All the Shopify updates and changes for November 2024

November was a busy for Shopify as a host of updates and enhancements were rolled out across the platform.

Standard Shopify users and those on Shopify Plus - as well as those merchants who choose to migrate to Shopify - will benefit from this latest round of improvements.

After enhanced branding customisations were rolled out last month, Shopify has now improved its tax platform, launched Shopify Audiences v2.4, and added new shipping address correction functionalities.

Check out all this and more below to discover the new ways you can manage and improve your store.

Shopify Tax expansion and enhancements

Customise combined listings in Search & Discovery app

Standard Product Taxonomy updated

Shopify Audiences v2.4 features to maximise ad performance

Live rates for UPS shipping labels

Unified user verification

Shopify Flow updates and enhancements

Inventory adjustment history table size increased

Form-specific field creation in Forms

More information for fulfilment holds

Fresh shipping address correction functionality

Automatic app-based discount limit increased

Multi-currency payouts available in more regions

New retail-first customer segments

Managed Markets orders payout at first label scan

Checkout Blocks support documentation moved

Track missing or delayed payouts

Find Shopify apps by searching for features

Shopify Tax expansion and enhancements

There were a couple of updates to Shopify Tax in November, providing more merchants with the sales tax management platform.

Now available in UK and EU

Shopify Tax is being released to all Shopify stores that sell to the European Union and/or United Kingdom.

There’s also a range of new offerings, including:

• Accurate VAT rate calculations based on your customers’ exact address, ensuring compliance for cross-border selling
• Smart product categorisation for tax purposes, automatically applying the right VAT rate based on local rules
• Shipping will now be taxed proportionally on each order when rates differ on multiple line items
• Liability insights that analyse your store’s sales and compare it to government requirements, ensuring you know where and how to collect VAT
• VAT invoices can be issues with a toggle switch to ensure you remain compliant and B2B buyers can reclaim any VAT paid

Automated filing in the US

Shopify Tax now supports automated filing in the US, integrating directly with your store to prepare accurate tax returns for a competitive, flat fee per return.

Customise combined listings in Search & Discovery app

If you’re a Shopify Combined Listings app user, you can now use the Shopify Search & Discovery app to customise how combined listings appear in search results, predictive search, and product recommendations.

You can choose to display only parent products, only child products, or both.

Standard Product Taxonomy updated

Shopify has updated its Standard Product Taxonomy, adding additional categories, attributes, and values.

This allows for more accurate product classification, speeding up the way you create and sell products, as well as improve their discoverability.

Apparel & Accessories, Home & Garden, and Sporting Goods have been a particular focus for the latest update.

Shopify Audiences v2.4 features to maximise ad performance

Shopify Audiences v2.4 has been released, including a new audience type, improved Retargeting Boost audiences and enhanced algorithms to maximise ad performance. The update includes:

• A new Existing Customer Plus audience that allows merchants to exclude lifetime existing customers from prospecting campaigns, leading to more efficient ad spending
• Exclude 40% more customers from your ad campaigns on average with the Existing Customers Plus audience compared to standard ad platform lists
• Achieve up to 50% better performance with Retargeting Boost audiences compared to version 2.3
• Add Meta Retargeting Boost and Prospecting audiences to ad sets directly in the Shopify Audiences app
• View ad set usage of Meta audiences directly in the Shopify Audiences app
• Get improved guidance on audience export issues and troubleshooting

Live rates for UPS shipping labels

Shopify’s UPS integration now features live shipping rates when you’re purchasing shipping labels with Shopify Shipping.

This provides deeper discounts on small packages with UPS® Ground and UPS® Ground Saver.

Meanwhile, Shopify plan discount line item has also been removed from the label purchase summary, speeding up the label purchase process.

Unified user verification

There’s now a unified user verification experience for sensitive actions in the Admin.

This includes deleting staff accounts and transferring store ownership, with the idea being that your business will be protected from session hijacking – without the need to navigate away or perform a full re-login.

Shopify Flow updates and enhancements

There were two key updates to Shopify Flow in November.

New ‘Cancel order’ action

A new ‘Cancel order’ action has been added, which cancels an order and voids payment authorisation.

This replaces a previous version of the action, with the new version also including an option to ‘Refund items’, which issues a refund to the customer inclusive of charges for the product, duties, and shipping.

