Shopify RE-Unite 2020 Announcements - Best news in these worrying times

Since it began in 2016, Shopify Unite has been an opportunity for partners from across the global Shopify ecosystem to gather under one roof, explore the future of commerce, and share plans on how we can build that future together.

But Owing to the COVID situation this year the coming together of all merchants and partners got cancelled.But the entrepreneurial journey never ends and to help all keep up with the spirit of business Shopify Team ran Re Unite 2020 ,as a first evert online broadcast eventfor all Shopify business owners sharing some major announcements and disclosing features coming soon for making the life of the merchants easy!

Here is a summary of all the biggest announcements you might love to hear!

1.Money

Shopify has announced Shopify Balance :

Shopify Balance will give merchants access to critical financial products to start, run, and grow their businesses. Shopify Balance will include:

• Shopify Balance account. A one-stop-shop within the Shopify Admin where merchants can get a clear view of their cash flow, pay bills, track expenses, and make decisions about the future of their business, with no monthly fees or minimum balance.

• Shopify Card. Physical and virtual cards that merchants can use to access their money faster, when spending in-store, through mobile, or online.

• Rewards. We’re working with our partners to offer cashback and discounts, designed for everyday business spending.

Shopify Balance is another piece of the entrepreneurial puzzle, and will make running a business simple and accessible to as many people as possible. It launches in early access later this year to merchants in the U.S. first, and will expand to other countries in the near future.

Next related to money is the use of Captial Shopify has announced its own Shopify Capital:

Shopify Capital is a program that helps small businesses easily access financing. Merchants in eligible countries can apply for funding within their Shopify account and, when approved, will see funds in their bank account within a few days.

Shopify issues financing amounts that range from $200 to $1,000,000, and doesn’t focus on personal credit history. We also don’t own a percentage of the merchant’s business.

The best announcement in this section is Shop Pay in these times when the merchants as well as buyers are struggling with Finances.Shop Pay Installments allow buyers to pay for purchases in four equal payments over time, with no interest or fees. Merchants will receive the full purchase amount upfront, and Shopify will collect the remaining installment payments, meaning there’s no risk to merchants. This flexible payment option will allow buyers to stretch out their payments, making purchases more convenient. This, in turn, will help merchants increase cart sizes and overall sales.

Installments will be fully integrated into the Shop Pay accelerated checkout, meaning merchants can continue to offer buyers a seamless checkout experience.

2. Online store

The heart of your ecommerce business is your online store and this REunite has given new wings to the it.Here are they:

All new free theme focussed on Grocery /Resturant industry : Express theme

Express is designed for a one-page shopping experience, and optimized for mobile. It can be used to get stores online quickly, and supports small to medium catalogs of products. We built it thinking specifically of businesses like restaurants and cafes, who want to keep their online experience simple, but any business that needs to get online quickly can benefit from Express.

Gift cards

To help support more merchants,gift cards is now free for all Shopify plans. Enabling gift cards is a good way to help merchants who may not be able to sell all their products right now. With gift cards, buyers can still support their favorite businesses.

Tipping

Some of the businesses pivoting to ecommerce rely on another form of revenue: tipping. As more of these businesses move online, we decided to build tipping into the online checkout flow to allow buyers to continue showing their support.

Selling internationally

We’re also launching additional features to the online store that benefit international merchants and their buyers. These include two new features.

Local domains

The local domains feature uses HTML hreflang tags to help Google direct customers to the right country and language version of the store, which can positively contribute to the store’s SEO ranking.

Custom FX

Custom FX pricing with rules-based padding will make it easier for merchants to target buyers in local currencies. Marketing initiatives will be easier to plan, as merchants can advertise effectively without worrying about changing product prices. With better price transparency, merchants will be able to build further trust with international customers.

3. Omnichannel and marketing

As the face of commerce changes, the importance of omnichannel solutions has grown. An omnichannel approach to commerce helps make merchants resilient, and better able to handle today’s unique challenges. We’re releasing a number of features to help merchants prepare for the omnichannel present and future.

The all-new Shopify POS

As the all-new POS evolves, we will be adding new features to help merchants truly build resiliency for their businesses, now and in the long run. These include:

• Contactless checkout

• See what’s in-store

The all-new Shopify POS has launched globally.

Shopify Email

Email is a powerful marketing tool for businesses, and it’s important that merchants have a channel to easily communicate with their buyers. Shopify Email has been launchein April 2020 for this reason.

Free listings on Google Shopping

To help merchants widen the audience that sees their products, Google to allow merchants to list their products for free on Google Shopping, through Shopify’s Google Shopping app.

Facebook Shops

The Facebook Shops feature is rolling out to all merchants over the coming months.

Shopify Ping

Shopify Ping is a free messaging app that lets merchants talk to customers and answer their questions, giving buyers better confidence in their purchasing decisions. It integrates with popular messaging platforms, such as Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, and Shopify Chat, allowing buyers to use their preferred method of chatting with merchants. Ping is currently available on iOS and iPad, but we’ll be rolling out an Android version this summer, and a web version this fall.

Shop and Shop Channel

The Shop app showing delivery tracking, product recommendations, and purchasing with Shop Pay.

From discovery to delivery, Shop is an app that helps merchants improve the online shopping experience for their customers. With the shop local feature, Shop lets buyers find nearby merchants, enabling them to support local businesses.

4. Back office

If the online store is the face of a merchant’s business, then the admin is its brain: it’s where merchants organize, fulfill, and manage all the moving parts of their business. To help keep those businesses running smoothly, here are the updates for the Back office

Faster product creation

Now more than ever, merchants need to be able to quickly get their products online to keep their businesses afloat. Soon, merchants will have the ability to set up products directly from a phone. Capturing product photos, adding the required details like title, price, and variants, and scanning the barcode can all be done from a phone’s camera, including photos for each variant. When the merchant is ready, products can be reviewed and published directly from the phone.

Purchase Orders

Keeping track of inventory across its lifecycle takes time for merchants. They need to ensure they have an accurate count of what inventory they have and where, to know when it’s the right time to reorder.

Shopify Purchase Orders lets merchants order, track, and receive inventory from their suppliers. Coming soon, inventory can be received using the scanning feature on Shopify’s mobile app, which makes updating inventory counts easier and more accurate.

5. Shipping

With businesses continuing to move online, a robust shipping strategy is paramount to a merchant’s success. Here’s how we’re continuing to build our shipping and fulfillment features.

Delivery and pickup methods

Here are the 2 updates in the pickup methods:

Local and curbside pickup

Merchants now have the option to allow customers to pick up orders in-store, curbside, or from any location they choose. Merchants will soon be able to fulfill orders directly from the Shopify POS, their admin, or the Shopify mobile app, and have customers come to their location for pickup.

Local delivery

Merchants in all countries will soon be able to offer an improved and simplified local delivery experience. Merchants will be able to define a local delivery area using zip and postal codes, or by radius. They can also set local delivery fees and minimum order prices. Eligible buyers will see the local delivery option in their checkout, and can provide specific delivery instructions if necessary.

6. Performance

While new updates and features are always exciting, there’s an underlying quality necessary for all successful stores: speed.

Storefront renderer

The new renderer will account for a 40 to 200 percent improvement in load times on live stores, helping merchants get better conversion rates globally.

Online store performance dashboard

All new store performance dashboard will be out this summer to track you metrics

Here are the 6 points which were announced and this now can help any merchant to bring their brick and mortar business online quickly ! With these new announcements Shopify has made it clear that for Shopify merchants are the KING!