As a Shopify store owner, how do you spend your time? Fixated on perfecting customer experience? Scheming for global expansion? Making plans for growing profitability?
Unite 2019 – Shopify’s annual development conference – announced several new tools and products that will take your focus off the tech and put it back where it belongs. Global domination? Or maybe just streamlining your shipping and discount options.
Check out these three new features and see how they’ll benefit your online shop.
1. Customize Your Shipping Settings with Shipping Profiles
What You Need to Know
It’s well known in the eCommerce world that customer satisfaction depends most on what happens at and after checkout. Customers have high expectations for streamlined checkout and timely delivery. To stay competitive with the rapid-fire shipping speeds of big-box companies, Shopify has rolled out Shipping Profiles.
How Does It Work?
Shipping profiles allow you to use per-product shipping. Meaning you can charge more accurate rates through product based shipping setup. You can also charge different amounts based on where you’re shipping products. Finally, Shipping Profiles make it possible to combine products that should share shipping rates. Then you create shipping zones and a specific rate for each location that fulfills those shipments.
What Are The Benefits
- Boost Sales, Maximise Profits
Utilizing tiered shipping rates lets you offer valued customers a discount when shipping extra products. Free shipping promotions are a great way to attract more buyers. Shipping isn’t a one-size-fits-all business strategy. You can set per-product shipping rates appropriate for your business’s shipping requirements. Each product can be fixed cost regardless of weight and dimensions.
- No More Money Lost on Shipping
Shipping profiles make it possible to create specific shipping rules based on item details like shipping origin, size, and weight. Customers will appreciate more accurate shipping rates, and your profit margins won’t take a beating. Profiles mean you ship precisely where you want and only for the rates you set.
2. Sell your products in multiple currencies
What You Need to Know
The 2018 Unite conference produced Shopify’s first multilingual beta, which expanded Shopify to French, German, Japanese, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. Since then,100,000 merchants have opted to manage their business in their preferred language. 2019s conference saw an addition of 11 languages. Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Malay, Hindi, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Thai.
With international selling becoming more commonplace, Shopify didn’t stop at making it easier for merchants to sell in their native language. They’re now investing in allowing customers to buy with their local currency. Shopify Payments will now offer selling in multiple currencies.
How Does It Work?
Shopify Payments lets you accept multiple currencies if you sell in multiple currencies. Using a currency selector added to your current theme, customers can select their preferred currency to make payments or receive refunds. Giving customers automatic conversions opens your shop up to a much broader customer base. Honestly, going global isn’t the challenge it used to be!
Shopify’s automatic conversions are based on current foreign-exchange rates and rounding rules. That means displayed prices will soon be available in AUD, CAD, EUR, HKD, NZD, GBP, JPY, and SGD. And that’s just a start! Soon, your customers worldwide can pay their preferred way. The conversion fee for every transaction is included, so your customers know exactly what they’ll pay.
Additionally, your customer’s currency of choice doesn’t have to match the currency of your bank account. Shopify handles all the conversions for you.
Who should use it?
This exciting new feature is a good option for you if you find your business in one of the following:
- Your Shopify store gets a lot of international traffic, and you want to boost your conversions with those international customers.
- You’re interested in offering regional stores. For example, Australia and New Zealand are geographically close, sharing similar seasons and holidays. If you’d like to provide products to customers in both locations, you can utilize Shopify Payments to accept both currencies in one store.
What Are The Benefits
- Improve Customer Service, Reward Customer Loyalty
When your store accepts multiple currencies, your customers avoid currency conversion fee charges against their credit cards. Nothing drives foreign customers away faster than seeing those conversion charges on their statements. Some customers may request a refund. Knowing they can shop with you without being penalized will improve customer satisfaction and increase repeat business.
- Consistent Price Displays
With Shopify Payment, all costs are transparent and upfront. Customers can shop in their usual currency, so they aren’t surprised by price changes at checkout. If you’re looking to expand your business internationally, fostering trust is critical. Multi-currency automatically rounds numbers as your customers are accustomed to seeing. So, for example, 19.76 Euros becomes 20.00 Euros.
- No More Cart Abandonment, Reduced Refunds, Ditch the Chargebacks
Merchants should see a marked reduction in shopping cart abandonment, refund requests, and chargeback rates. This is because customers will see your products listed in real-time foreign exchange rates. This straightforward approach to pricing and secure access payments makes customers more likely to make purchases. Because you’re being upfront, you won’t see as many dissatisfied refund requests.