The previous version, which didn’t void payment authorisation and had separate refund options, has now been re-labelled as ‘Cancel order (deprecated)’.

Shopify recommends updating existing workflows to use the new action.

Marketing automation templates

You can now find and activate marketing automation templates built by Shopify and partners in the Flow app – alongside all other Flow templates.

The templates and analytics will still be accessible through Marketing > Automations, and some traditional automations that create segments or customer metafields can only be created when they’re activated from here.

Inventory adjustment history table size increased

The length of the inventory adjustment history table for a product or variant has been increased from 90 to 180 days.

In the table, an Activity column displays the event that caused an inventory adjustment, such as a new order or a return, while there are also figures for inventory quantities before and after adjustments.

Form-specific field creation in Forms

You can now create fields on Shopify Forms that let you edit, manage, and save data to submissions stored in metaobjects.

Previously, you needed to create a customer metafield to store all submission data on the customer record. This meant that if a customer submitted multiple responses, only the latest submission was retained, meaning each form field required a separate metafield in customer profiles.

You can now choose whether each custom field in a form maps to a metaobject that stores the full form submission or the customer profile.

More information for fulfilment holds

More information on fulfilment holds has been added across web and mobile.

More context will be provided about a fulfilment hold, such as:

• Which app placed the hold (or manual if the hold was placed by a merchant)
• The reason for the hold
• The reason notes attached to the hold

Fresh shipping address correction functionality

Shopify has made a couple of tweaks to how shipping addresses are corrected, aiming to increase address accuracy and reduce the number of returned packages.

Managed Markets address correction service

There’s now an address correction service as a standard process for all labels in Managed Markets.

Orders with valid addresses will be available for immediate fulfillment, while Orders with invalid addresses will be placed on hold to be reviewed and corrected by Managed Markets within one business day.

Orders will be releases in ‘Address corrected’ or ‘Address error’ states, with the latter recommending you to contact the customer to correct the address.

You can opt out the address correction service in Markets > Preferences > Managed Markets if you wish.

Fix address issues in Admin

Addresses with potential issues - like invalid post codes – on the Companies, Customers, Draft Orders, and Shipping Labels pages will now be validated automatically when making changes.

Shopify will provide suggestions to fix the issues quickly and accurately.

Automatic app-based discount limit increased

The number of active automatic app-based discounts per shop has been increased.

The update also allows who were using Shopify Scripts to manage multiple promotions to correctly model them as individual automatic discounts when using apps and Shopify Functions.

Multi-currency payouts available in more regions

Multi-currency payouts are now available in the UK, Australia, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, and Austria.

This means that merchants on Advanced, Plus and Enterprise Plans can connect multiple bank accounts to a single store and settle in up to eight currencies.

New retail-first customer segments

You can now create customer segments that specifically target local customers with things like location-specific offers or in-store events more effectively.

Customer_within_distance – segment customers based on their proximity to a retail location.

Orders_placed by app and location – segment customers by sales channel, such as POS, or based on orders placed at specific retail locations.

There are also two new segment templates - accessed from the templates link inside the Segments tab - you can use to get started:

• Customers near retail location
• Customers who frequently purchased in-store in the last year

Managed Markets orders payout at first label scan

Changes to DHL eCommerce for Managed Markets means that orders will now be paid out at the first label scan by USPS – instead of after USPS delivered the parcel to the DHL eCommerce domestic hub.

Time-to-payout will therefore be decreased and there will be a consistent experience across all Managed Markets carriers.

Checkout Blocks support documentation moved

The Checkout Blocks support documentation has been updated and migrated to the Shopify Help Center alongside other Shopify apps.

The Help Centre Assistant will now also use the updated content to respond to queries faster.

Track missing or delayed payouts

Bank references will now be provided on ‘paid’ payouts in Shopify Payments.

These unique identifiers will help you track missing or delayed payouts – you can contact your bank for an update and simply provide the bank reference if a payment hasn’t settled.

Go to Finances > Payouts > Payout Details and click on the payout to find the bank reference.

Find Shopify apps by searching for features

You can now search for a specific category or feature in the Shopify App Store to get app recommendations that support these features.

The Categories section of an app listing will show exactly what feature that app offers.

Are you looking to migrate to Shopify, learn more about the platform, or need advice from a trusted Shopify Plus partner? Get in touch with our expert performance development team today.