Shopify, as one of the leading eCommerce platforms, offers businesses an easy and intuitive way to showcase their products/services to customers worldwide. From AR/VR, voice search, and social commerce to headless commerce, metafields, and PWAs, Shopify’s attempt to help store owners deliver seamless shopping experiences to customers knows no bounds. By integrating immersive functionalities and features, online businesses can enhance both the selling and buying experiences while staying competitive and profitable. In addition, eSellers can offer tailored experiences to their customers, thereby increasing brand trust and value.
Read on to learn more about the latest developments in this area.
Shopify has gained ample recognition as a leading platform for eStore development, thanks to its robust functionalities, intuitive interface, versatile modules, and seamless integrations. It has become a preferred choice for a vast number of online stores, from individual businesses to major players in the industry. In fact, it has grown to become the world’s third-largest retailer, after Amazon and eBay, processing a remarkable $79.5 billion in order value.
Considering its potential for growth and ability to enhance customers’ shopping experiences, Shopify aims to pave the way for the availability of incredible opportunities to store owners for them to succeed in the eCommerce marketplace. As a business owner seeking growth opportunities, a competitive edge, better reach, customer base expansion, and long-term success, staying updated with the latest trends and developments is quintessential.
So, without further ado, let us delve into this feature-rich platform and see what it has in store for 2023.
Shopify by Numbers
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Shopify Development Trends to Follow in 2023
Additional Trends
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Shopify Development Trends to Follow in 2023
The rest of the year will witness several significant trends that will shape the eCommerce businesses, especially stores built on Shopify. Here’s a sneak peek.
Voice Search Will Remain Prevalent
Customers prefer a store that makes shopping completely hassle-free (and click-free). Voice search offers customers an incredible opportunity to navigate through the store and complete transactions using natural language commands. This facilitates a more intuitive and convenient shopping experience, especially for mobile users.
For businesses, voice search can bring in additional revenue-generating opportunities by allowing them to gather valuable customer data, such as preferences and purchasing patterns. By leveraging this data, businesses can offer targeted suggestions and promotions, enhancing the overall customer experience and increasing conversions.
However, to embrace voice search, it’s vital to consider Shopify-specific apps & modules and integrate them seamlessly. Since this requires expertise, you can hire Shopify developers with extensive experience and skills for optimal results.
3D Product Visualization Is the Key to Luring Buyers
When it comes to online buying, providing high-quality product images and videos is essential (to compensate for the lack of physical touch) and enables customers to make informed purchasing decisions.
3D product visualization aims to enhance customer experience by allowing sellers to integrate photorealistic visuals, 3D animation, and 360-degree models of their products. This lets customers view their desired products from different angles, explore their features, and better understand their appearance and functionality.
This also minimizes returns, since approximately 22% of buyers feel that they would no longer wish to retain products that don’t match the provided image. Also, as the demand for interactive shopping experiences grows, incorporating 3D visualization can differentiate your business, attract more customers, and ultimately increase conversions and sales.
AR and VR Are the New Normal
Believe it or not, customers are ready to pay more for a product that offers them an AR experience. The reason: AR instills a greater sense of trust and confidence in customers (just like how IKEA does, wherein it allows buyers to visualize how their desired furniture items will look in their designated space/area or the real-world environment). Similarly, depending on the product type, merchants can integrate virtual try-on into their stores and allow customers to try their desired products in real time.
According to Shopify, when a fashion brand integrated AI, it witnessed whopping results.
- 44% of shoppers were more likely to add an item to their cart.
- 27% of customers were more likely to place an order after interacting with a product in 3D.
- 65% of visitors were more likely to place an order after interacting with a product in AR.
AR and VR allow shoppers to change products’ colors, styles, or features in a virtual environment, thus offering them an in-store experience. This, in turn, enables them to personalize products according to their preferences and make informed buying decisions.
