Welcome to the October edition of What’s New at Shopify. It’s been a busy month with all of our new feature releases. From marketing campaigns to app updates to inventory management, we’ve got you covered with everything you need to help your clients streamline their businesses and successfully prepare for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
Let’s get started, shall we?
1. Shopping on Instagram Stories
In October 2017, we launched the Instagram sales channel, where approved shops can tag products in their posts, linking users to purchase and checkout from your online store without ever leaving the Instagram app. Shopping stickers allow you to make your clients’ Instagram Stories shoppable. When you add a shopping sticker to a product within a Story, users can simply tap to learn more about the product tagged, and then tap again to make a purchase.
In addition, Instagram will be rolling out a new ‘Shopping’ category on Instagram Explore. The Explore tab will enable shoppable content to be surfaced algorithmically based on a user's likes. This is a huge opportunity to get your client’s brand and products in front of new customers who might not have found them otherwise. Whether you’re sharing a professional product shot or amplifying photos from your users, product tags and stickers can increase discovery on a global scale.
Since our first launch, we’ve seen over 29 thousand stores actively selling through Instagram, and predict an even greater engagement through Shopping content on Instagram Stories. Merchants want to grow their business with shoppers on mobile, and Shopping on Instagram presents an immersive new way for them to do just that.
You might also like: What’s New at Shopify: Sep 7, 2018.
2. Marketing in Shopify
Paid ads are a great way for your clients to get their products in front of the right people—but running them is getting more complex every day. That’s why we’ve launched Marketing in Shopify: a new place for merchants to plan, launch, and track their marketing campaigns. We’ve streamlined the process to make running a successful ad campaign easier than ever, so merchants can get up and running with Google Smart Shopping campaigns and Facebook ads today.
Your clients will be able to set up campaigns in minutes and track the results directly from their Shopify Admin, saving them even more time. They will also get insights-driven marketing recommendations to guide them based on their unique store and products. Additionally, Shopify app developers will begin to be able to integrate into the marketing section later this year.
Help your clients get set up with Google Shopping and Facebook Ads in Shopify, so they can get their products in front of buyers on the platforms they already know and love. Find more information on marketing in Shopify.
3. Improved methods to transfer development stores to merchants
Once you are done building a development store for the merchant, you can now transfer store ownership to the merchant either directly from your partner dashboard or from the merchant’s store admin.
Both methods will ensure that the store is correctly paused, credit card information is removed, and a collaborator account is set up. The transfer steps and effects are also now clearly communicated throughout the process, through UI copy, banners, and emails, making the handoff process easier for both partners and merchants.
Removal of collaborator accounts
In order to help you clean up your dashboard, you can now remove collaborator accounts that you are no longer working on. This new feature also helps you maintain security for the merchants you’ve worked with.
To remove a collaborator account, visit the Managed stores page in your Partner Dashboard, click on the store in question, and click Remove managed store.
4. Accelerated checkout with Shopify Pay
Shopify Pay is an accelerated checkout option exclusive to Shopify. Clients eligible for Shopify Payments can take advantage of Shopify Pay’s one-step checkout functionality, allowing their customers to save their shipping and payment information across all stores with Shopify Pay activated.
For your clients with repeat customers, Shopify Pay now allows their customers to checkout without SMS verification on the same device—which means fewer abandoned checkouts and more sales.
Set up your clients with Shopify Pay, so they can reap the benefits of a smoother, faster checkout experience.
For more information on getting the most out of Shopify Pay visit the Shopify Help Centre.
5. Updates to Buy Button![]()
We've simplified the steps to creating a checkout link from the Buy Button channel just in time for BFCM. Merchants can now select any product, and simply copy the link into an email campaign, social media post, or text message to send customers directly to checkout—it’s a fast way to promote any product, anywhere.
In addition, if you’re creating an embedded collection for your client, you can now set images to a fixed size to create a uniform look for each product. We’ve also made it easier for you to get started with the Buy Button channel, by including more educational content and clear next steps. Access all these new resources in the Shopify Help Center, and get your clients ready for BFCM.
You might also like: 12 Essential Tips to Get Your Site and App Ready for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
6. Inventory management with Locations
Locations is a new feature that gives Shopify merchants visibility and control over how inventory moves between different locations. With the rollout of Locations comes a new section in the Shopify Admin that allows merchants to view all locations they source and sell from, in one single place. Merchants will be able to track their inventory and manage orders across all their locations with simple and intuitive interfaces.
Shopify App Developers can also start to create location-aware functionality for merchants, so whether you currently have an app that could use Locations (make sure you’ve migrated to the new APIs!), or are an agency looking to help onboard clients with multiple locations, this new feature opens up a whole new world of possibilities for Shopify Partners.
You might also like: Shopify Locations: What This Update Means for App Developers.
7. Transporter app
Transporter is Shopify Plus’s own data migration toolset. It allows merchants to upload large, complex files to import products, customers, orders, and metafields. Transporter is the fastest way to load data into Shopify—making re-platforming easier.
We’ve now fully released our command line tool with the latest Transporter update, which allows you to extract and transform data from other ecommerce platforms. This allows partners to simply and powerfully migrate potential or existing clients who are not yet on the Shopify platform.
Key new features include:
- Complete, end-to-end extraction and transformation support for product, order, and customer data from Magento 1.x in the Transporter CLI
- Transporter app supports CSVs of up to 250MB, processing them 10x faster than the API
- Error handling has been improved to expose useful, actionable messages to users
- Updated documentation for the Transporter CLI as well as Transporter app
Transporter’s command line tool is open sourced and we encourage our Partners to contribute back to it to help us add new platforms, features, and object support.
8. Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments
Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments is now available in the U.S. for select merchants—saving clients product, time, and money against fraudulent orders. For a small fee on each protected order, it allows clients to fulfill orders with confidence, knowing that payment is guaranteed.
When Fraud Protect is activated, online orders processed through Shopify Payments are analyzed by Shopify’s machine learning algorithms and classified as either ‘protected’ or ‘not protected’. Protected orders can be shipped immediately with confidence, and clients can still review unprotected orders to decide if they would like to fulfill them.
If your client receives a fraudulent chargeback on a protected order, they will immediately be reimbursed without having to do anything.
To learn more about protecting orders through Fraud Protect visit the Shopify Help Centre.
Empowering clients with the right tools
Whether it be fraud protection or marketing campaigns, Black Friday/Cyber Monday can be a stressful time for merchants. Staying up to date empowers you to make better decisions to grow your business, service your clients, and help them transition smoothly through busier times in the season.
Stay tuned for next month’s edition of What’s New and learn all about the latest updates on the Shopify platform.
What update are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments below!
