Our hot take on Shopify’s Summer '24 release

Summer is (kinda?) here. And if you’re as nerdy as us, then you’ll have been eagerly awaiting the latest seasonal feature drop from our friends at Shopify.

For the Summer '24 release, it’s been all about "Unification"—new features, functionality and upgrades that are designed to streamline, simplify and level up your e-commerce capabilities across the entire platform.

So with that in mind, here’s our pick of the top upgrades to drop this July.

Having a thriving business usually means you’ll have to consider different contexts and address each of them with the right tools.

The mighty Shopify admin already offers a separate section for handling your offerings in international markets if you are selling across borders. Plus, you can also easily manage your wholesale business if you are also selling to other companies, along with managing aspects of your retail business if you have a physical store.

But now, Shopify has a new section that will unify all these different contexts into a single command centre. This new section will be called "Markets" and it allows you to have a bird's-eye view of all your different markets and manage them from a single, centralised location.

Your new mission control centre doesn’t begin and end with “Markets”. The team at Shopify has also worked on consolidating existing functionalities in the "Analytics" section.

The existing “Analytics” section has had a makeover and now offers a unified view of all your data, with the ability to dive deep into the details and gain all the insights you need to make better business decisions in an instant.

The new and improved “Analytics” section is set to be the ultimate powerhouse. Why? It has an integrated editor to query your data, which will be streamed in real time for the first time.

But we’re also seeing more unification across the Shopify platform. This time, in terms of AI-powered features and functionality.

The AI capabilities that Shopify revealed in recent releases are now being integrated into new areas, empowering merchants on all fronts. For example, the image generation tool will now be available in all media editors across the platform. Plus, you’ll even find it on the Shopify app, allowing you to edit images on the go.

We all know how replying to customer enquiries is crucial but time-consuming. That's why a new AI-powered tool is in the works to suggest draft replies to customer queries, allowing you to respond quickly and get back to business.

Shopify updates might seem to roll round pretty quickly—but in reality, a tonne of work goes into integrating new features and updating the functionality across the platform.

The Summer '24 release contains more than 150 new features and improvements, so there’s lots more to explore as part of the latest upgrade. Shout out to Spotify for making the platform more polished than ever—and giving us (and merchants) plenty more to play with until the next feature drop.

Go check out the full run-down of Shopify Editions Summer 2024 here.