The much-awaited Shopify Editions Summer 2023 is out with more than 100 product updates. The report aims to reimagine e-commerce with Shopify’s support for a better future. While artificial intelligence (AI) ruled the Summer ’23 Edition, other major highlights included a business credit card without additional fees, new tools for sales and curation, a unified marketplace and impressive checkout optimizations.
Based in Canada, Shopify thinks of boosting entrepreneurship worldwide. What it calls tools can be called magic by some of its merchants. The Summer ’23 Edition, one of Shopify’s twice-annual reports on product updates and innovations, explains such tools of magic. These tools are stronger than ever, thanks to the evolving AI technology.
“We’re unveiling more than 100 updates across Shopify that allow our merchants to be more productive, creative, and powerful than ever before—ushering in a new era of commerce full of brand new possibilities,” Shopify said in a blog posted on news.shopify.com.
Magic Combined With AI
AI is the talk of the globe and for entrepreneurs, it is literally creating magic. Its impact is evident all around us, changing the shopping experience and business operations enormously. Shopify sees tremendous potential in AI and expects massive upsides to the technology.
“I can’t actually think of any corner of the internet that will benefit more from AI than the pursuit of people building and growing their own businesses,” Tobi Lütke, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Shopify, said in a statement.
“I’ve been part of the technology industry since the mid-nineties. I have never seen anything like AI. This will be an unbelievable boon to entrepreneurship,” Lütke added.
Sidekick
Announcing the biggest product based on AI, Shopify reiterated its foundational belief: “Entrepreneurs are heroes. And every hero needs a sidekick”. On July 12, Lutke announced that Shopify plans to launch Sidekick, an AI assistant for merchants.
Briefly described in the Shopify Editions Summer 2023, Sidekick is a commerce assistant powered by AI. Merchants can gain enormous knowledge and get answers to all of their business questions using the superpowers of Sidekick.
Sidekick comes with various capabilities like offering detailed suggestions on common and complex business queries. Some of its most useful features include storefront design, developer documentation, and analyzing economic trends.
This AI tool by Shopify is the latest addition to the company’s bet on the future of e-commerce supported by AI.
In February, the e-commerce company launched an artificially intelligent tool called Shopify Magic. It helps merchants to write product descriptions on their Shopify store. Designed for commerce, Shopify Magic is a suite of software tools that write attractive and high-quality product descriptions on their own.
A part of Shopify Magic, Sidekick is yet to be released for merchants. However, the announcement ensures that all its AI-enabled features are perfectly designed for commerce on Shopify. Shopify Magic uses the data stored on the Canadian e-commerce platform to produce faster, smarter and more creative work for businesses.
“I use it to write product descriptions by inputting desirable keywords for SEO. It gives me the ability to work more efficiently and save costs…it’s a game changer. We have used the feature a few times for our product descriptions and I was surprised how well it works. It has exceeded my expectations. Having had some time to explore and experiment with them, Shopify Magic and the product description generator have left me thoroughly impressed,” Kwame Chambers, the co-founder Of Glitch Anomaly, said in praise of Shopify Magic.
Nine New Features of Shopify Magic
Shopify also announced nine new features of Shopify Magic in a statement: “FAQ and response recommendations personalized for a merchant’s store. Shopify Magic drafts custom replies for a business’s most common customer questions, and a merchant can review, edit, and publish those answers via Shopify Inbox. Those answers are then automatically shared with customers who ask questions, instead of the merchant needing to respond in real-time.”
“Instantly generated blog posts for any holiday, business milestone, or campaign idea, with the ability to customize the tone of voice and quickly translate content into different languages. Instantly generated emails built for commerce with compelling subject lines, engaging content, and recommended send time for optimal performance,” the statement reads further.
While it creates a threat to manual workers, AI completes tasks efficiently and mostly flawlessly. Shopify aims to integrate AI with its backend services to help merchants succeed in a highly competitive business environment.
Shopify Credit
The second biggest highlight of the Summer ’23 Edition is Shopify Credit, which aims to boost the business credit card segment. “For years, we’ve seen first-hand how complicated business credit cards can be: confusing benefits, hidden fees, and credit checks that can negatively impact credit scores. But these cards are essential for business owners, so they still use them—on average, 53% of non-payroll spend occurs on a credit or debit card,” states Shopify.
The data quoted by Shopify comes from research commissioned by Visa Inc. after careful examination of 2,800 small businesses based in the United States. With $50K-$25M revenue, these businesses employ not more than 100 employees. The research was conducted from June 6th-17th with the help of Ipsos.
Shopify Credit is a business credit card, which offers a pay-in-full option. Issued by Celtic Bank, this card is built by Shopify in partnership with Stripe. It is accepted everywhere much like Visa. The biggest benefit of Shopify Credit is rewards up to three percent cashback on eligible purchases.
“Our card comes with a hassle-free application process, and zero fees. That means no monthly or annual fees, no setup or late fees, no fees at all—period. The card scales alongside a merchant’s business, with credit limits based on their sales (and not their credit history),” Shopify explains.
Shopify Credit, which is currently available to some U.S.-based merchants, is part of Shopify’s latest offerings on financial solutions for merchants. These tools not only help them save time and money but also grow their businesses. Some of the latest financial offerings by Shopify include Shopify Capital, Shopify Balance and Shopify Bill Pay.
