(originally posted on 5/8/18 in Slack)

SHOPIFY NEWS

Wow.
I just watched the Keynote speakers at the Shopify Unite Partners Conference. So many cool changes coming to Shopify!

These changes will be announced by Shopify over the coming months this Summer, but I wanted to give you a heads-up, first glimpse!

There were MANY announcements today, here are some of the key take-aways that will affect your business:

Marketing Campaigns

• Shopify will be introducing a Marketing menu within your Shopify Dashboard. This tool will allow you to create marketing campaigns directly in Shopify!!!
• You will soon be able to create marketing campaigns such as email newsletters and more
• The marketing tool will also give you recommendations based on information within your store - for example, which products are best sellers, which products to promote, etc. It will also give you digital marketing advice, along with detailed marketing reports for your campaigns so you can see what's working and what's not
• As part of this tool, free abandoned email marketing is now available to all Shopify merchants (this has already rolled out)

Complex Discounts

• More advanced discount types are coming this week to your store, things like Buy-One, Get-One Free and advanced quantity discounts (different discounts depending on the quantity a customer purchases from you), and more.

Streamlined Checkout

• Shopify is improving the checkout process to make it even more streamlined and quicker for your customers
• The new Dynamic Buy buttons are part of this effort, allowing a customer to click Buy Now and purchase with just two clicks/taps. The buyer will only see the payment method they are most likely to use to pay, which streamlines the purchase even more.

Smart Currency

• Coming this Fall, all stores using Shopify Payments will automatically have a currency converter for their stores. This is a smart converter, showing customers the currency based on their location!
• This converter uses the most up-to-the-minute exchange rate, making it easier for international customers to see prices in their local currency
• This feature starts with 9 major currencies, and more will be added over the year

Local Payment Methods

• To encourage more international buyers, at checkout, buyers will see payment types that are most common in their location - not just the standard Visa, Mastercard and Amex. So buyers in Germany will see the most popular payment method in Germany, etc.
• This new feature rolls out this Fall
• Merchants will be able to select these additional payment types within Shopify Payments. There is no need to set up accounts with all the various payment providers, it will all pass through Shopify seamlessly.
• This feature encourages more global purchases

Inventory Management

• For merchants who have inventory across multiple locations, a new Inventory Management tools is coming.
• This inventory management tool will show up on the product listing page, beneath where we currently enter inventory. You'll now be able to specify WHERE the inventory is coming from. This will mostly be helpful for merchants who store inventory in multiple warehouses in multiple service centers.
• More work is still being done on this feature, and it will roll out soon.

Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments

• For merchants using Shopify Payments, there will be a new automatic fraud protection tool that reviews each order for fraud.
• This tool will be available this Summer

Kit

• Kit is currently used as a virtual marketing assistant. It can help you with Facebook and Instagram ads and placing pixels, email marketing campaigns, updating your Facebook page, and thanking customers who made a recent purchase. But coming soon, Kit will ALSO be a virtual employee
• You will soon be able to ask kit skills beyond marketing - such as changing your featured items in your store, giving you better reports on last month's best selling product, telling you when inventory is running low, total profits for inventory, etc. It will have a LOT more skills that will help you streamline your workflow.

Ping

• Ping is the new messaging service that Shopify will use.
• Ping is how you will communicate with Kit. It is much more VISUAL than the way you currently communicate with Kit. You'll be able to see previews of email newsletters, ads, and more, directly within Ping.
• Ping is also how you will communicate with customers that send you Facebook Messages, text messages, iMessage, etc. - all of those messages will roll into Ping, making it ONE place you can go to get all your messages
• Ping has a variety of keyboard extensions you can use to make communicating with Kit and your customers even easier - products, discounts, and more will be available through these extensions
• Ping launches this summer and is free for all merchants

Shopify Languages

• The Shopify selling platform is now available in more languages for more merchants to use - French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Italian for now - more languages coming. This will allow merchants to work on their stores in their own native languages.

New App Store

• The new, smarter app store launches this Summer.
• The app store will make it easier for merchants to find the apps they need, allowing merchants to browse by category, price, and more.
• The app store is a smart store, which will be able to recommend apps to merchants based on their store and their perceived needs.

Shopify Services Marketplace

• A new Shopify Services Marketplace launches this Summer.
• It will be a place merchants can go to hire Shopify Partners and Experts to help them with their stores. It will be well organized and easy to find the kinds of help you are looking for. You'll also be able to order services directly through the marketplace and communicate with developers right there.

Shopify POS

• Improvements are being made to Shopify Point of Sale for brick and mortar shops who also sell online
• Better integration with multi-channel customers, inventory and more
• Coming this Summer

Tap and Swipe Reader

• A new Tap and Swipe reader is coming this Fall for $49 for POS merchants.
• There will no longer be the $49 Retail fee for merchants using the Retail POS package

Virtual Reality

• Shopify is working on virtual reality programs and features for stores
• There are apps in the app store right now that can do this - let customers create a flat lay of products from your store along with things they own to see how they look together.
• More VR tools coming soon

Augmented Reality

• Shopify is also working on augmented reality for merchants, a tool that will allow customers to see your products in their own settings
• 3D products is also a feature they are working on

Shopify Space

• Shopify is building a physical place where merchants can go to get one on one help from gurus, attend daily workshops and events, access all Shopify tools, and more. This space is meant to help merchants grow their business.
• This space opens this Fall (location to be announced later).