Editions Winter '23 Recap
Tune into The Unofficial Shopify Podcast for all the goods on the biggest updates and features coming to Shopify. From one-page checkout to AI integration to quality of life improvements, they'll tell you which ones are worth paying attention to stay ahead of the competition.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
3/28/2023
Paul Reda: Hey, everyone. What you’re hearing now is take two because we talked for five minutes, then Kurt noticed that I was muted the whole time. So, that conversation we were having that I was telling you about the secret I learned about how to make six-figures on your store every month, no questions asked, it’s just gone. You’ll never hear it ever again.
Kurt Elster: So, the trick is you hit inspect element, and then you just set that revenue to whatever you want it to.
Paul Reda: Yeah. And then you take a screenshot of it and you post it on Twitter.
Kurt Elster: And you post it on Twitter. Then you sell a course.
Paul Reda: And then you sell a course talking about how rich you are.
Kurt Elster: And then that’s how you actually get rich.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Exactly.
Kurt Elster: It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Paul Reda: Pretty much. Well, you know, you think about it. You visualized it. By doing inspect element, you visualized being rich, and then you sell the course on top of that, and then you become rich.
Kurt Elster: And is it still a vision board if it’s only on Pinterest? Or should I… It has to be poster board?
Paul Reda: No, I think you need to physically make the vision board. You gotta be like James Caan in Thief and physically make your vision board.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Good. I like that. So, in your-
Paul Reda: Did you ever see Thief?
Kurt Elster: No.
Paul Reda: Oh, that movie’s sick. I love that movie.
Kurt Elster: What year is it?
Paul Reda: ’80, ’81, I think.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Yeah, because I was born in ’83 and everyone knows you can’t watch movies that came out before you were born.
Paul Reda: All right, that’s an inside joke that only the two of us would get. No one listening to this is gonna get that.
Kurt Elster: So, I don’t… I’ve never seen Alien, never seen Star Wars.
Paul Reda: That’s an inside joke. Someone yelled that at me when I made a reference to Alien and they were like, “How do you know about that movie?” And I was like, “What?” And they were like, “That came out before you were born.” It’s like, “Yes, because on December 31st they burn all the movies that came out that year.”
Kurt Elster: That’d be kind of fun. That would get people back to the theater.
Paul Reda: Yeah, then we all… You put it in a giant wicker man that’s shaped like Alfred Hitchcock, or like Martin Scorsese, and then you burn it, and then no one ever sees the movies ever again, and then you just share them around the fire. You’re like, “His name was Marty McFly. He got in a car, a special car.”
Kurt Elster: And that’s how we got Rick and Morty eventually. Wow.
Paul Reda: No, Thief’s great. It’s Michael Mann’s first movie, I think. I think it’s his first theatrical movie definitely. But it’s shot in Chicago, looks amazing, James Caan just doesn’t care about anyone, just wants to steal stuff. Total badass. Oh, movie’s so good.
Kurt Elster: So, transitioning to Shop chat, when you’re in the Shopify admin, that search bar is not there. It’s gone. You’re looking for… You’re looking at products, orders, or customers.
Paul Reda: Well, to me it’s when you’re on the product page, on the products listing, there’s no search bar. There’s a search bar up top, which I guess is universal search.
Kurt Elster: That’s universal search. That’s different.
Paul Reda: But it’s like I just want to search these products and just return these products for me. And it’s just hidden now. The search bar is hidden. I don’t know why. It’s some Johnny Ivy Apple, “We’re just gonna move everything that’s useful,” bullshit like the headphone jack, and that’s gone now.
Kurt Elster: Sometimes I miss my headphone jack.
Paul Reda: Yeah, and everything in the UI is now behind a hamburger, and now the UI is cleaner.
Kurt Elster: It’s cleaner because we swept that stuff under the rug.
Paul Reda: Yeah, because we hid anything you’d want to use.
Kurt Elster: If you hit F that search bar just pops back. I’m like just a productivity super pro every time I remember to click the F key and bring back my beloved search bar.
Paul Reda: But my hand is already on the mouse, so I just gotta go to the little button and click on it.
Kurt Elster: You got one hand on the mouse. What’s the other hand doing? Hovering over the F key.
Paul Reda: This is a G-rated podcast. I can’t tell you what the other hand’s doing.
Kurt Elster: I keep a thumb on the spacebar for just immediate scrolling. What are we discussing on today’s episode?
Paul Reda: That’s your job. You… I was at my desk. You looked at me with those bedroom eyes and you were like, “I’m ready.” So, I came over here and assumed the position, and then you just start talking and I react to that. That’s what we do.