Shopify Capital
Launched in 2016 in the US and later expanded to Canada and the UK in 2020 and 2021 respectively, Shopify Capital recently entered the Australia e-commerce market. Shopify Capital has lent more than $3.8 billion USD in its first three markets since its launch, the company stated on its official website. It claims that merchants who received funds through Shopify Capital witnessed 36 percent higher sales in the next six months compared to others.
Shopify has collaborated with Westpac, which will offer money-movement services by linking Shopify to the Australian payments system. Shopify has also partnered with Stripe, another global fintech company that has expanded its services from payment processing to offering loans and deposits. Shopify aims at expanding financial services in Australia, said Tui.
Shopify Capital eases the process for merchants by removing the complexities involved in traditional finance. With no lengthy application process and no personal credit checks, it allows small business owners to apply for and pay back through the existing Shopify platform they use to run their online store. Once approved by experts, funds get deposited within two business days. There are no hidden fees and uncertainty of compounding interest rates. Merchants repay based on a mutually agreed fixed percentage of daily sales. Most importantly, there is no time limitation involved for the repayment — merchants can repay based on their sales, hence payments flex with the business.
Shopify Balance
In November 2022, B2B e-commerce payment experience company Balance announced its Shopify integration. By using Balance, Shopify merchants can now streamline and fully automate the B2B payment procedure for their e-buyers.
As soon as merchants connect Balance to their Shopify store, new customers instantly qualify in-cart whereas returning customers get access to rolling net terms. Merchants do not have to wait for days or weeks to get their payment. They get the full amount of the invoice upfront.
Shopify Balance offers a payment experience made especially for B2B, giving the same convenience as B2C. The Balance app allows e-commerce merchants to give their customers an option to defer payment by up to 2 months. Customers will also be able to pay via multiple payment options like ACH, credit card or cheque.
Shopify Bill Pay
In April, the e-commerce giant launched Shopify Bill Pay, a tool for managing vendors’ bills and paying them directly without leaving the dashboard. Developed by American fintech company Melio, Shopify Bill Pay streamlines the process of expense management without any additional subscription fees. It promises to help Shopify merchants save 16 hours of paying business bills on a monthly average. Shopify Bill Pay is twice the faster as other B2B solutions available to manage expenses.
Shopify Bill Pay not only reduces the time that you spend on administrative processes but also builds a long-term expense management flow to make operations easier. Melio, Shopify’s partner developer for this project, has tried to reduce friction for merchants and allowed them to track expenses. The tool is easy to use and requires no knowledge of coding. You can manage vendors from within the Shopify admin dashboard.
The tool can also be integrated with Shopify Balance. It doesn’t ask for subscription fees or sign-up charges from merchants. The bills can be paid for free using Shopify Balance accounts or ACH bank transfers. Once integrated with Shopify Balance, Shopify Bill Pay also shares insights on the financial health of an online store. It helps you create physical and virtual business spending cards. For scheduling payments, Shopify Bill Pay allows you to pay four days earlier than a bank transfer.
Shopify Collective
The company also rolled out Shopify Collective, a tool that boosts B2B sales at a low cost and lowers the risks involved. It allows cross-selling, which means that merchants can ship products from other brands directly to their customers. Reducing the role of suppliers, the tool helps Shopify merchants to can sell products without buying inventory. They can keep a margin on the source price to gain easy profits.
Shopify Collective is only available to US merchants at this stage.
“This is just one of the powerful offerings in our suite of B2B tools on Shopify. We also offer B2B on Shopify, our premiere solution for selling wholesale, which is a huge growth opportunity: the global wholesale market is estimated to be worth $7.9 trillion,” Shopify explains.
“Because of the massive potential in this space, we continue to double down on our investment in B2B. Since launching in June 2022, we’ve released more than 45 customizable wholesale features, and onboarded well-known global brands including Kraft Heinz Company and Supergoop!”.
Shopify Marketplace Connect
Shopify doesn’t want its merchant partners to miss out on any opportunity and thus, it is helping them sell to multiple marketplaces using just the admin dashboard. The number of marketplaces used by merchants grows in proportion to the growth of businesses. According to Shopify, 42 percent of merchants use more than four marketplaces to sell their products.
Different marketplaces pose different challenges and force merchants to use separate apps, processes or strategies to handle operations like orders, fulfillment, inventory and product listings.
“That’s why we’re launching Shopify Marketplace Connect: a single app for merchants to sell on all the biggest marketplaces—like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay—while connecting, managing, and fulfilling every order directly from within Shopify,” the company states.
Shopify Marketplace Connect not only streamlines business operations but also helps merchants to reach new customers online. The app is now available to all merchants based on Shopify.
Shopify Checkout
Shopify has also improved its checkout offering, citing data from a Big 3 global consulting firm that claims “Shopify Checkout has a 15 percent higher conversion rate on average compared to other leading e-commerce platforms”.
“Our Checkout has processed over half a trillion dollars of sales, and supported 561 million online shoppers in 2022 alone. With this unmatched volume of data, we gain powerful insights that we use to improve our checkout at an amazing pace—and we’re giving Checkout a lot of love this Edition,” the e-commerce company added.
Shopify is planning to improve checkout extensibility further with 17 new APIs. The updates are designed with the intent to create unique checkout experiences using Shopify apps.
