality apps to make the process as smooth as possible. Some of the improved features that are supported by Customer Account Extensions include:
- Seamless order and return management: Allows customers to manage all aspects of their orders and returns within a unified account via a passwordless login.
- Build better customer relationships: Merchants can use survey apps like Zigpoll to collect direct feedback and opinions. This data is seamlessly stored within a single customer record to help merchants better engage with customers.
- Personalise the customer experience: Build personalised experiences directly into customer account pages in minutes with no code. The result: a seamless, branded experience that removes friction and drives sales.
- B2B functionality: While Shopify has a host of out-of-the-box B2B features, a seamless B2B customer account experience was a challenge – until now. With Customer Account Extensions, merchants can easily build a customised experience for their wholesale customers, with self-serve functionality for quotes, invoicing, bulk ordering, and even B2B storefronts.
More AI-powered commerce tools
Shopify Sidekick, Shopify’s AI-enabled commerce assistant continues to roll-out globally. Enhancements are also coming to Semantic Search, which enables customers to search for products on a merchant’s storefront using everyday language, giving them a richer way to find the items they’re interested in.
“Semantic Search will be huge for us. We’re currently looking at changing our search intent and provider. As we can’t always cover all terminologies that a customer may use [coat / long coat / trench coat / warm coat / smart coat] we can really help customers find what they’ve been looking for or what they want to get – whether it’s a cursory search or they’ve seen something directly – we can more accurately interpret the customer’s intent and wish, so we can improve conversion rate, decrease bounce traffic, increase CTRs (click-through rates) for search and ensure our growing product range can be served or shown when needed, without having to include multiple synonyms for a range of products,” continues Buxton.
Expanding payments methods and automating tax
UK merchants using Shopify Payments can now use Klarna as a local payment method. This version of Klarna is being built in a new way – as a payment extension – and is the first Local Payment Method (LPM) like this, but will operate similarly to other payment gateways on Shopify Payments with a seamless onboarding and integrated payments.
Merchants selling in or to the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) can now use Shopify Tax, which comes with automated VAT calculations, liability tracking and invoicing. In the EU and UK, VAT rules and regulations are complex, yet critical for compliance and business growth. EU regulations are evolving and enforcement is steadily increasing. Shopify Tax is designed to help them remain compliant.
Shopify Checkout, even better
We’ve optimised our cart infrastructure to boost load speeds by up to 50%, made Checkout Blocks available to all plans for customised thank you pages, and integrated chat apps into the checkout. We’re also improving draft orders by enhancing features such as:
- Checkout customisations: Merchants can now use Checkout UI extensions in draft order invoice checkouts.
- Bundle options for B2B: When dealing with Bundle orders, merchants can customize product assortments and purchasing options that match buyers’ needs, regardless of how they check out.
- Functions support: Checkout rules and payment and delivery customizations powered by Shopify Functions can now be executed in draft orders.
“Checkout Blocks provides a completely customisable experience for our store, especially since moving to one-page checkout at the beginning of the year. We’re able to customise information by Market – supporting our expansion into the United States, provide estimated delivery date by shipping method on the checkout with the use of liquid, and provide additional confidence boosters or fulfillment delay information to control expectations and provide a much higher level of CX,” concludes Buxton.
Evans concludes: “Merchants depend on Shopify, and software that is fast, intuitive and reliable. The Boring Edition is about making those enhancements that create environments for merchants to thrive through greater integration across the entire Shopify ecosystem and remove friction. They’re vital to the future of commerce, and anything but boring.”