Kurt Elster: That’s accurate, just when you say it, it doesn’t… It sounds upsetting to me but I can’t quite place my finger on why. Well, all right, today we are talking about Shopify’s newest updates and features. This quarter, a little bit ago, prior to this podcast, I waited a little bit long here, but Shopify Editions Winter 2023 happened. And in those feature announcements they had 100-plus updates in there. It’s a little weird because A, all right, we’re already impressed. Slow down, guys. I don’t need 100-plus. I’ll settle for 99.
But it’s like they’ll do, “Here’s features that have launched in the last 90 days. Here’s the stuff that’s launching shortly.” And then, “Here’s future stuff coming down the pipe in the next 90 days.” And so, it really… It takes me some time to parse through it and figure out, all right, what’s the stuff I’m excited about? What’s the stuff that’s available now and practical to us?
And when the announcements first happen, that’s not necessarily obvious to me. I’m like at that point just a kid in a candy store and my eyes glaze over. With that, let’s do our introductions. I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And joining me today is my business partner, Paul Reda.
Sound Board: Producer Paul!
Kurt Elster: And this is The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.
Sound Board:
Paul Reda: Whatever sound effect that was, I’m definitely muting it.
Kurt Elster: You’re just gonna have to find out.
Paul Reda: Oh, boy.
Kurt Elster: Neither of us are wearing headphones.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I know.
Kurt Elster: I don’t even know if I got the right one.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I’m getting rid of that.
Kurt Elster: So, it had like 100-plus feature announcements, but the standout theme-
Paul Reda: That’s too many, by Thomas the way.
Kurt Elster: I know.
Paul Reda: They’re just making up stuff at that point, like hid the search bar. That’s not a feature announcement.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I didn’t see that one in there.
Paul Reda: That’s a change log. 100 items is a change log. That’s not a feature announcement.
Kurt Elster: For sure, there’s stuff that ends up in the change log that I don’t think makes it into this. And then especially if you include the developer API change log, oh man. Maybe it’s because they canceled all those meetings. They had… It was like a companywide initiative. It was like any meeting with over X people just gets canceled. They just cleared people’s calendars and they’re like, “You’re gonna start shipping.”
Paul Reda: Good. I’m glad they did that. Companies should do that more often.
Kurt Elster: I often open my calendar, I hit select all, delete, and then that… I maximize my productivity.
Paul Reda: I mean, I got… We now have a companywide meeting at noon every Tuesday and I was getting annoyed at that.
Kurt Elster: It is one a week. It is 30 minutes.
Paul Reda: Well, because we went from zero to one. It was 100% increase.
Kurt Elster: Look, anything times zero is zero, so it’s a zero percent increase.
Paul Reda: Now I’m fine. I mean, now I’m fine with it, but it’s a slippery slope.
Kurt Elster: So, the theme here for sure is checkout and the very first feature, which we don’t have access to, and no official timeline yet, is one-page checkout. This is a thing… This is like a holy grail for a handful of people for years. If I could just have one-page checkout my conversions would go through the roof. I don’t know if that’s true, but done right I think it’s absolutely plausible that a one-page checkout could bump conversions. I think the claim we’re going with is like 10 to 15%.
The idea is because-
Paul Reda: Skepticism.
Kurt Elster: … I don’t have to jump to a new page load through the process and I can see everything up front at a glance, that it makes it easier, because I’m just scrolling down the page.
Paul Reda: I don’t doubt it’s better. I don’t doubt it’s better at all. I don’t know if there’s gonna be that much of a lift.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I want to see it.
Paul Reda: So, it’s just one giant… I mean, I don’t like it if it’s a giant list of fields.
Kurt Elster: They really condensed it so you can… Even though it’s not available to use in your store, and I’m sure I’ll get hosed, it’ll be available when this goes live.
Paul Reda: Well, fine.
Kurt Elster: It won’t. But I’ve seen it. There’s a few stores that I will not out because we’d tank their conversion rate that are in the beta test for it. So, those are floating around out there, and the place you can check it out is Shopify Supply. Shopify has a merch store that also functions kind of like a demo store of like, “Here’s our latest and greatest if you’re using all our fancy features.” And that one has the one-page checkout in it.
So, if you go like shop for a hat, or sweatshirt, or something on Shopify.supply, you can just see this thing in action. And in my head I pictured like it’s the same checkout, but you scroll down. And okay, yeah, it is a little bit.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I’m just like if all-
Kurt Elster: It walks you through the process really nicely.
Paul Reda: I don’t know. I’m wondering if there’s a mental difference in fill out these five fields, enter them, now fill out these five fields, enter them, as opposed to, “Hey buddy, fill out these 20 fields.”
Kurt Elster: There is.
