Shopify Summer Editions
Welcome to the bi monthly Your Basket Is Empty newsletter, Issue #43
So. What’s been going on?
Well. After much deliberation and advice, we’ve decided to sunset Your Basket Is Empty the brand. Although there is some brand equity in the name, it ultimately doesn’t represent the new direction of the company - a Digital Commerce Agency.
Of course, we could have kept it as our media arm of the business (podcast, this newsletter, events etc). And there is an advantage to this. However, the operational overhead of running two brands doesn’t outweigh the simplicity of creating and distributing content through our agency.
The sunsetting won’t happen immediately, it will be a transition. So you can still enjoy your favourite commerce content here and on our podcast channel.
We’re super stoked for our new brand and name - which will be announced in the next few weeks.
Your pals, Lucy & Tim
Shopify Summer Editions
I’ve returned to the Shopify world at an interesting time. As discussed in our inaugural joint podcast a couple of weeks ago, I’ve spent the last three years selling SaaS software to enterprise businesses and I’ll admit, I didn’t keep up with every update from Harley & the gang. Frankly, I was burnt out after three years trying to make Shopify work for our larger and/or complex customers:
“Surely,” clients would ask, as I explained the need for a custom app to change one line of code, “it doesn’t need to be this complicated?”
Having worked my way through the updates shared in the latest Shopify Editions, I can only conclude Shopify was feeling the same way. This platform has become an entirely different beast. And said beast is fighting hard to dispel its most popular criticisms with a focus on what they’ve dubbed ‘Unified Commerce.’
Here’s our write-up of the most interesting (and telling) features:
Enterprise
Shopify is going after the Enterprise market, hard. For years they’ve boasted heavy hitters like Gymshark & Skims - but these businesses started on Shopify and then exploded. Convincing a billion dollar company to migrate their business from Salesforce or Adobe Commerce is a different challenge entirely. These companies have lengthy RFP processes, dedicated procurement teams and a ton of non-negotiable requirements.
These features suggest that Shopify know they need to offer better flexibility for customers and end users if they want to start winning more Enterprise deals:
Offering Split Shipping in Checkout
Building a Microsoft Business Central connector
Making the checkout PCI DSS v4 compliant
Providing greater flexibility around staff access to customer data and granularity of user roles
Small things, but RFP processes often come down to points scoring. By releasing these features, Shopify is continuing to minimise the reasons they won’t win out against more traditional enterprise platforms.
Building more in-house
A critique of Shopify is often also one of its strengths: there’s an app for everything. I’ve found it interesting how Shopify continues to extend its out-of-the-box feature set so that merchants are less reliant on third party tools.
Managed Markets, previously known as Markets Pro, previously known as Global-E. Gone are the days of needing an expensive and conversion-killing ‘checkout hijack’ to sell globally without your own infrastructure. Shopify takes care of all of that now. (If you’re a US merchant.)
Shopify Search & Discovery saw multiple updates including filtering by product image and AI driven sorting.
To achieve the functionality offered by the Combined Listings App used to be a chunky piece of work that required developer intervention. Now, you can get it on the app store for free.
Checkout Blocks were acquired by Shopify after just a year. Once a paid-for app, it’s now available free and supports epic checkout customisations.
By rebuilding their analytics tooling from the ground up and including features that analyse onsite and offsite performance, Shopify lessens the reliance on multiple tracking tools.
Localisation & Centralisation
Further obstacles are to be removed for merchants who previously had no choice but to manage multiple storefronts:
If you’re a Plus customer, you can sign up to link a different bank account to each of your business entities from within the same store.
Expanding into a new region within an existing market is now much faster.
You can localise your cookie banners in 32 languages
Country specific quirks for Brazil, Switzerland and others are catered for.
B2B
Shopify was never considered the right choice for B2B. Until now. This is a corner of the market where historically they’ve lost business to competitors and specialist platforms. For that reason, it’s no wonder this Editions contains a whole section dedicated to wholesale.
The dedicated and aesthetically pleasing Trade theme is now available everywhere, for free.
Selling wholesale on Shopify once amounted to being able to create draft orders. now set Trade pricing per country with Shopify Markets and even charge deposits.
Headless B2B storefronts are now supported.
Shopify is doubling down on Shopify Collective, releasing a load of new features to make it easier for merchants to use.
Japan
Since the pandemic, e-commerce has boomed in Japan; subscriptions and shopping on mobile have increased in popularity and the Japanese government has encouraged digital transformation through a number of different initiatives and policies.
Brands that were providing a sub-par experience to their Japanese customers can now benefit from using a theme optimised for Japanese language.
Japanese shoppers can now use popular local payment methods
Japanese merchant can now pay for their Shopify plan in Yen
All this focus on one country suggests Shopify is honing in on Japan as a growth area for themselves and for merchants.
Omnichannel
Shopify was once an e-commerce platform first, everything else second. The POS solution that got fourteen dedicated updates in Editions this year is rumoured to have originated from software built for a Shopify hackathon. But now, Shopify has released a spate of updates purely focused on other sales channels:
Shop Minis received updates that allow merchants to enhance their in-app experience and improve conversion through pre-built apps or an SDK
Through Marketplace Connect partnerships with Target and Amazon, Shopify is leaning into supporting sales via other channels
Back-office functionality like Ship To & From Retail stores will make things easier for businesses that have a large physical presence
Ai
Shopify is using AI in all the right ways, given where LLMs are at the moment. Gradually introducing it to automate tasks for business users via Sidekick and Shopify Magic means whatever models are powering the solution are going to learn a lot about the merchants using it, and they’ll learn it fast. Because an algorithm is only as intelligent as the data you’ve fed it, this is a sensible strategy to underpromise and overdeliver.
Elsewhere, encouraging merchants to use the Standard Product Taxonomy is a really smart way to ensure different merchants are using the same recognisable data attributes. The more adoption, the more effective their Search & Discovery tool becomes.
Final thoughts
My take? Unified Commerce is a worthy goal that only a behemoth like Shopify could take on. Who else could attempt to cater to every type of merchant - from the side hustlers drop-shipping other brands' products with Shopify Collective, to the multi billion dollar global enterprise on Plus.
When it comes to the future of e-commerce, this announcement suggests Shopify isn’t just backing a horse, it’s backing all the horses. Where do I place my bet?
Playlist
Of course this week’s playlist is dedicated to Glasto…
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