RSMUS.comOn Tuesday, March 14th, 2023, we hosted a webinar where our team of Shopify experts discussed the latest updates and innovations in the Shopify omnichannel commerce platform, as well as shared best practices for ERP integrations. In this blog post, we will unpack the topics covered in the webinar and provide more details on how these updates and integrations can benefit businesses.
Shopify Editions Winter 2023 Update – What’s New and Exciting?
One of the key topics discussed in the webinar was the Shopify Editions Winter 2023 update. This update includes more than 100 enhancements that will help businesses grow and thrive in the ecommerce space. The new update includes improved performance, better user experience, and enhanced functionalities that will provide businesses with a competitive edge.
While it was difficult to narrow down the list of changes to just a few, we selected a handful of improvements in the Shopify Editions Winter 2023 to highlight during the webinar. These features include major updates to the checkout experience, making it slicker and easier to modify with drag-and-drop functionality and apps. The other major area we focused on was continued updates in the B2B feature set, with new capabilities such as setting product quantity rules and customer specific product publishing, which allows to create customer specific product catalogs along with pricing. Overall, B2B will continue to be a focus area for Shopify, and we will be sure to highlight new features and best practices in future blogs and webinars.
License Pricing Changes – Providing More Flexibility for Businesses
Another topic discussed in the webinar was the licensing pricing changes that have been recently rolled out by Shopify. We focused on how these changes will impact different types of businesses already on the platform or looking to start leveraging Shopify for their eCommerce needs in the coming year. You can find an in-depth overview of the price changes in an earlier blog post here, and get a complete overview of license and implementation specifically for Shopify Plus here.
Headless Commerce using Hydrogen & Oxygen – An Innovative Approach to Ecommerce
Shopify Hydrogen is an opinionated React framework that offers pre-built components and tools to build unique and custom front-end experiences that integrate with the Shopify backend platform. Hydrogen enables developers to build lightning-fast frontend experiences and access utilities that natively integrate with Shopify. On the other hand, Shopify Oxygen is a hosting provider that can host custom content such as Hydrogen storefronts directly within the platform, all this at no additional cost. This means that merchants can rely on Shopify’s global infrastructure to manage the server components and complexity needed for Hydrogen, resulting in seamless, headless ecommerce stores. Businesses looking for a headless B2B solution will have to wait a little longer since Hydrogen does not currently support B2B. With Hydrogen already at version 2.0 there is a strong commitment from Shopify to continue evolving our capabilities to implementing heedlessly with Shopify.
ERP Integration Best Practices – Real-World Examples
Finally, our team shared best practices for ERP integration to Shopify, mainly focusing on midmarket platforms like Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central. We discussed a few strategies for selecting the right integration tools and technologies and talked about maximizing performance while balancing costs and business processes to get the most from customer or iPaaS-based integration solutions.
Wrapping up!
The webinar provided attendees with valuable insights into the latest updates and innovations in the Shopify platform, as well as best practices for ERP integrations. From the Shopify Editions Winter 2023 update to licensing pricing changes and headless commerce using Hydrogen & Oxygen, our team shared their knowledge and expertise on these topics, providing actionable advice that businesses can use to improve their operations.
We are always here to support and assist businesses in their digital retail journey, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions or would like to learn more.
Oleg Glubochansky
Leading Commerce and Digital Marketing practice at RSM US ·Over 18 years of experience in technology and software development ·Specializes in delivering strategic guidance and implementation of Omni-Channel commerce experiences ·SEO and SEM strategy and marketing analytics