Paul Reda: Just all at once.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. If you show all the fields all at once, it becomes an overwhelming list of things to do.
Paul Reda: Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.
Kurt Elster: But the way they implemented it, it just doesn’t look that way when you see it. And the big question, though, is this thing Plus only? And I don’t think so. I don’t think this is gonna be a Plus-exclusive feature.
Paul Reda: I would assume not. Because you know, what Shopify really prides itself on, and we’ve known this for years. We’ve been told this by people that work at Shopify, is that Shopify regards their product as the checkout. The checkout is the product that Shopify is selling you.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That’s like… That is the cornerstone.
Paul Reda: That’s the cornerstone of the entire thing, is we do the checkout, we handle that, we do the money, we handle telling you how you gotta do the fulfillment and all that stuff that extends from the checkout. Everything extends from the checkout. And that was why for such a long time you couldn’t touch the checkout or edit it, because that’s because that’s Shopify’s domain and they handle all that.
Kurt Elster: And then… Oh-
Paul Reda: So, the idea of-
Kurt Elster: Beg forgiveness if you were to circumvent that checkout.
Paul Reda: Oh, yeah. No, they don’t like that. So, the idea of them somehow bifurcating the checkout and it being like, “Well, this is the Plus checkout, and this is the checkout for scrubs,” that would… They would have to be maintaining two levels of their base product. I don’t think they’d ever want to do that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I think we’re in agreement that it’s probably… This is not going to be a Plus exclusive when it does roll out. The other question I had about it, and so I was able to test it, was how does it handle abandoned cart? And so, the first field on that page is what’s your email, right? If I put my email in and it’s a one-page checkout, the only button I ever click is purchase. Complete order. And so, if I abandon a one-page checkout I’ve never actually submitted anything, so would I still get an abandoned cart email from this thing? And so, I found a store that was using it in the beta, and I went ahead and jacked up their conversion rate for them by going through the checkout with absolutely no intention to buy. I’m so sorry. And sure enough, I did get an abandoned cart email that was addressed to me and had the products that I had in the cart.
So, it is just dynamically pulling in that email address, so abandoned cart still works. But I thought that was a good question. Would that work?
Paul Reda: I mean, you maybe cost someone their job.
Kurt Elster: All right, I don’t think so, and if I did, I am so sorry.
Paul Reda: At the meeting they were like, “Why is our conversion rate down .01%?” Like, “I don’t know. We did everything the same.” It’s because of Kurt. They’re like, “You’re fired.”
Kurt Elster: They’re probably like, “This one-page checkout. I don’t know.”
Paul Reda: They’re like, “We’re moving backwards now. You’re fired.”
Kurt Elster: I would be devastated if that happened. So, within that checkout, they’ve got a drag and drop checkout editor now. It’s called checkout extensibility. A little bit of an awkward name, right? This one is Plus only. And so, this… It looks like the checkout that you know and love except it now works the way Online Store 2.0’s theme editor does where you can drag and drop app blocks into the checkout.
Paul Reda: So, the only things you’re moving around are the app blocks. You can’t create sections and have sections and move sections around. You just get to take apps and place them in your checkout.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Okay.
Kurt Elster: And so, the thing to do is to make an app that just inserts a div that I can write HTML into.
Paul Reda: Oh yeah. They probably don’t like that. I’d bet they’d sanitize those inputs or something.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That would really circumvent this restriction on it. Note to self. We gotta try that.
Paul Reda: This change is kind of… Because doesn’t this mean that Scripts is going away?
Kurt Elster: Checkout.liquid-
Paul Reda: Because here’s the thing, so Shopify Scripts are a thing we use to-
Kurt Elster: I use it daily. I love it.
Paul Reda: We use it all the time. But it’s kind of a power user thing. You gotta know how to do Ruby, you gotta do all this stuff with it. Now, instead of us freely writing a Shopify script that our client can use forever for free, or whatever we charge them to do it that one time, now some app middleman is gonna come in and be like, “I made an app for that,” to do that. And now they gotta pay the app developer 10 bucks a month till the end of time. Because we couldn’t do the free script anymore.
Kurt Elster: You’re not wrong.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Clarifying point. All right, we’re confusing two features, but the theme is the same. So, checkout extensibility replaces a feature where previously if I was on the Plus plan I could gain access to the checkout as a template.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Checkout.liquid.
Kurt Elster: Checkout.liquid. And even within checkout.liquid it was a little limited in what you could do with it.
Paul Reda: Oh, definitely. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And even when you did mess with it, you didn’t want to risk breaking it, and then you had to go through this upgrade process whenever they changed things that was clearly not fun for anybody. And so, I get why this is net better, and so I lose that, so that example of like, “I just want to jam a div in there with a message.”
