Over the past year, Shopify has significantly ramped up its updates. Introducing quarterly editions and maintaining a regularly updated changelog, the ecommerce provider has been rapidly rolling out updates to merchants. With this rapid pace, it can sometimes be challenging to stay ahead of the changes. Is this new update accessible to the public? Will this feature benefit my business? Meta what? To simplify matters, we've delved into Shopify Editions Winter '24 and highlighted what we believe are the key features.
Theme Blocks
When Shopify introduced 2.0 in 2021, it completely transformed how Shopify themes were constructed. With the adoption of sitewide sections , we gained access to reusable components applicable across all pages of our site. In Winter '24, Shopify unveiled the introduction of theme blocks, creating an even deeper advancement of customisation within sections. While specific blocks were previously limited to only one layer within sections, theme blocks now offer a depth of up to 8 layers. This means multiple layout options for a single design. There's also the introduction of global blocks, which can be implemented site-wide. For example, if you have payment icons in the footer, you can create a block that can be placed under the add-to-cart buttons or within a payment policy page. Currently, these features are only accessible to developers, but will be rolled out across all merchants throughout 2024.
Product Attributes and Category Metafields
In 2024, customers have more avenues for shopping beyond just your website. With platforms like Google Shopping, Meta, and Shopify's own Shop gaining traction, making sure your products are easily discoverable is crucial. Shopify has recently introduced product attributes and category metafields to enhance this accessibility. When creating a product, simply assigning a category grants access to fields such as colour, size, and material. These attributes are AI-driven, dynamically adapting based on your product category. For instance, if you designate your product as "Electronics," relevant fields and attributes are automatically generated. These additions not only streamline the search process on external shopping platforms but also empower Shopify to implement advanced filtering within collection pages. Particularly beneficial when dealing with a large inventory, customers can now effortlessly locate specific items like "grey cotton trousers" amidst hundreds of options, elevating their shopping experience.
Variant Limit Increased
This has been a pain point for a long time for Shopify merchants. Previously, you could only have 100 possible variants. Many of you would’ve had to install apps like ‘Infinite Options’ or have to find tricky workarounds. Well, good news! Shopify is increasing this from 100 to 2000. This will come as music to your ears if you are working with custom products, or stock multiple variants of one product. All your colours and sizes on one product! This is currently available for developers and then will be rolled out to stores in 2024. If you are needing this, let us know and we can request for early access.
Core Web Vitals
Understanding SEO and page speed can be a murky territory for many business owners. However, Shopify has taken strides to demystify this aspect by introducing their new web vitals dashboard, which offers three key parameters for measurement:
Customer Privacy Settings
Within your store settings, a brand-new, shiny "Customer Privacy" dialog awaits. Particularly for merchants catering to regions mandating cookie consent, this setting now offers a straightforward setup for banners. Among its features, this update includes:
If there are any other things you want to explore with Winter ‘24 Edition you can visit Shopify’s site here. As always, we are always here to help.