Shopify Editions - Winter ’25

Here at Noughts & Ones, we’re always thinking about ways to improve our services and the themes we work on, but this doesn’t always mean that we have to come up with something new and shiny every week. Sometimes the best use of our time comes from improving on what we already have built and refining it further.

 

It would appear that Shopify have this mindset too, as Winter Editions ‘25 showed.

 

The latest Shopify Editions was named ‘The Boring Edition’, and whilst I’m already tired of the of ‘there’s nothing boring about this Edition’ line in the thousands of existing blog posts around this topic, it’s a welcome statement from the ever growing behemoth that is Shopify to make a statement by stating that their past 6 months have purely been around refining what’s already there.

 

There’s of course a lot that The Boring Edition covered, so if you would like to dive in deep for yourself, check out everything here. Below are our Noughts & Ones’ personal highlights, as well as some things on our wishlist on what we’d like to see for The Summer Editions ‘25 (because let’s be honest, we’re all looking forward to Summer now!)

 

Blocks Blocks Blocks!

There have been a few ‘blocks’ updates that we’re getting excited about at Noughts & Ones. The first one being Checkout Blocks, which is now available for all rather than just on Shopify Plus. This is very exciting as this now gives users the opportunity to add in customised blocks in pages after checkout. Shopify has its own app to allow you to add in custom blocks, so you can add in custom information specific to your merchant and its customers. There is a good amount of customisation here for these blocks via Shopify’s Checkout Blocks App which is great to see, as well as easily being able to view and add these blocks via the theme customiser.

 

Shopify have also announced (after a few Editions of teasing) that Theme Blocks are now available! Theme blocks are great news as it means themes are able to use the same chunks of reusable code, safe in the knowledge that they can be built and styled once and then reused across the site. They can also be made much easier for merchants to control where these components are placed. Whilst Shopify has been talking about this for a while, we’re excited to see some more use cases for it in the wild and we’ll certainly be playing around with it internally to see how it can best suit our partners.

 

A better way to Search & Discover

A perfect example of making something good even better in Shopify is with their Search & Discovery app. Not only now can you choose the order that your category filter appear, you can also now filter by category metafields, meaning you now have more freedom to display filters that actually make sense to your storefront, rather than trying to work your storefront around pre-defined filters. If you’re not sure on what to pick however, you can always leave it to Shopify Magic; Shopify’s own brand of AI tools (more on AI later).

 

Shopify Bundles

We were really pleased to see that Shopify Bundles got some updates in this Edition, including a small but useful update in how bundles are presented in the order summary. Before, each product would show as being split out, whereas now, the products included in the bundles will show nicely nested, which is a much better user experience. Shopify has also promised updates on more accurate inventory and reporting. These are all fantastic updates, but we couldn’t help feeling like we still want more from Shopify’s own take on bundles. It is still a very simple implementation on bundling and one we’ve found never quite does enough for our partners. We’re lucky to have many alternative solutions out there to meet merchant needs, but this is certainly one we want to hear more about in the Summer.

 

Let it Flow

We LOVE Shopify Flow and we’ve found many use cases for it, so it’s great to see that it’s got some love and attention in the latest Edition. The variable picker looks to have gotten a boost with more powerful search which will hopefully make finding the right variable much easier (as well as being able to search straight from the admin page now). It also allows for more automated workflow tasks without the need to make custom HTTP calls, using its new ‘Send to API’ request. We’re really excited to try some of these out as it could be a real timesaver. The biggest thing for us though is  that Shopify Flow can now trigger workflows when a new  Metaobject entry is created. Shopify gives the example of if a merchant creates a custom form in Shopify Forms, it can trigger a Flow to send an automated thank you email to the customer that submits a form. We’ll certainly be seeing how much we can do with this new functionality though as it could really open up some interesting opportunities for our partners.

 

Shopify Sidekick

It wouldn’t be 2025 if we didn’t have an update with AI. Enter Sidekick, which is rolling out on a lot of stores. The exciting thing here is that this is an AI assistant tailored to your store. Want to create a discount? Ask sidekick and it can set it up for you. Want an overview on your AOV? Ask Sidekick! This is by no means perfect so like anything related to AI, double check its answers, but we feel like this could be a really powerful tool for Shopify the more it grows.

 

All in all, this Edition has been a ‘Boring’, but welcome one. Whilst we all are accustomed to look at the next shiny feature (and have come to expect it in these Editions), the positive feedback to the Boring Edition shows how important it is to refine what’s already there. We’d love to see more of this in the future, as there is still plenty of work to be done. Bundles for example had a few minor improvements, but it would be great to see this further enhanced in the future to be able to handle some more complex bundle options.

 

Did you catch the new Shopify ‘Boring’ merch drop in the docs as well? We can’t wait to show this off when the weather gets a bit warmer… Bring on the summer!