Paul Reda: Yeah, that’s fine. I’m fine with that.
Kurt Elster: That was what we would do with checkout.liquid. You know, like a Prop 65 warning. The Shopify Scripts let you run conditional logic to alter prices on items, so that was like the number one use, and that was called line item script, so I could use it to power a promotion, like a complex promo. No discount codes. Or I can make it mess with discount codes. Basically, I can get it to do whatever pricing wise. Then I could do the same thing with shipping, where I could be like, “All right, if I’ve got glass bottles in the cart, don’t offer two-day air because they just keep breaking and it’s annoying for everyone.”
Paul Reda: Yeah. Or like if this giant pain in the ass product that costs $500 is in the checkout, don’t offer free shipping even though they’re over our free shipping threshold, because this damn thing will never ship for free.
Kurt Elster: Yes. Yeah. Or payment gateways, like, “Well, if an item with CBD is in the cart, then you gotta hide PayPal because they don’t approve of CBD.”
Paul Reda: All the things that we did using a script for free.
Kurt Elster: Yes. But the Script Editor and that checkout.liquid template, those were features exclusive to Shopify Plus, and Shopify Plus, $2,000 a month. But those are free features within it. All right, it’s an expensive plan. It is. The thing that replaces Script Editor is Shopify Functions, which is essentially… Okay, that’s apps for checkout processes. And then there’s the checkout extensions, those are just regular apps can add widgets into the checkout. So, we’ve essentially created a new revenue source for the app store.
Paul Reda: Wait.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: So, checkout extensions are just apps that already exist can also now do stuff in checkout.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. So, let’s say on… Well, like Harney Tea. One of our clients. Harney Tea. In the checkout if you’re a loyalty rewards member you can redeem the points right in checkout. And that was like a widget that we would stick in checkout.liquid.
Paul Reda: Yeah. We had to jam that in there. We had to do a whole thing to put that in checkout.liquid.
Kurt Elster: Now that the app provider who does the loyalty points, and I forget which one it is, I’m so sorry, has to make an extension for… Yeah-
Paul Reda: For their already pre-existing app, that it will do something.
Kurt Elster: So that it could pop that widget in there.
Paul Reda: Yes.
Kurt Elster: And when I went to upgrade them, the widget didn’t exist yet, so I had to go email the company and explain it to them. And they were unaware. But you know, all this stuff really just became available recently. So, okay, there’s that, and then the other part of it is… Well, Script Editor I was using, but now… I was using Script Editor to conditionally modify payment gateways, shipping rates, and my discounts with line item Scripts.
Each of those categories powered by Scripts now gets replaced with… I have to find what’s called a Shopify Function.
Paul Reda: So, Shopify Function is a new type of app-
Kurt Elster: New type of app.
Paul Reda: … that only runs inside the checkout and does checkout manipulation things.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Does it have a different set of permissions than checkout extensions?
Kurt Elster: Yes. Yeah, they’re definitely different.
Paul Reda: What the hell?
Kurt Elster: Extensions are widgets. They’re just app blocks.
Paul Reda: Okay.
Kurt Elster: I say just, but they’re app blocks. And Functions is more logic based.
Paul Reda: So, Functions replaces Scripts.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: So, we’re replacing a free thing that people got for free on Plus with a not free thing that everyone has access to.
Kurt Elster: Oooh. Functions are Plus exclusive, I believe.
Paul Reda: So, we’re replacing a Plus only thing that was free with a new Plus only thing that you gotta pay for on top of Plus.
Kurt Elster: Shopify Functions is Plus exclusive. Yeah.
Paul Reda: All right. No comment.
Kurt Elster: I gotta make a Shopify Functions app. At least as a Shopify partner, that’s what… I’m seeing some opportunity here. Because I think it’s August 2024, checkout.liquid, if you were using it, you cannot use it on net new Shopify Plus stores right now. Just it will not… You can’t do it. If you’re already using it, you get to keep it until August 2024 when they will pry it from you. Same with Script Editor.
Paul Reda: I was about to say, when do the Scripts stop working?
Kurt Elster: August 2024 they will pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Paul Reda: Yeah, so and the problem with this is currently there are no Shopify Functions that exist.
Kurt Elster: No, they’re starting to pop up.
Paul Reda: Oh, okay.
Kurt Elster: I looked. They’re populating in there. All right, so the positive side here is I love Script Editor. I love it. But you have to create Ruby script that does the thing you want.
Paul Reda: No, it sucks. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And so, unless you are a power user, this thing is not accessible to you. Or you’re willing to hire a developer to run it for you. And so, the idea with Shopify Functions is like, “All right, we’re gonna fill that hole with a much wider variety of things that realistically, if they’re not already easier to use, over time are gonna become easier to use.”
