The Ask Phill guide to Shopify Editions Winter '23

Shopify Editions launched in the summer of ‘22 as a biannual update on all Shopify products released in the previous six months. Here we are six months later and right on cue Shopify announce Shopify Editions Winter ‘23. Dropping last week, with over 100 fresh Shopify updates, the capsule is here to help businesses and developers build for the long term.

It’s quite remarkable that the platform can deliver such a comprehensive set of improvements and modifications in so short a space of time. Shopify are clearly committed to delivering the best e-commerce platform to their customers, and devote the majority of their energy to pushing their technology forwards.

The Winter ‘23 Editions is a comprehensive upgrade across the entire Shopify platform. From conversion boosts to fulfilment modifications, the platform has dropped another huge list of features and upgrades that, to be honest, could easily be very overwhelming.

Simply working through the list and getting your head round each individual update will take you a while, and that’s even before you start to work out how each update might be relevant to your business and your Shopify site. 

That’s why we’ve put together a list of the most important Shopify Editions updates that you need to know about right now. To make things even clearer, we’ve separated all our top picks into two categories: most important updates for Shopify merchants and the most important updates for Shopify developers.

So whether you’re building a store or running a business, there’s something new for you. Let’s get started!

The drop is split into nine different categories: Boost conversion, Sell across channels, Go global, Expand with B2B, Find & engage customers, Fulfil & deliver, Run your business, Build with us and Choose your components.

We won’t cover all of them here, so if there’s a category heading that you think sounds like it’ll specifically help your business and we haven’t touched on it, we’d recommend heading to the Shopify Editions page for the full rundown.

Boost conversion

If you know anything about Ask Phill, you’ll know we’re all about conversion. So when we saw a whole section of Shopify Editions Winter ‘23 dedicated to boosting conversion, naturally we got pretty excited. 

We have quite a few updates within this category, and you should take them all on board if you want to grow your business throughout the rest of this year.

One Page Checkout [Merchant update]

• Why are we excited?
• How will it boost conversion?
• What do you need to do?

Extend Your Checkout [Developer Update]

• Why are we excited?

Drag & drop editor [Merchant update]

• Why are we excited?
• How will it boost conversion?
• What do you need to do?

AI Generated storefront [Merchant update]

• Why are we excited?
• How will it boost conversion?
• What do you need to do?

Product bundles [Developer update]

• Why are we excited?
• How will it boost conversion?
• What do you need to do?

Go global

The borderless nature of e-commerce makes it the perfect space for fostering international ideas. Almost every D2C e-commerce brand aspires to scale from their own market into neighbouring countries (and even further afield).

At Ask Phill we pride ourselves on helping brands achieve their international ambitions, and Shopify’s recent updates are making our job even easier.

Translate & Adapt app [Merchant update]

• Why are we excited?
• How will it help global scaling?
• What do you need to do?

Build with us

We’ve been winning awards for our Shopify development since way back when. We love pushing the platform beyond its limits and discovering new methods and techniques for building the best possible e-commerce experiences with the platform.

With Winter Editions ‘23 Shopify have dropped a whole host of new development updates. Here are some of the best, according to our Tech team.

Hydrogen 2: built on Remix [Developer update]

• Why are we excited?
• With Shopify Hydrogen, the platform is bringing headless capabilities right into the heart of the platform. We’ve been pushing headless Shopify stores for many years now, and it’s great to see the technology become a central pillar of the Shopify platform.
• How will it improve development?
• What do you need to do? 

Create custom data models with Metaobjects [Developer update]

• Why are we excited?
• Now Shopify offers centralised objects that you can load at different locations. For example, you can create an object with information about a designer - this could be an image with a title and description. You can then link this to a metafield on any product page, making it easier to distribute content around your website.

Choose your components

The final section we want to highlight is built around Shopify’s biggest new feature. The Shopify platform is an intersecting collection of underlying components that power millions of businesses around the world. 

For the first time, the platform has made the individual components available to the world’s largest retailers.

Introducing Commerce Components [Merchants update]

• Why are we excited?
• With Commerce Components, Shopify is clearly targeting enterprise-level businesses. In a bid to attract the biggest businesses in the world to the Shopify platform, they’re making it as easy as possible to update and maintain enterprise-size websites. It shows a clear ambition and drive from Shopify to cement its position as the biggest e-commerce platform worldwide.
• How does it work?

The full documentation is yet to be released but from what we already know, Commerce Components is a new spin on the Hydrogen framework. Offering Shopify’s world-renowned reliability and backend stability, with the flexibility of a component-structured architecture, Commerce Components is the update that enterprise businesses were waiting for. We believe it’s now only a matter of time before the biggest companies worldwide make their migration to Shopify.