3. New Discount Types to Boost Your Average Order Value
What You Need to Know
Speaking of cart abandonment, would you like to reduce checkout difficulties during your promotions and discounts?
With Shopify, it’s now possible to create discounts that apply automatically to your customers’ carts. No discount code required! We all know that discounts are a powerful marketing tactic, but sometimes the frustration of finding and entering correct codes can lose your conversions. Shopify’s new discount types allow you to create automatic buy-one-get-ones and percentage or fixed amount discounts. They’re the ideal way to streamline your checkout process!
How Does It Work?
Just in time for BFCM, you can now set up discounts that apply to orders over a specific amount. Want to offer free gifts for purchases over $150, or a 50% discount on scarves for people who buy over $100 of cardigans? With Shopify’s new Buy X Get Y discount codes and automatic discounts, now you can!
First of all, there’s a process for the correct application of automatic discounts. Let your customers know they’ll need to add all their eligible products to their cart before moving to checkout. That includes qualifying purchases as well as the items they want to get as their reward for the promotion.
As an example, they’ll need their $100 worth of cardigans in their cart to qualify AND the scarves they’d like 50% off.
Additionally, customers can only use one active auto discount at a time. Because they’re automatic, those discounts take precedence over discount codes. Also, customers cannot apply multiple discounts to one order. So no using the 25% off cardigan code in addition to their “Buy $100 get 50%” automatic code.
What Are The Benefits?
- Boost Conversions and Increase Promotion Flexibility
If you’re seeing a lot of cart abandonment and remarketing isn’t resolving the issue, adjusting your discount types might be the answer. Clearly stating your discount policies and utilizing auto-discounts make it easier for customers to take advantage of your offers. With this new tool, customizing discounts is a breeze. Just add a minimum purchase amount or quantity of products. Then, set the conditions to apply to the discount to a particular collection or product. This is a no-hassle, win-win arrangement.
- Create A Personalized Shopping Experience and Increase Cart Size
Testing promotions and new products just got a lot easier. With automatic discounts, you can create a more personalized shopping experience for your customers. You can sell one or more items at full price, and offer incentives like reduced prices on other, select items.
- Improve Inventory Turnover and Make Room for New Stock
Most shop owners know that BOGO promotions are a great way to move unwanted inventory faster. Instead of selling one discounted item, you can attach two more and clear three times the space with one transaction. You can use this feature to encourage customers to try new items by pairing them with products you know they already use. Just discount the new one and mark it as a special feature!
Other Features You Can Expect
New Shopify Plus:
- It provides eCommerce automation to better facilitate growth. All your Shopify Flow workflows are in one place, so you can save time by creating automatic tasks for each of your stores at once. You have complete control, including access to specific stores, channels, and apps.
- Takes some of the work out of your hands by giving each of your employees their own accounts. Now your staff has all the tools they need to be more productive.
- It gives you scalability insights to expand your business. Combine the functionality of global view analytics, stores and workflows with new currency features to expand globally.
- Qualifying Shopify merchants can sign up for the beta experience now.
Shopify Fulfillment Network:
- Gives you access to a comprehensive network fulfillment centers so you can keep up with the big boys of eCommerce. Ship faster by utilizing smart inventory-allocation technology. Shopify predicts the best places to store and ship your products with unique machine learning. That way, your items get to your customers without the wait
- Shopify supports a comprehensive fulfillment network, including custom packaging, branding, exchanges, and returns. By negotiating lower rates with a special matrix of logistics providers and warehouses, Shopify can pass on savings to you.
- Currently available in the United States, the entire fulfillment network is managed by Shopify, so you know you’re getting quality service. No business is too small. Shopify Fulfillment Network can facilitate merchants whether they’re shipping 10,000 orders per day or 10.
Make the Most of These New Features by Partnering with A Pro
Even an hour spent frustrated with the tech side of your store is a waste. When it comes to small business, time is money. No one understands that better than us! At Shop Style Design, we have the tech-savvy and the manpower to help you make the most of Shopify’s new tools. Unite 2019 gave users some exciting opportunities. When you need to take the stress out of maximizing your business, contact the experts at Shop Style Design.
