Shopify Editions, Apple Vision Pro & Custom GPTs for eCom

Hey 👋
Hope you are having a great weekend. In this February edition, we have a lot of news and interesting things to cover:

• Shopify Winter Editions 2024

• Custom GPTs for eCommerce & Shopify

• Apple Vision Pro entering the eCommerce space

• Shopify Plus Plan Updates

• And some other news

Keep your coffee/tea prepared, and let's dive in ☕️

1 🎉 Update Release: Shopify Editions Winter 2024

Shopify Editions Winter 2024 introduces a multitude of innovations and updates aimed at enhancing the user experience on the Shopify platform for both store owners and developers.

Here are some key new features 👇

1️⃣ Increased Product Variant Limit Support for up to 2000 variants per product is now available thanks to the new GraphQL Product API, significantly expanding the possibilities for creating more complex product catalogs.

❗️ The number of product options remains unchanged. You can still only have 3 product options, such as size, color, and style.

2️⃣ Extended Checkout Flexibility (Checkout Extensibility) Shopify Plus now offers even more ways to customize the checkout process, including extensions to the "Thank You" and "Order Status" pages. This allows merchants and developers to customize the look and functionality of these pages.

3️⃣ Shopify Magic / AI Introduction of Shopify Magic, AI-based tools including image editing capabilities and automatic content creation to improve product descriptions and speed up page creation.

❗️ However, Shopify Magic has not appeared in either my test stores or client stores. I think they still have a very limited number of users.

4️⃣ Shopify Subscriptions App A free app for managing subscriptions directly from the Shopify admin, allowing users to modify or skip subscription orders, improving customer interaction and increasing their lifecycle.

5️⃣ Enhanced B2B Features New features to improve interaction with business clients in Shopify Plus, including support for sales representatives and the ability to create unique discounts exclusively for B2B orders.

6️⃣ New Site Performance Dashboard A new web performance dashboard for tracking and optimizing storefront performance based on key web acceleration metrics. Shopify's infrastructure has improved by 35%, and the number of global access points has expanded.

7️⃣ Improved Payment Options Including the ability for customers to save payment methods for faster future purchases and automatic updating of outdated card details, contributing to successful transactions.

What do you think about the new features?

Learn more about Shopify Editions 2024

2 Custom GPTs for eCommerce & Shopify 🤖

Open AI released a custom GPT Store in January, and now everyone can create their own Custom GPT.

Our team decided to try it out, and we created our own Custom GPT - “Shopify Developer Copilot,” which allows you to consult with a ChatGPT version that knows Shopify documentation and understands how to redesign templates, use APIs, and even build Shopify Apps!

P.S. You will need a ChatGPT Plus subscription to try it out

But that’s not all. We collected a list of Custom GPTs worth trying for your eCommerce:
Our Selection of GPTs for eCommerce

‍‍1. Shopping Scout
It’s an expert in finding Amazon products. For any product request, it provides several links and summarized descriptions to make discerning shopping a breeze!

2. Ads Expert 2024
Expert in digital advertising, offering compliant strategies for Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok, Etsy, and Pinterest.

3. Email Marketing Copywriter
Write powerful copy for ecommerce email campaigns.

4.SEO Assist
Optimize Your Website for Search Engines. Website Analysis. Keyword Analysis. Competitor Analysis. Content Optimization, On-Page Optimizations. Check Rankings/Top Sites. Competitive Strategy. Site Comparisons. Keyword Density. Site Speed. Site Authority. Live Web Access to data. (CORE AI+Google QEG)

‍5. Affiliate Program Finder
Find affiliate programs for any item and start earning. Provides the affiliate link to the program, commissions, ease of access, and description.

3 Apple Vision Pro is a new device for eCom

Following the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro headset, a handful of popular brands have announced the release of dedicated apps to offer immersive experiences for users, with shopping being the clear end goal.

A great example is Alo Yoga launching a dedicated shopping experience app for Vision Pro.

Should we start worrying about Apple Vision Pro? I guess it’s not going to be massively used in 2-3 years but preparing your experience for this device unlocks 🔓 access to amazing innovators’ audience

Don’t miss Ecommerce & Unicorns editions! Subscribe now:

4 Shopify Plus Plan Update

Shopify Plus pricing just increased by 25% 😳

1. Plus plan increases from $2k to $2.5k per month & Variable Platform Fees from 0.25% to 0.4%.
BUT - if you’re an existing merchant and commit to a 3yr contract by April 24, you lock in your current pricing. NOTHING increases.

2. On March 13, merchant processing fees are:
- Increasing 0.1% for non-AMEX and international transactions
- Decreasing 0.2% for AMEX transactions

To sum up:
- the 3yr commitment is a no-brainer, so your rates remain flat
- merchant processing fee net increase is essentially a rounding error

5 Other news:

• Amazon launched a brand new AI shopping assistant named Rufus

• Tiktok's new feature makes all posts shoppable. TechCrunch

• Amazon isn't buying iRobot after all. iRobot shares are down significantly.

• NRF (National Retail Forum) happened on January 14-16 in NYC. Read our review

• TikTok completed its deal to take control of Tokopedia, Indonesia's biggest e-commerce platform, for $840M, giving it 75.01% of the GoTo-owned company

🎧 ECORN Radio this week:

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Need help with your eCommerce Project? Wanna learn more about Shopify in our weekly blog? Just hanging around?

Thanks for reading and supporting E&U (Ecommerce & Unicorns)

Daniil from ECORN