Shopify releases first ‘edition’: A slate of product announcements centered around ‘C2C’ concept

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

After teasing something new with a mysterious tweet, Shopify has announced what it’s calling “Editions” — a twice-yearly showcase of features and offerings.

Announced June 22, 2022, the first Shopify Edition features a wide slate of new offerings and updates as well as highlighting existing ones.

Shopify Editions appears to be a way to roll together new features and improvements from the preceding months into a single, cohesive message. In a way, it’s similar to the presentations tech companies such as Apple are known for — just without a parade of staffers talking through the updates.

By design, the first Shopify Edition mixes both truly new feature announcements with ones that have been announced in the past few months, often framing them in new ways to showcase how they can work with other parts of the ecosystem or preview new features or enhancements.

The Summer 2022 Edition also introduces what Shopify calls “C2C,” or “Connect to Consumer,” a play on the existing “B2B” (business to business), “B2C” (business to consumer) and “D2C” (direct to consumer) terms.

“Today, we’re paving endless pathways for merchants to build their businesses. With 100+ product updates, our Summer ‘22 Edition signals the speed of innovation, as well as the breadth and depth of what we’ve developed across online storefronts, offline experiences, Web3, social commerce, checkout, and much, much more,” the announcement reads.

The first round in the edition is categorized as “Find Customers” and spotlights:

• Shopify Audiences: “Shopify Audiences is a new app from Shopify that helps you find your next best customer. Shopify’s unique view on purchase intent and our merchant network helps identify buyers who are looking for your products. Create and export high-interest audiences to ad platforms like Facebook.” This tool is only available to Shopify Plus customers.
• Shop Cash: “Shopify’s most popular checkout is getting even better. Shopify will give buyers millions of dollars in Shop Cash rewards for their Shop Pay purchases.” The feature is free to use; merchants only pay for “boosted” sales.
• Twitter Shopping: “Sell your products directly on your Twitter profile and tap into an audience of hundreds of millions of users who use Twitter every day.”
• Linkpop, a previously announced link tree solution; Twitter Shopping: “Sell your products directly on your Twitter profile and tap into an audience of hundreds of millions of users who use Twitter every day.”
• Dovetale: “Shopify’s all-in-one creator management tool that helps you find new creators, build authentic communities, better manage relationships, and track affiliate sales.”
• Marketplace Kit: “Connect your platform to millions of merchants and brands with shopping experiences built with Shopify’s Marketplace Kit.”

“Convert Shoppers” showcases:

• B2B on Shopify: “The most essential and powerful wholesale features are now built right in the Shopify admin.” This is only available on Shopify Plus.
• Discount Combinations: A new offering that lets more than one discount be used per order, expected to roll out to all customers in the coming weeks.
• Shopify Point of Sale: The company’s existing POS offering with enhancements.
• Shopify Markets: The umbrella name for international selling tools.
• Shopify Checkout: Spotlighting the existing one-click checkout, Shop Pay.
• Checkout Extensibility: Existing functionality for Shopify Plus customers to customize checkout pages without extensive coding.
• Shop Pay Enhancements: Highlighting the existing Shop Pay Installments and more recently unveiled fraud prevention tool Protect.
• Pre-Orders: Spotlighting the exiting pre-order functionality available via third-party apps.

“Create Your Story” features:

• Hydrogen+Oxygen: “Build fast, headless storefronts with a React-based framework built by Shopify, for Shopify. From pre-built components and starter templates, to hooks and utilities that map directly to Shopify’s APIs, Hydrogen gives you the tooling you need to accelerate development. Then deploy with one click on Oxygen, our globally distributed hosting solution.”
• Tokengated Commerce: “With Tokengated Commerce, your fans can connect their crypto wallets to your store and unlock personalized benefits with their NFTs—like exclusive merchandise, early access to drops, cool collabs with other brands, or even IRL experiences.”
• Online Store Editor and Theme Updates: Includes new free and premium themes from Shopify, plus preview inspector, a theme update tool, Online Store Editor for Shopify Mobile and no code 3D viewer configuration.
• Metafields: Enhancements to the existing metafields feature.
• Search and Discovery App: “Increase conversions with customizable search, filtering, and product recommendations, so your customers can find products they love at the moment they’re most likely to buy them.” Currently available via invitation-only early access.

“Build Relationships” focuses on:

• ShopifyQL Notebooks: “You now have access to a query language that’s built for commerce. This allows you to write your own data story and build your own path to uncovering insights and business opportunities.” Available only on Shopify Plus.
• Customer Engagement Tools: Includes email automations, customer segmentation, Shopify Inbox and Shopify Email.
• Re-engage Customers: New features including post-purchase offers, Shop Favorites and search via the Shop app.
• Shopping made better on Shop: “Create stronger customer relationships with the app built for shopping,” which includes Shop Stores and a collections feature.

“Run Your Business” offers:

• Admin Enhancements: Bulk editor tool, New App navigation, new staff and partner permissions
• Shopify Fulfillment Network: A previously announced fulfillment offering.
• Shop Promise: “Grow your sales and get discovered by billions of buyers across platforms by showing your commitment to fast, reliable 2-day deliveries and hassle-free returns with the Shop Promise badge for your store.”
• Order and Inventory Management: New shipping automation, presets, bulk printing, fulfill-by-date and inventory management features and enhancements.
• Shopify Shipping Goes Global: Now available in U.K. and France
• Supplier to Buyer Logistics: Part of the acquisition of Deliverr, “faster delivery, smarter inventory, and pre-fulfillment logistics support with Flexport. We’re making managing your supply chain easy, while giving you new growth channels and tools used by the largest brands.”
• Shopify Flow: Now available to users on the Shopify plan or above.

Finally, “Scale and Build” showcases:

• Built for Shopify: “A new program that provides the tooling, functionality, and documentation to build an app that looks and performs like it’s part of Shopify. With our new app design guidelines and incentives, it’s never been easier or more rewarding to build a high-quality Shopify app.”
• Shopify Functions: “Shopify Functions lets developers build apps that customize discounts, shipping and payment settings and then configure them in the Shopify admin.”
• Data Protection: “Take control over which apps access customers’ personal data. Shopify is enhancing controls to support your path towards compliance with privacy and data protection rules by adding new data minimization, transparency and security requirements for apps.”
• Shopify Balance: “A free money management account for your business, so you can skip the bank and manage your money in your store’s admin.”
• Shopify Capital: Increased funding options for first-time borrowers.
• Planet App: “Make all your deliveries carbon neutral, support cutting-edge carbon removal projects, and tell your customers all about it with storefront icons.”