The other one I really like, this new feature, we got this going on Asutra, is another client, this Shop Promise badge. You can display expected delivery dates as part of the product form, the checkout, and in the Shop app. And so, you get that… If I’m on an Amazon listing it says, “Hey, order by X and you’ll get your product by X.” Now I can just add that. That’s just a feature in Shopify that I can drop into my product page.
Paul Reda: And it just figures that out? Because Shopify knows when an order was delivered.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. They have a full timeline of order placed, order fulfilled, order shipped, order delivered, because it has the tracking, and you can pull that data yourself. It’s in reports you can see it and it’ll be like, “Hey, your median time to fulfill is 1.1 days and time for them to receive it is 5 days.” And then it knows the to and from zip codes, and so if I go on like Asutra’s website on Wednesday, it’s gonna tell me, “Hey, you gotta order by noon and you’ll receive this product by Friday.”
And then the chances are it’s gonna show up on… Or you’ll receive it by Saturday, and then the chances are it’s gonna go show up on Friday.
Paul Reda: So, they build a buffer in.
Kurt Elster: I would suspect.
Paul Reda: I would hope so.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And so, it’s really cool. It is not… The availability, it’s not available to everybody. There’s a bunch of conditions you have to meet to be able to use this, which is good, because if people can’t trust it-
Paul Reda: Yeah. You’ve gotta have an ample amount of data for it to work off of.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And so, it’s only going to allow you to use it if it thinks it can provide actually useful delivery estimations. And that’s the thing I love. It goes a step further. There’s this Shop Promise badge guarantee. Yeah. Where there’s like you’ll get Shop Cash back if it misses the delivery.
Paul Reda: What?
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: Who’s giving that money?
Kurt Elster: I believe Shopify.
Paul Reda: Because their app screwed up?
Kurt Elster: And then you could spend it like in the Shop app. Yeah.
Paul Reda: All right.
Kurt Elster: It sounds like a… If this is made available to you, absolutely try it. It’s cool. And so far, I’ve only seen it in the one store, but I like it.
Paul Reda: This next header is Shopify Magic/AI integration. Is magic an editorial term by you? Or do they now have a thing called Shopify Magic?
Kurt Elster: It’s called Shopify Magic.
Paul Reda: God damn it. I’m surprised it wasn’t called like Shop Magic. Magic Shop. Because they just love throwing the word Shop on things.
Kurt Elster: Well, because this exists solely inside the Shopify admin. That nomenclature does get a little confusing.
Paul Reda: Well, you use the Shop app to do your shopping with the Shop Promise badge. And you get Shop Points. And they pay you back in Shop Dollars if you didn’t get what you shopped for in time.
Kurt Elster: How do you just trademark a verb?
Paul Reda: How do you trademark Windows?
Kurt Elster: Oh, yeah.
Paul Reda: You can’t trademark Shop for shopping, though.
Kurt Elster: Isn’t that what they did?
Paul Reda: There’s no way. That’s why they always… You can’t just… No. There’s no way. Refuse to believe it.
Kurt Elster: So, Shopify Magic, and again, this is what… It’s like rolling out. I’ve seen this in a store. But it was really cool.
Paul Reda: It’s just Harley pulling Tobi out of a hat. Shopify Magic.
Kurt Elster: I mean, I’d be impressed, but no. In the Shopify admin, if I’m editing a product and I’m looking at the product description, there’s like a little purple sparkle tab icon sticking out of the rich text editor. And when you click that, a text editor appears within your text editor. Yeah. Wrap your head around that. And in it, it’ll say-
Paul Reda: Don’t you mean the Shop editor?
Kurt Elster: It’s a rich text editor, thank you. And in it, the default is like… It says, “Give it at least two features or bullet points.” And then you choose a tone, a voice, and hit generate, and it’ll write a description for the product. Or you’ve got your product description already written in your store and say you select the first paragraph is editorial. You highlight it. That appears and then you get new options. It’s like, “Oh, did you want to expand this, rewrite it, or condense it?” And it works really well because it’s like… Yeah, I realize this is just built on top of another AI app, probably ChatGPT, and I could just do all the same stuff with prompts there, but the convenience of it’s right there in front of me, and even if I’ve gotta edit 20 products, or 200 products, having it just right there built in, super convenient.
Yeah, I love the thing. The Shop app has a chatbot stuck in it now.
Paul Reda: See, how can you just call an app Shop? You can’t. You shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
Kurt Elster: Is it called Shop app or is it just called Shop?
