The e-commerce software Shopify offers merchants and developers numerous new functions for their business. These were presented at Shopify Unite 2021. The most important updates include the new zero percent revenue share model for developers, more flexibility for the design of the storefronts for retailers and a faster and scalable checkout.
Shopify is growing and wants to retain even more merchants
Shopify has long since become a big player in online retail: In 2020, more than 450 million people worldwide made purchases via the platform. Almost $120 billion in sales were processed via the e-commerce platform. More than 1.7 million companies in around 175 countries now use Shopify.
explains Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify. Shopify describes the innovations for developers and retailers as the biggest investments for its own platform – which focuses on omnichannel sales. In the future, they should get an improved infrastructure - from the storefront to the checkout to the theme store - and more options when creating and customizing their Shopify shops. The scaling of the business and the presentation of brands is also optimized.
This is what Shopify announced at Unite 2021: templates for shops, custom storefronts and much more
For developers there is a very special innovation: starting August 1, 2021, if you develop apps for the Shopify App Store, you will pay zero percent revenue share for the first million US dollars you earn through the platform in a year. Before it was 20 percent. This new model with zero percent revenue share for Shopify is also available for developers in the Theme Store.
There are also various innovations for the storefronts. This includes the Online Store 2.0 and custom storefronts. Shopify lists what's new in these areas as follows:
Online store 2.0:
Shopify gives merchants more flexibility and customization so they can better showcase their brands, create unique online experiences, and integrate apps—all without having to customize code. Also, Shopify is introducing some new features, including sections on all pages to personalize each part of a store, a new editor experience, and theme app extensions, with templates for building Shopify stores. This is the biggest upgrade to Shopify's Liquid platform to date, and it's available to take advantage of now.
On July 15, the Shopify Theme Store will open to developers. From this point on, developers can also create templates for shops and market them on the platform.
Shopify is also launching Dawn, a new developer tool and future default theme that is said to be faster and more beautiful than previous themes: Dawn is 35 percent faster than the most popular Shopify theme. This makes creating themes and templates much easier. Dawn allows retailers to be more creative when designing their shops.
Custom storefronts:
From July 1st, buyers can reach online shops worldwide and the GraphQL Storefront API within 50 milliseconds. In addition, the expansion of the hosting regions to all continents enables faster response times. Shopify uses more than 100 server locations to be able to serve API requests for personalized storefronts directly and without delay.
Shopify will also be presenting an outlook on Hydrogen, a new React framework for developers to create custom storefronts, and Oxygen, Shopify's future hosting platform for custom storefronts. Hydrogen and Oxygen are planned to be made available soon.
The checkout is also faster and more extensive
Even if potential buyers have already decided on a product, a purchase is often not concluded. One of the most common reasons for such a development, which is annoying for merchants, is overly complicated checkout processes or the lack of diversity in payment options. Shopify aims to combat this with the following checkout optimizations:
The Shopify Checkout should be faster. The company wants to give all retailers the opportunity to process tens of thousands of purchases per minute. 300,000 pairs of sneakers can be sold in just over eight minutes. This would allow merchants to process as much sales volume as was generated via the Shopify platform in total at the height of Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend in 2020.
With the introduction of Checkout Extensions, developers can safely program apps in Shopify Checkout. The customization options for the checkout process with Shopify should also work with Shop Pay. Merchants can therefore adapt Shop Pay to their individual needs.
Shopify is also introducing a new Payments platform. This enables merchants to integrate payment solutions from third-party companies in the Shopify Checkout. This could increase conversions and sales in the long run.
You can see the detailed presentation of Shopify News in the Unite 2021 recap video:
The information in this post is from Shopify's official press release.
