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Shopify Unite 2019

Shopify Unite 2019 has kicked off! Today was packed with announcements and features that Shopify will release throughout the rest of this year. Huge updates to the Shopify Plus experience are rolling out and Shopify Fulfillment could be an amazing option for merchants that want an integrated logistics and fulfillment experience. Shopify thinks of itself as an end to end retail operating system. There are a ton of features being released, read on for our notes.

Next week we are hosting our first trade show booth at IRCE in Chicago and Ambaum will be hosting workshops during the conference. If you are in Chicago, stop by and say hello!

Cynthia Savard Saucier, Director of User Experience

  • 2016 introduced Sections to the Shopify home page, now in 2019 Sections will be rolled out in the entire online store
  • Introducing the idea of Master pages and you can edit multiple pages at the same time, you can edit a single section on a master page and have it roll through to the entire site
  • Apps are coming to sections, you can add an app to a page as easy as it is to add text and images
  • Can create a Product Master page, add product reviews and it will show up on all product pages under the Product Master page
  • Content portability – merchants can switch themes and all of their content will follow
  • Drafts – merchants can try out larger changes to their theme in a “dev” environment
  • Sections API – in developer preview currently
  • Support for new media types – video and 3D images are natively supported on product detail pages
  • 3D Model – when a customer interacts with a 3D model they are 2X as likely to purchase
  • Checkout speed and performance – 20% reduced latency compared to 3 months ago
  • Checkout app extensions – partners can build apps that extend into the checkout
  • Subscriptions – allowing for subscription apps to enter into the checkout flow and customers don’t have to leave Shopify, including a partnership with ReCharge

David Moellenkamp, Director of Product

  • Headless commerce – requires a platform that allows for extensibility and Shopify is primed for growth here with merchants already using Shopify this way
  • Custom storefront tools can now support metafields, multicurrency and shopify scripts
  • Multicurrency – rolled out to Shopify Plus in early 2019, some merchants that have enabled this have seen a 60% lift in their International conversion rates, now multicurrency will be available to all merchants on Shopify Payments
  • Added currencies – Netherlands and Denmark
  • Multi Language API (available today for the developer community) – with these new APIs you can store translated content for blogs, products and serve up localized content for buyers around the world

Arpan Podduturi, Director of Product

Speaker Arpan Podduturi
  • Shopify POS now powers over 100,000 merchants, driving billions in sales
  • Shopify Retail Kit (rolled out in April 2019) – new tap and chip case (merchant’s logo can be added to case) accepts credit cards and contactless payments anywhere in the store, no more checkout lines
  • POS Cart App Extensions – automatically surface loyalty and promotion awards during checkout, include a customer and the extension will call a loyalty app
  • New Shopify POS – ground up rebuild and apps get first class treatment, home screen includes a smart grid that shows merchant specific workflows and can include specific apps
  • Camera based scanning and POS search uses the core Shopify search technology
  • Retail Staff roles – store managers can give staff a login that is tailored to their role
  • Buy online and pickup in store – buyers can check out online and pickup in nearby stores (currently in a closed beta with merchants)
  • All new POS – available later in 2019

Lynsey Thornton, General Manager of Core Product

Speaker Lynsey Thornton
  • Shipping Profiles – assign delivery rules and rates by product and location, use the API to create custom shipping solutions for merchants through the GraphQL API
  • Fulfillment – GraphQL Fulfillment API, add visibility, flexibility and control through the fulfillment process
  • Changing a Customer’s Order – order editing now exists! In the next few months every merchant will now have the ability to edit an order
  • Order Editing API now released – alter orders, add custom items and even send a notice for additional payment from the customer
  • Shopify launching in 11 more languages, spoken by 2B people in the world

Shopify Plus

Speaker for Shopify Plus
  • Over $1B in sales from Plus merchants
  • New Shopify Plus Dashboard – use a single merged identity account to access information across all stores
  • Information and Analytics will be available in one single location
  • In Shopify Plus – stores are added with a few clicks, in the future support will exist for expansion stores
  • All staff accounts in Plus will be managed from one central place
  • Multi Store Tools – global customer view now in Shopify Plus, searching for the customer will bring up a single customer record across the business
  • Shopify Flow – 1.8B tasks automated so far in Shopify Flow, enable workflows across all stores
  • Launching in the next few months for Plus customers

Vanessa Lee, Director of Product

4 major goals for the app platform:

  • Easier to build – Shopify app command line interface and helps manage all development stores and populate a sandbox store, Shopify APP CLI
  • Making apps more embedded in Shopify – EASDK and POSDK overhauled with the Shopify app bridge, works with development tools: supports context bar, product picker and barcode scanner (merchants can scan barcodes with your app)
  • Speed – Doubling down on GraphQL, today with REST you’d have to make 11 API calls just to get the details of one order, with GraphQL it’s now just one API call and you have to parse through less data, still supporting REST but leaning in to GraphQL even more, 2,000 apps now using Graph QL (new documentation rolling out)
  • Stability – Admin, storefront and checkout API versioning, will roll out updates each quarter and be supported for at least a year

Craig Miller, Chief Product Officer

Speaker Craig Miller
  • Merchants have numerous 3rd party logistic/fulfillment issues – complex pricing, increased inventory costs, incompatible technology, poor performance
  • Marketplace fulfillment – large merchants only, unfair competition, using merchant data to compete with the merchants that use them
  • Shopify Fulfillment Network – fulfillment centers setup all throughout the US and use machine learning to figure out where merchants’ SKUs should be located
  • Here’s how it works – install the Fulfillment app, select the products, get quote and then send Shopify the products
  • Shopify Fulfillment channel supports – retail, wholesale, social channels, custom packaging, returns and exchanges as well as kitting and supports merchant of every size even merchants sending 10K+ packages/day
  • Deliver to 99% of the continental US in 2 days
  • If you run a fulfillment center and are interested in partnering with Shopify they are partnering as well
  • Spending over $1B to build out the Shopify Fulfillment Network

Harley Finkelstein, Chief Operating Officer

Speaker Harley Finkelstein
  • 820,000 merchants on Shopify
  • $41B of products sold in 2018
  • 218M buyers have purchased something off Shopify in the last 12 months
  • $100M paid to app developers in 2019

Hit up Shopify’s Unite blog post for more in-depth details. What are your thoughts on the announcements? Let us know!