Newsletter #30: Shopify Winter Editions, privacy in cars, and a spiral artwork

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

Big news: we just passed 600 subscribers! Regarding the open rate, do you remember that the last one I shared was 60%? Well, I discovered that Substack only shows the “30 day open rate”. To get the all-time average open rate, I had to compute it myself on a google sheet, as Substack does not have a public API. As of today, the all-time average open rate is 65%. It’s almost 400 people reading my newsletter every week. Thank you so much for that!

Let me share an even bigger news: I'll be starting a new chapter of my life in March (still in the Shopify space, of course) and it will be in London. So if you know someone who has a flat that I could rent, please feel free to answer this email directly. That would help me a lot. Thank you again.

In today's edition, we're discussing Shopify Winter Editions, privacy in cars, and a spiral artwork.

Let's dive in.

Work

Yesterday, I organized a gathering in Paris to watch Shopify Winter Editions together and have a drink afterwards to celebrate.

Editions is a huge bi-annual event where Shopify officially presents recent platform updates and unveils new features that were still unknown to the public.

So, what’s new?

Winter Editions 2024 are a consolidation of Shopify’s foundations: features are improved and limits are pushed further.

Here are the main announcements that Shopify made:

• The maximum number of variants per product has been increased from 100 to 2,000. It’s currently in developer preview.

• The maximum number of products per bundle has been increased from 10 to 30.

• Shopify Subscriptions app is now in full release. I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time!

• Shopify Markets Pro is now available in the US.

• Shopify combined listings (exclusive to Shopify Plus): for products that come in multiple colors or styles, we’ll soon be able to merchandize them from a single parent listing. Each child product will have its own description, media gallery, and URL. This is something we used to achieve with metafields. It’s going to be handy having it included natively.

• Checkout Extensibility is now available for the Thank You and Order Status pages.

• Customer Account Extensibility (currently in developer preview): we’ll be able to build extensions directly into new customer accounts with the same UI components as Shopify Checkout.

• An AI-powered semantic search (exclusive to Shopify Plus): customers can now use more natural words and phrases to search for products. For example, they could type “Show me something warm to wear in the winter”, and the search would surface winter coats and accessories.

• Ability to reuse theme blocks and nest them: it adds so much flexibility to the Theme Editor. With this new feature, I honestly don’t believe we need flex sections. Let’s see if they are still released in the future.

• New web performance dashboard.

• New POS terminal.

• Line of credit: eligible merchants can now get a flexible and customizable financing solution from Shopify.

• Native exchanges: merchants will soon be able to handle exchanges directly in their Shopify admin without a third-party application.

The features I am the most excited about are the nested blocks, the web performance dashboard and the native subscriptions application. I look forward to playing around with them.

Beyond these announcements, what struck me the most about Shopify Editions is how the website itself was built.

Editions is not a simple landing page, it’s a complex project that was brought to life by many professions working together harmoniously.

I had the privilege to discuss the genesis of Editions with Arnaud Tanielian, Engineering Manager at Shopify. Arnaud manages the development team of the Shopify Core Creative team, in charge of building pages on shopify.com and other marketing surfaces.

Here are amazing insights that Arnaud kindly shared with me about Shopify Winter Editions 2024:

• The website is a Shopify Plus store running on Hydrogen and deployed on Oxygen.

• To build its UI, Shopify’s team used Storebook and Chromatic.

• It leverages native features, including metafields and metaobjects.

• The team invested heavily in 3D. For example, the hero banner contains a 3D scene so rich that it could be described for hours. Shopify worked with experts in WebGL and Three.js. They used Spline to design everything before to see how it would work, then they built the 3D models themselves and optimized them. It was a great occasion for creatives and developers to work together.

• They used the View Transitions API, as well as CSS scroll driven animations.

• They used Rive to create interactive animations. For example, in the card « intuitive filters and search for recruiting creators », you can click on « Instagram », « TikTok » or « YouTube » and see the animation layout change.

• The website is composed of different sections: conversion, channels, marketing, operations, developer. The developer section appears to be important as it has its own color theme and special banner. This banner is not built with 3D but animations on top of images.

• Some calls to action (CTA) are dynamic: depending on whether you’re logged in, you will be taken to your Shopify admin or to free trial starting page.

• There are 2 easter eggs on the website. Will you find them?

To conclude, Shopify Editions is more than just a website where Shopify announces new features. It’s a global project that brings many teams together during 4 to 5 months. With 2 Editions per year, Shopify is basically always working on it.

Editions is also the best way for Shopify to “eat their own food”, meaning try their own products first hand. They put themselves in the shoes of merchants. It’s a humbling experience that allows them to improve their product along the way.

Inspire

I read this quote in Mozilla’s last study called “Privacy Not Included” (PNI).

Mozilla examined the privacy and security flaws of 25 major car brands spanning 5 countries: the US, Germany, Japan, France, and South Korea.

The worst offender is Nissan. The Japanese car manufacturer collects a wide range of information but does not specify how. They say they can share and sell consumers’ “preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes” to data brokers, law enforcement, and other third parties.

Other top offenders include Volkswagen, Toyota, Kia, and Mercedes-Benz.

According to a study conducted by McKinsey, by 2030, car data monetization could be an industry worth $750 billion.

Looking at the world we live in, I should not be surprised by these findings. Yet, I was still a bit shocked, as I had never considered cars as another place where I need to be vigilant about my personal data being collected.

Discover more in Mozilla’s summary article or in their full study.

Explore

Today I’d like to simply share an artwork I recently discovered.

It’s a spiral head painted by the artist Pavel Tchelitchev (1898-1957).

It was shared on Twitter by @mymind with this comment:

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this edition until the end.

I'll talk to you soon.

Take good care of yourself.

Coralie