Shopify launched their Winter Editions ‘25 on December 10th 2024. Marketed as ‘The Boring Edition’ this release focuses on reliability and stability of the platform, with a key focus on important platform optimisations, performance improvements and feature integration. With over 150+ updates, here are our team’s most anticipated features from this release:
StudioForty9 Account Managers are excited for:
- Semantic Search: The new introduction of semantic search is an exciting move towards smarter shopping. By using AI to understand search intent instead of just keywords, Shopify is moving towards creating a more intuitive experience for users. This makes it easier for shoppers to find exactly what they’re looking for.
- Configure Combined Listings for Search: This new feature simplifies search results and groups together different versions of the same product, so you don’t have to scroll through numerous duplicates. This is going to make searching for products online much faster and more efficient as there is nothing worse than shopping online and searching for a brand only for the initial results to show you 10 variants of the same product.
- Metaobjects: Shopify’s update to metaobjects makes it simple for merchants to add custom content eg. look books or size guides without needing to know a bunch of complicated code, as was previously the case. This will make it a lot simpler to add rich, personalised content that will improve the shopping experience and UX. It will also make it easier for merchants to keep their branding consistent and give users the info they need.
StudioForty9 Marketing Team are excited for:
- Enhanced Analytic Tools: As a performance marketing department, the more data the better, as it will help us refine our strategies and make better decisions for our campaigns.
- Shopify Segments: Help to improve Google Ad Targeting.
- Shopify Email: For our clients using this feature, we look forward to using the enhanced features for creating and managing email marketing campaigns directly within Shopify.
StudioForty9 Project Managers are excited for:
- Checkout Blocks: With no coding required, this allows more flexibility to make changes easier/quicker.
- Staff Access by Role: This will be useful for store admins as it will make accessing certain areas and managing permissions more straightforward.
- Customer Accounts Extensibility: Until now, this was quite limited but with more flexibility, it will make it simpler to customise new customer accounts.
StudioForty9 Business Analysis Team are excited for:
- Metaobjects Everywhere: Easier to access metaobjects which will allow clients to dynamically show information related to certain products like brand details.
- Customer Accounts Menu Links: The ability to tailor the customer accounts header menu by adding or removing pages, directing customers exactly where they need to go.
- Split Shipping: Split shipments can be offered, this may be of use to stores offering both click & collect and home delivery.
StudioForty9 Developers are excited for:
- Theme Blocks: This is quite exciting from a frontend developer perspective. Previously, blocks had to be defined per section and re-defined in each section that you wished to use them in, leading to code duplication and feature asynchrony. Now blocks can be defined at a theme level instead and re-used across sections.
- Customise Line Items Appearance: While it's still somewhat limited in what we can style, being able to style more aspects of the checkout is always a good thing. We look forward to putting this to good use and hope for more similar checkout styling improvements to come in 2025.
- Functions logs in the CLI: It doesn't get a lot more exciting than a spot of debugging. You can now replay remote checkout function logs locally. This will be an essential tool in debugging certain tricky checkout features.
- Session Recordings with Pixels: Speaking of debugging, this addition to pixel features should re-enable recording of issues that customers face, and aid with debugging those one-in-a-million edge cases that pop up every so often.
- Ship to Store: This update will make for better handling of pickup in-store scenarios.
- Functions and Checkout Extensions Work with Draft Orders: This allows us, as developers, to apply consistent logic across the standard and draft checkout.
StudioForty9 Sales Team are excited for:
As the sales team, it’s always important to look at the new updates for retailers that may be considering Shopify POS:
- Bundles Work with POS: Shopify Bundles app now integrates with Shopify POS, enabling you to sell bundled products in-store which will help retailers to increase sales and expand product offerings.
- Retail Customer Segments: You can now create highly targeted marketing campaigns by using location-based filters to reach customers in your local area, making it easier to deliver relevant messages to a specific audience.
- Customer Metafields on POS: Customisable data fields allow retailers to capture and display crucial customer information, such as sizing preferences, birthdays, loyalty tier status, and shopping habits, which can help them to create a more personalised shopping experience for their customers.
- A More Customer-Focused POS: Retail customers will enjoy a more user-friendly POS experience, featuring product thumbnails, larger buttons, and the flexibility to choose from multiple receipt types.
Want to find out more about this latest update, you can visit the Winter Editions ‘25 page here.
