Must-Read Shopify Updates for DTC Brands

Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋

We'll send you weekly emails, every Wednesday, trying our best to deliver great value to your inbox.

In this newsletter, you'll find:

💠 Must-Read Shopify Updates for DTC Brands

💠 New Optimization Options on Facebook Ads

💠 Build a High-Converting Shopify Store that Drives Profit

Must-Read Shopify Updates for DTC Brands

Shopify has some big news for brands 🔥

Let's take a look!

🔍 Semantic search:

If you've ever felt that there's no search engine like Google, you're not alone.

How many times have you tried searching for a product without getting any results?

Only to find out later that it was available, but the search engine didn't recognize it for some reason.

Well, it seems that those days are over.

This new AI-powered storefront search feature goes beyond keywords to better understand a shopper’s intent, according to Shopify.

For example, someone might type “warm clothes for the winter” and the algorithm will recognize they’re looking for sweaters, beanies, woolen socks, etc., even though they didn’t use those specific keywords.

👕 Combined listing:

Finally!

Products that come in multiple colors or styles can all be merchandised from a single-parent listing.

Each variation with its own description, media gallery, and URL.

I guess this should simplify things a lot for merchants and customers.

💳 Improved checkout:

This is a big, and long-time expected, update.

On one hand, the checkout process will go from 3 pages to 1 👏

On the other, Shopify also announced more ways to personalize the checkout experience for Shopify Plus merchants.

I'm talking about the addition of 14 APIs and 90 new apps to include up-sells, post-purchase surveys, conversion tracking, and custom content.

🔄 New FREE subscription app:

For a long time, there have been big players offering this to merchants.

Now, Shopify is realising its own free app to serve the same purpose.

There are many more updates, which you can read in this post, but these are the ones that I found most relevant for brands.

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New Optimization Options on Facebook Ads

When Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) were launched, advertisers could only optimize for the "Purchase" event.

Now, Meta updated this to include more events:

How useful is this?

Well, it's always recommended to optimize for the end goal (ie. Purchase).

However, those brands that want to optimize for a different event, now they'll be able to do it.

Build a High-Converting Shopify Store that Drives Profit

On this episode of The DTC Insider podcast, Brian Roisentul interviews Ben Sharf.

He’s a co-founder at Platter, a platform that helps e-commerce brands build a high-converting Shopify store that drives profit.

We discussed:

👉 What Platter is about and how it helps e-commerce brands

👉 Current challenges for DTC brands

👉 What DTC brands should focus on to be successful in 2024

👉 Best practices to increase AOV, LTV, and CR

🎧 Tune in to our latest episode: https://thedtcinsider.com/c/podcast

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