Paul Reda: I have no idea.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: It’s like calling an app, App. It’s like when the Android browser was called browser.
Kurt Elster: A browser. Yeah. Good luck Googling that one.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Good luck trying to find a bug. Like, “Oh, has anyone else experienced this bug in browser?”
Kurt Elster: Tell me about metafields. I got some metafields updates. We love metafields.
Paul Reda: There’s a Metaobjects update.
Kurt Elster: Metaobjects.
Paul Reda: I spent an intense five minutes before this podcast was being recorded learning what-
Kurt Elster: You’re being modest. It was like a solid 15.
Paul Reda: Learning what metaobjects were. So, metaobjects are-
Kurt Elster: A herd of metafields?
Paul Reda: They’re a collection of metafields that you… If you think of a metafield as the base object is the product and then we are putting metafields on that product, a metaobject, that’s more the base object. You’re making a metaobject and then you might be applying that metaobject to a product. So, let me give you an example. A very good example I saw is you’re selling apparel. Your apparel on your store has different designers and you want to highlight those designers on the product. So, each designer has like 20 products on your store and say for every designer listing you want to have their name, and a photo of them, and a little bio. If you’re doing that solely with metafields, you would have three fields you have to fill out on every single product where you gotta type in name, type in their name. That’s one metafield. Upload the image, another metafield. Fill out their bio. Go to the next product. Name, upload the image, fill out their bio. And you’re just doing that. You have three things you’re filling out on every single product. It’s a huge pain in the ass.
Now, with metaobjects, what you do is you create a metaobject called designer. That metaobject has three fields. Name, photo, bio. You create the three designers. You create the designers and then you fill out their thing, so like Kurt Elster, then you have a name of him looking like William Riker, and then you fill out his bio about how he started on the Enterprise, and then he was captain of the Titan, and so you just have that prebuilt and premade, that bio of that designer, and so you do that for all the designers. You do all of it once for each designer. Then you create a metafield that’s designer and when you go on the product, you’re like, “Who’s the designer on this product?” And you click on it and it gives you the list of the designers you created and you just pick the name, or pick whatever, and then all that stuff you pre-filled out in the object will populate on the page.
So, instead of having three fields that you have to fill out the same data every single time on every single product, you create a set of fields, you fill them out once, and then on every product you’re just like, “Use that. Use that one. Use that one.” And it’s all one time.
Kurt Elster: So, in programming there’s a concept called DRY. Don’t repeat yourself. And if I had… You’re right, if I had a field on a product page and say a size guide, and I’ve built that size guide out using a series of metafields, and then the metafields are tied to the product, so for every product with that size guide I have to reenter the same information over and over. That’s certainly not efficient. It’ll work, but it’s not ideal. And so, the metaobject, a grouping of metafields are within the object, and then I call it with a metafield?
Paul Reda: Yeah. A grouping of metafields that go together.
Kurt Elster: Okay. I like the bio idea, that like a card, like, “About the author.”
Paul Reda: Yeah. It’s a little card about each designer.
Kurt Elster: About the designer.
Paul Reda: You know, or a thing where it’s like, “Well, we have different FAQs for every product. We have the jacket FAQ and the backpack FAQ.” Well, how do we do that with metafields? Well, if each one is five questions, each product has 10 metafields you have to fill out, which is question one, answer one. Question two, answer two. Question three, answer three. And then you go to every single product, you go, “Okay, is this a backpack? All right. Backpack question one.”
Kurt Elster: And I’m copying and pasting.
Paul Reda: Backpack question two. Backpack answer one. Backpack answer two. And you’re just filling all those fields out over and over again. Now, you just create a metaobject called FAQ. Then you go backpack, and you fill out all the questions and answers for backpack. Then you create another one inside the metaobject called jacket, and then you fill out all the questions for jacket, and then on each product you go, “Is this a jacket or a backpack?” Backpack. And then it just does the FAQ for the backpacks.
Kurt Elster: And now the real magic here is if I have to make an update. In the old system-
Paul Reda: Oh, yeah.
Kurt Elster: I would have to update every metafield on every product. Now, I update that metaobject and it updates once, and then it’s gonna update across all the products it’s attached to?
Paul Reda: Yes.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Sweet. Because you know, in a store catalog, realistically there’s a lot of repetition. You know, if I’m selling an apparel store, most of the information for a category item or a product type, say like tee shirts versus shirts, or versus socks, versus shorts, versus whatever, most of that info about my tee shirts is all gonna be the same, right? And so, if I could just put all that, I can have a metaobject called tee shirt size guide, and then if I start manufacturing a different blank I just update it in that one place.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Okay. I like this. We have yet to actually implement a metaobject, but now that I get it I’m like, “This is useful.”