Indulge in Headless Commerce
Yet another growing trend in Shopify development, headless commerce, breaks free the barriers of traditional architecture where the front-end and back-end are tightly coupled. Instead, it separates the two, allowing merchants to deliver consistent shopping experiences across diverse channels, such as websites, apps, smart devices, or in-store kiosks. This flexibility facilitates seamless customer interactions and a cohesive brand experience across touchpoints.
In addition to this, merchants can leverage headless architecture in a number of ways, including
- Optimize the front end for speed, resulting in faster page load times and, ultimately, better user experience.
- Seamlessly integrate third-party services, tools, and APIs for payments, analytics, marketing automation, or inventory management.
- Experiment with new front-end technologies or quickly iterate on their user interfaces without affecting the core functionality. This enables them to adapt to changing market demands and stay ahead of the competition.
However, to fully leverage this trend, it is crucial to seek expert assistance or hire skilled Shopify developers who can effectively handle and manage data, create customized front-end experiences, integrate necessary tools, and deliver innovative shopping experiences.
Leverage Metafields to Your Advantage
Meant to help merchants store and display additional information related to their products, variants, collections, customers, orders, and more, metafields are a powerful tool to extend store capability and deliver unique storefronts that meet specific requirements.
As Shopify puts it,
“Metafields have benefits for customers, developers, and store owners alike; they improve everyone’s experience of the Shopify ecosystem.”
Here’s an insight into how metafields can benefit store owners:
- Customized product information: Store owners can add custom fields to products, such as dimensions, materials, or washing care instructions, which can enhance the overall shopping experience for customers.
- Better SEO and discoverability: By adding meta tags, high search volume keywords, and other SEO–related information, businesses can achieve better rankings and visibility in search engine results, thereby leading to increased organic traffic.
- Flexible pricing and inventory management: Metafields can be used to store custom pricing or inventory-related information. This allows store owners to implement complex pricing strategies directly within Shopify, such as tiered pricing or special discounts. Besides, custom inventory fields can help manage unique inventory attributes, such as expiration dates or batch numbers, providing more control over inventory.
- Enhanced product display and merchandising: Store owners can create visually appealing product displays by adding custom images, videos, and interactive elements. This can engage buyers and persuade them to buy without any doubt.
- Multilingual and localization support: Since metafields support translations and localized content, businesses can cater to customers in different regions and languages.
Wait, there’s more to it!
Shopify development trends encompass more than just a few key areas. Here are additional trends that merchants should consider adopting for growth.
Mobile Commerce Optimization: Optimize the mobile commerce experience with responsive design and mobile-friendly interfaces to ensure a smooth shopping experience across smartphones.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): Combining the best features of websites and mobile apps, PWAs can help you deliver fast, engaging, and offline-capable experiences to your users, thereby improving performance and user engagement.
Personalization and AI: Utilizing AI-enabled technologies like ML (machine learning) can help you deliver personalized recommendations, dynamic pricing, and targeted marketing campaigns for better customer engagement and conversions.
Social Commerce: By integrating social commerce features into your store, you can enable your buyers to discover and purchase products directly from social media platforms, thus increasing your sales and enhancing your brand identity.
Sustainability and Ethical Practices: By incorporating sustainability initiatives, eco-friendly packaging, or transparent supply chains, you can engage customers and foster a positive brand image that aligns with consumer values.
Key Takeaway
To drive growth in the evolving eCommerce landscape, staying updated with emerging trends is critical. Shopify, as one of the fastest-growing platforms, offers its users diverse opportunities to deliver innovative shopping experiences to customers and keep them hooked. As merchants, you should try your hands on the latest development trends and offer customers ample reasons to choose you.
Given the stiff competition, it is recommended to put your best foot forward and seek professional assistance. You can either hire Shopify web developers from a reputed agency or partner with expert freelancers for a seamless experience that yields optimal returns.
Happy Shopify-ing!
Amelia Swank is a Senior web and app developer, currently working with SunTec India, a well-known software development company. She is passionate about technology and has written several articles to spread her knowledge of web and application development. Amelia is always keeping an eye out for the newest trends, inventions, and changes in the IT industry, and is eager to share her insights with those who are interested in the field.