Shopify Winter '25 - Every Game-Changing Update

Hey 👋

Shopify’s Winter ‘25 just released — and it’s loaded with updates to help you with your business as always.

But their edition is “Boring” as they officially named it, and also pretty hard to read 😬 

We’ve made it easy to consume, so you can start using these new features faster & crush it this holiday 💪

Let’s get into it 🔥

1. Top Updates 💫 

In case you just want to see the hottest additions, here they are:

1️⃣ Draft Orders — they now work with functions, bundles, and checkout extensions

2️⃣ Shopify POS — now works with bundles, retail customer segments, and customer metafields

3️⃣ Shopify Search & Discovery — with combined listings and category metafields

4️⃣ Loading Speeds — improved across the board up to 59% faster on checkouts and a noticeable speed boost to the admin

5️⃣ New Features — Sidekick AI, markets, new analytics & customer account extensions are being rolled out

Now, let’s see what these updates actually mean for your business 💹 

While they call this edition “Boring”, it’s a actually comparable to their last Summer ‘24 Editions, which we also covered in-depth 👀 

2. A VIP Treatment for B2B 📞 

If you sell wholesale, you’ll be pretty happy with these quality of life changes:

1️⃣ Password-Free & Branded Logins — offer B2B customers an easy login with branded sign-in pages

2️⃣ Price Locking & Bundles — have better control over draft orders & lock prices till the order is complete

3️⃣ Self-Serve Return API — build return apps & flows for customers

4️⃣ B2B-Only Reports — exclude DTC & focus only on wholesale customers

Shopify made it way easier to run a B2B business for both us the merchants & our customers 😁 

Stay tuned for more exciting updates from Ecommerce & Unicorns! Subscribe now:

3. POS Upgrades & Order Management 📦️ 

Running a brick-and-mortar? You’ll be happy with these improvements:

1️⃣ Product Bundles — sell bundles directly in-store with Shopify POS

2️⃣ Offline Payments — process card payments even if WiFi sucks

3️⃣ Metafield In-Store — capture more customer data during IRL transactions

4️⃣ Split-Screen Search — check search results and the cart side by side, looks pretty neat:

As for order management, you don’t have to do as much manual work anymore & it’s easier to manage behind-the-scenes:

1️⃣ Fulfillment Logic — order routing and fulfillment settings prevent overselling across subscriptions, draft invoices, and imported orders

2️⃣ Draft Orders — custom pricing and extensions supported

3️⃣ Centralized Finances — manage taxes, expenses and bills in Managed Markets

So many much needed features, and a few we didn’t even know we needed so bad 😭

4. Faster Checkouts + Search & Discovery ⚡️ 

Shopify optimized their entire checkout process & made it easier to retain customers during it. The checkout now:

1️⃣ Loads 59% faster for buttons like Shop Pay & Paypal, with Carts loading 50% faster as well

2️⃣ Integrates AI Chat Apps to upsell, provide support & convert customers right at checkout (Plus only for now)

3️⃣ Checkout Blocks on more pages, letting you say your thanks or show order status (no Plus required), here’s what that looks like:

Shopify’s Search game also got an upgrade:

1️⃣ Parent/Child Listings being unified for easier navigation

2️⃣ Metafield Categories making it easy to show only the relevant filters on your storefront

3️⃣ Natural Language Search lets shoppers from around the globe search in their preferred tongue

P.S. — Check out our November eCom Recap in case you missed it, we covered everything from Trudeau “banning” TikTok to Amazon killing Walmart & Target 👀

5. Shopify Email & PPC Glow-Up ✨ 

Marketing just got a whole lot smarter — Shopify rolled out updates to make email campaigns easier to set up & analyze.

For email, here’s what’s new:

1️⃣ Custom UTM — track campaigns with clean URLS

2️⃣ ROI Metrics — spend & returns now show up in the marketing dashboard

3️⃣ Product-Based Campaigns — send email campaigns right from your product details pages (no extra clicks)

4️⃣ Winback Campaigns — target & convert lapsed customers with Shop Campaigns (Canada & US only as of now)

5️⃣ Marketing Automation w/ Segments — trigger automations when customers join or leave a segment with Shopify Flow

Also, just look at the official Shopify Editions ‘25 “time machine” page:

They took us back to the 90’s and made everything hard to read for no reason 😂

As for PPC, things also got a lot easier:

1️⃣ Shop Campaigns Available to all Shopify Plans in US & Canada

2️⃣ Google Shopping Ads now expands in 1 click from Ads in Shop Channel

3️⃣ Segments in Google Ads lets you run campaigns on Google Ads using your existing Shopify segments

6. Even More Marketing Updates 🔥 

Aside from the email & ads side, Shopify also added plenty of QOL features, like:

1️⃣ Higher Converting Sign-in with Shop boosting it by 16%

2️⃣ Exclude More Customers from Ads using Shopify Audiences with the new Existing Customers Plus audience (Plus-only)

3️⃣ Branded Login Pages for all customers, including typography, signature, colors, even at checkout

4️⃣ Customer Accounts Menu Links lets you customize the accounts header menu by adding or removing pages

5️⃣ Metafield Controls for Forms allows you to select which fields in Shopify Forms map to customer metafields, and it looks like this:

Customization’s never going to be a problem now 😉 

7. Collections, Bundles & Sidekick AI 🛍️ 

AOV has never been this easy to boost:

1️⃣ Smarter Bundles App — with better layouts & performance data

2️⃣ Smart Collections — auto-group products by color & material

3️⃣ Reporting for Bundles — get insights on just how well your bundles perform

And now for the spooky part, Sidekick AI is finally here in English to merchants around the world:

Sidekick is pretty much a very powerful commerce assistant that’ll make it easier to start, run and grow your business (powered by Shopify Magic).

It’s trained on your product & brand data to generate valuable and relevant support for a range of tasks, like filling in fields or forms in any page of the admin, segment customers, create or edit products — the whole package.

To start using it, you must meet these requirements:

1️⃣ Access Shopify Admin on a desktop PC

2️⃣ Your account must be set to English

3️⃣ Your store must have access to the new Shopify Analytics, but you aren't required to have opted-in.

Then, log in to your Shopify Admin and click on the Sidekick icon to start chatting!

And that’s that! We covered the main bits of Shopify Editions ‘25 — honestly, it wasn’t as “boring” as they officially claimed it to be, don’t you think? 🤔

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Daniil from ECORN