Paul Reda: Yeah. The examples that we’ve given, we definitely could have used them in the past. It’s just that we haven’t had to use it recently.
Kurt Elster: It’s pretty sweet.
Paul Reda: So, someone hire us to do a new store setup and we’ll go metaobject crazy on your store.
Kurt Elster: You ever play with the Enhanced Search and Discovery app?
Paul Reda: I have and I find it to be lacking.
Kurt Elster: It one day appeared in everyone’s store.
Paul Reda: It’s better than what they had before but it’s not as good as-
Kurt Elster: The third-party ones?
Paul Reda: It’s not as good as the third-party ones, most especially Product Filter and Search by Boost.
Kurt Elster: Boost or Booster.
Paul Reda: Is it Booster or Boost?
Kurt Elster: I’m not sure.
Paul Reda: All right. Anyway, there’s an app called Product Filter and Search.
Kurt Elster: We’ll call it B dot Product Filter and Search.
Paul Reda: Yeah. It’s great. We use it all the time. And Search and Discovery is still not as good as it, but it’s getting better.
Kurt Elster: The thing that lived in Search and Discovery… I don’t know originally. It was just… I think originally it was just like, “Here’s sidebar filters.” And it was part of the Online Store 2.0 rollout was, “All right, we’re gonna have native sidebar filtering for collections and then you manage that within Search and Discovery.” But it wasn’t super robust. It didn’t have like-
Paul Reda: And it was built off of like link lists, like for some reason you’d go in the navigation in the link lists and then it would be down there, and you could add things to sort by, but the list of things you could do was very limited. Like for example on Harney, they have a whole thing where you can sort by robustness, or taste level. They got all these-
Kurt Elster: The tea ratings.
Paul Reda: Yeah, like the tea ratings, like, “Oh, I only want the teas that have at least a four in robustness.” Product Filter and Search you could set all that stuff up and it looks real nice. Search and Discovery, they didn’t allow that.
Kurt Elster: I’m drinking Harney Tea right now.
Paul Reda: I do. I only drink tea from this indie brand I know. It’s called Lipton.
Kurt Elster: Lipton? Yeah?
Paul Reda: Yeah. Lipton. Yeah. I don’t know if-
Kurt Elster: I’m not familiar.
Paul Reda: Oh, yeah. You probably haven’t-
Kurt Elster: That must be a local thing.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I think they’re Chicago based. I don’t know. But yeah, I gotta go down to their store and buy it, because they don’t even have distribution yet.
Kurt Elster: That’s so cool.
Paul Reda: Yeah, I know.
Kurt Elster: Wow. So, the Search and Discovery app, I imagine a lot… It showed up unexpectedly in a lot of people’s stores last year and they either uninstalled it, went, “What the heck,” and uninstalled it, or played with it a little bit and then maybe uninstalled it. Today, there is so much more to it. You should revisit it. So, it’s got search synonyms in it now. So, in the past if you had like… You know there was a common misspelling for when people were searching for a product, you’d have to add that as like a product tag to make sure it pops up. Now, you can add that in Search and Discovery app and the native cross selling that you could do in a Shopify theme, you can tie that into this app and manually set it. It’s doing a lot more now, so it’s worth revisiting, especially like in a 2.0 store that out of the box is gonna have some of these features built in, like the sidebar filtering and the product recommendations.
You know, the nice part about the official Shopify apps, they’re not charging you for them. Right?
Paul Reda: Well, that’s what I like.
Kurt Elster: It’s not an additional monthly fee. There’s some other minor stuff, some quality of life stuff that happened. The rich text editor inside… Not the one in the product page that has the Shopify Magic. The one that’s inside the theme editor, previously it had bold, italic, and link. I think that was like the only options.
Paul Reda: That’s right. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And now it can do headings. Yeah, headings and lists. Oooh. I’m making fun of it, but it is a welcome change.
Paul Reda: No. No.
Kurt Elster: I need that. Gimme that.
Paul Reda: No. Can’t get excited about a rich text editor. All those WYSIWYG editors do is output absolute garbage.
Kurt Elster: You’re… I know. I would much rather… Just let me write the HTML.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I don’t know how many times you’ve been like, “Hey, this looks broken. Can you do the code to fix it?” And I’m like, “That’s in the description, buddy. They wrote it broken. They gotta go into every description and unbreak it.”
