What's New in Shopify Editions Winter 2025? Our Highlights
Shopify Editions came early this season! If you’re not sure what Shopify Editions is, every 6 months Shopify releases an Edition which is an announcement of newly released features and features being worked on to look forward to in the future.
This season’s Edition has been named “The Boring Edition”. Why? Well it seems that instead of announcing big new features, Shopify has been working on releasing and improving features that have already been talked about. They’re catching up with everything that has previously been announced, which we totally get.
Tobi Lutke, Shopify’s CEO says about this Edition,
"We focused on the hard and unsexy work of nailing the basics, getting all the parts of Shopify to work seamlessly together, and run at tip top performance. You've got to sweat the details."
While we were expected boring, we were surprised to find some updates we’re actually really excited about! Let’s dive into the note-worthy updates for web designers…
Shopify Product Updates
1. Checkout Blocks
Now all plans can customize the Order status and Thank you pages with content blocks using Shopify’s Checkout Blocks app. This means you can insert text, buttons, banner images, FAQs, icons and embed apps right onto these (previously uneditable) pages. This content can be static or dynamic based on the customer or products they've purchased. This is such a cool feature for customizing the customer experience and we’re thrilled with this update. Personally, we’ve used it direct customers to sign into our course platform where they can instantly access their digital products, and we've inserted a downloadable invoice button since we sell mostly B2B and sometimes get requests about this. Customizing the checkout page with blocks is still exclusive to Shopify Plus plans.
2. Customer Accounts
There have been some great updates to the customizability of customer accounts. With the option to enable “new customer accounts”, stores lost the ability to access the code for this page which previously allowed you to add whatever was desired. Now that customizability is coming back in a new way. The updates are:
- Customer account extensions: Use apps to personalize customer accounts by adding blocks where customers can see and manage subscriptions, wishlists, reviews, loyalty points, returns and more. See the full list of apps that can be added here.
- Customer accounts menu links: At the top of a customer account page, by default the menu items are “Shop” and “Orders”. Now these menu items can be customized to help direct customers exactly where they need to go! For example, we’ve added links to direct customers to access their digital products, and a link to access the reviews they’ve left. Edit this menu under Content > Menus > Customer account main menu.
- Branded login pages: Customer accounts and checkouts have a few new branding options to keep things on-brand with brand colors and typography.
3. Theme Editor UI
You may have already noticed that the theme editor settings have a more compact layout, with setting titles and selectors being put onto one line. This is so that it’s easier to find the settings you’re looking for, which we appreciate! See below how titles and settings are displayed as inline rather than stacked, to save space:
4. Shopify Subscriptions
There have been a few updates to the app to improve the experience for store owners:
- Buy X Get Y discounts can now be combined with subscriptions. For example, offer customers a free gift when they subscribe.
- Inventory settings are now respected, so new orders will be restricted if products are out of stock.
- Manage subscriptions directly from the product editor in the admin, not only from within the app.
5. Markets Expansion
Markets will become available to all merchants over the coming months. Markets are a key piece of making it possible for brands to grow internationally, through retail and B2B all while managing everything from a single store. The previous Edition was all about Markets so we’re excited to see stores in more countries gain access to these features that will allow them to grow.
6. Faster Speeds
Faster speeds in the admin and checkout process are being boasted. That’s:
- Faster admin: Initial page load speeds have been increased by 25% and page-to-page navigation is 12.5% faster.
- Faster cart and checkout: Cart loading speeds have increased by up to 50%
- Faster accelerated checkout buttons: Buttons now load up to 58% faster on the product page.
7. Filter Ordering
One of the main uses of the Shopify Search & Discovery app is creating collection page filters. Previously the order of filterable options was automatic, showing options in alphabetical order. Now you can create a custom order to create the order that makes the most sense for the variable. For example, when creating filters for sizes like XS, S, M, L, XL then alphabetical order would not make sense and a manual sorting order should be used.
8. Sidekick Rolling Out
We’ve been hearing about Sidekick for a year now, which is an AI-enabled commerce assistant trained to know all of Shopify and access the context, data, and knowledge to generate highly personalized and relevant support for a range of tasks. It has now launched to all merchants in English.
9. Noteworthy Updates:
- Metaobjects Everywhere: Metaobject data is now accessible in more places on the theme, creating even more possibilities for what stores can do. We love how metaobject data is stored seperately from the theme so it’s easy to manage data.
- Semantic Search in more languages: Semantic search searches by the intent of the customer rather than the exact words they’ve used. This feature now supports 90+ languages.
- New Analytics: Store owners can now get more customized insights using the metrics they choose, on the Shopify admin dashboard.
- Extended Cart Expiration: The cart's lifetime has been increased, meaning that customers who return to your store some time later will still have their carts saved. This should boost customer conversion.
Even though big new announcements haven’t been made, we’re happy with existing features being improved for merchants. Shopify has released so many new functionalities in the past two years on the admin dashboard, the theme editor and in the form of free apps, and we’d love to see these features built on to meet the needs of more merchants, rather than being the basic free solution that some of them have been. You can read the full Edition here.
Hana Drdla