Kurt Elster: I believe the last time that happened was last Friday in recent memory. Granular permissions they added, or rather more granular permissions, so like when you add a collaborator account, or you add a staff member to your store, please don’t tell me you just give them access to everything, right? You could always choose what sections of the store they could view, but now it’s added even more options into it and if you… Previously, it was all or nothing, like they can either access the section and edit it or not see it at all. Now, there’s sections that have read only, and so… Worthwhile to go back through it, make sure you don’t have like old accounts you forgot about, or make sure that collaborator accounts that you do need don’t have access to things that they shouldn’t. That’s just like an easy security exercise to go through. Always limit access to only what is necessary.
Now, running through all those features, the stuff that’s Plus exclusive. I wrote it down. I noted in advance. So, we talked about checkout extensions. That is a Plus exclusive.
Paul Reda: And extensions are the things that are replacing Scripts.
Kurt Elster: No. Extensions are app blocks in the checkout.
Paul Reda: So, I subscribe to the loyalty points. I buy the loyalty points app. They’re doing loyalty points on my store. But I’m not Plus, so the loyalty points app that I’m paying for can’t put a thing in my checkout because I’m not Plus.
Kurt Elster: Yes. That widget, the checkout extension widget, that’s a Plus exclusive, so being able to do that, and Shopify Functions. So, the thing that replaces Script Editor.
Paul Reda: So, doing anything with the checkout whatsoever other than uploading your logo and changing the colors, at all, is a Plus exclusive.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: So, that’s the same.
Kurt Elster: They also changed the colors and some of the fonts that you had access to in that checkout editor, so you got more controls over how it looked. Let’s just assume that’s a Plus exclusive, as well.
Paul Reda: Oh my God.
Kurt Elster: The Shop Cash thing, which is that incentive program for Shop Pay, also a Plus exclusive. And there was a lot of B2B selling improvements. That stuff is Plus exclusive.
Paul Reda: So, how about what’s not Plus exclusive?
Kurt Elster: Well, let’s see here. Our metafields, our metaobjects.
Paul Reda: All right.
Kurt Elster: Those quality of life features I mentioned.
Paul Reda: The improvements to the Search and Discovery app?
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Okay. Good.
Kurt Elster: Absolutely. And we’re thinking this one-page checkout, that’s just free money assuming it bumps conversions for whoever opts into it. And Shop Magic. Shopify Magic. The AI product description tool.
Paul Reda: The Skynet that writes your product descriptions.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: Okay.
Kurt Elster: And again, it was, “Hey, we announced 100-plus features.” I just picked the stuff that was interesting to me. And so, we ended up with a few Plus exclusives. Any closing thoughts?
Paul Reda: I could definitely see the usage for metaobjects, and I would very much like the excuse to use it somewhere because I think it would be sick. Unfortunately, I have no current use case for it given the projects I’m currently working on.
Kurt Elster: I’d love to use it to build a proper accessible text tabular data size guide. A size guide that is like not just a damn image jammed into the page. And I think that’s an ideal example scenario for metaobjects because a size guide is a lot of little integer values.
Paul Reda: Yeah, because if I think about it, all right, say you have four sizes, and then each size has two measurements… No, you probably got like five sizes, so that’s like 10 fields.
Kurt Elster: And I know you’re working on a product detail page for Hoonigan, and they just provided us new size guides.
Paul Reda: Oh, did they?
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Okay. Well, if we’re doing that, I’ll look into it.
Kurt Elster: That’s accessible.
Paul Reda: And then I get to write-
Kurt Elster: SEO, I guess?
Paul Reda: Then I get to write responsive tables.
Kurt Elster: Oh, just put a horizontal scroll bar on there. Scroll left to right. If it’s a table, what are you gonna do?
Paul Reda: Maybe I’ll use CSS Grid.
Kurt Elster: All right, so on those developer jokes-
Paul Reda: I will not use CSS Grid. It scares me too much.
Kurt Elster: Oh, I’m thinking of CSS Flex is the one you like.
Paul Reda: No, Flex is great. CSS Grid is very scary. Carl uses it some. Tom uses it sometimes and I look at it and I’m like, “I don’t get it.”
Kurt Elster: The one I enjoy is CSS Clamp where you can set min and max values.
Paul Reda: See, I was already kind of-
Kurt Elster: If I can give it a range, that’s cool.
Paul Reda: I was already kind of doing that with calc and linear equations.
Kurt Elster: That’s fancier but didn’t they get rid of that?
Paul Reda: No. I could still do that.
Kurt Elster: You could still do calc?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: I thought they were getting rid of that.
Paul Reda: No, you need calc, man. No one understands what we’re talking about.
Kurt Elster: No. We’ve really… We’ve gotten deep in the weeds. All right, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Please. Join our Facebook group. Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders. And talk to us. Some of the questions, the points I covered were questions people asked in the group earlier in the month, so we would love to have your input. All right, see you guys.
Paul Reda: Bye.
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