Have you got big growth targets for your eCommerce store this year? Are you looking to massively increase the volume of conversions via your website? Most importantly, do you want to stay ahead of the curve and impress your bosses/directors/investors? Then keep reading and discover the Shopify trends that’ll give you a competitive edge in 2024…
The top Shopify development trends for 2024
We’ll kick things off by taking a look at the top Shopify development trends that are set to dominate 2024.
Use your head(less)
You may have heard the term ‘headless commerce’ bandied about by marketing pros and developers alike throughout 2023. Well, prepare to hear it a great deal more in 2024.
Headless commerce - which refers to a type of eCommerce architecture where the front end and back end of a website are decoupled - is allowing brands to provide unique, highly-personalised, multichannel experiences to their customers.
Compared to traditional eCommerce architectures, which would use a single platform to manage both the front and the back end of a website, headless commerce allows for enormous amounts of creativity with minimal work.
This is a significant advantage when you consider how competitive the eCommerce space has become in recent years.
Brands that utilise headless commerce can make changes on the fly - be that, changing templates or making style/UX changes to the front end of their site.
Compare this to traditional eCommerce architectures where any changes to the front end also require changes to the back end (resulting in time-consuming projects), and you can see why headless commerce is becoming the de facto choice for the most ambitious eCommerce brands.
Is your eCommerce store built on a headless commerce platform? If it’s not, it should be…
The need for speed
Yes, it’s become a tired cliché spouted by marketers and columnists alike, but the average attention span really does seem to be decreasing.
To compound this, major search engines like Google have also recognised the increasing levels of consumer impatience; as a result, they’ve made loading speed a major ranking factor for websites.
So, whether you like it or not, your eCommerce website has to be faster than ever in 2024.
With Shopify sites in particular, things like the Ajax API allow you to build collections or category pages with elements such as filtering, pagination, predictive search bars that can be used without reloading the page.
This can all be achieved without adding to page load - meaning you can create a features packed site that is rapid…
That’s not the only API that can improve your site’s performance. Take a look at the Section Rendering API, which improves the way in which users interact with your site. For example, it can allow you to update page content without reloading the entire page. It does this by ‘fetching and dynamically replacing only certain elements of the page’.
APIs such as the ones above aren’t the only way of keeping your Shopify store light and fast. It’s also important to work with a Shopify agency (erm, hi! 👋) to ensure that things like your Liquid code are efficiently written and not carrying out overly complicated actions that’ll s l o w t h i n g s d o o o w n….
Prevent race conditions between apps
The chances are you’re using a number of apps with your Shopify site. In fact, according to Shopify themselves, the average Shopify store uses at least six apps.
However, given that these apps will have typically been developed by separate developers, they won’t always work harmoniously.
In the worst instances, multiple apps operating at the same time can result in the triggering of race conditions between said apps. This means that two or more of the apps attempt to perform operations at the same time. Such a situation can result in issues, especially if operations need to be carried out in particular sequences.
To ensure this situation doesn’t arise with your Shopify store, work with a Shopify Plus Partner agency. They have the requisite skills and knowledge to implement the GraphQL mutations and delay features that’ll stop race conditions occurring.
The top Shopify marketing trends for 2024
As well as making sure your Shopify website is in tip-top tech shape, you also need to drive people to it, and convert them into paying customers. Below, you’ll find some of the biggest marketing trends that’ll shape your activity in 2024.
Social commerce
This isn’t so much a new trend, but rather one that’s reaching maturity and is set to flourish in 2024.
Social commerce - the practice of using social media platforms to directly market and sell your products to consumers - is growing amongst eCommerce brands.
In fact, in 2024 it is expected that the value of social commerce sales worldwide will surpass $1 trillion!
What does that mean for you? It means there’s a whole heap of sales to be made through social commerce.
If you’ve not already got a social paid social strategy in place - you need one.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
If you’ve not heard of Open AI’s new ChatGPT tool, where have you been? Under a rock?!
After generating thousands of headlines and opinion pieces, the true potential of ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence is starting to be uncovered by marketers.
For eCommerce purposes, AI opens up the potential for significant productivity gains. For example, AI has the potential to rapidly populate product descriptions and other tasks which would normally have taken an individual hours of time to write.
Sure, you shouldn’t simply drop AI generated copy onto a website - Google has decidedly mixed feelings about this - but so long as it is properly proofread, edited and amended by a skilled human, it could prove to be a useful tool - especially for those brands that have very large product inventories.
Personalisation
Hey 123, how are you doing? That’s not your name? Oh, right - no one likes to be referred to as a mere number.
That’s why personalisation is a trend that’s just getting bigger and bigger. Consumers are hungry for personalised interactions. In fact, according to a recent report from global consultancy firm McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions.
When effectively implemented, it’ll deliver a host of benefits to your brand - the most significant of which being growth.
According to the same report from McKinsey, companies that are experiencing high growth, drive 40% more of their revenue from personalisation than their slower-growing rivals.
With Shopify, it’s easy to implement personalisation.
The ways in which you can add personalisation to your Shopify store in 2024 include:
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Product recommendations - by dynamically serving up product recommendations (based on a user’s previous browsing behaviour), you add a touch of personalisation that’s not only enjoyed by the user, but which is proven to increase conversions.
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Offer free shipping, discounts or other offers - based on the traffic source of your visitors, you can create personalised offers that will increase conversion. For example, someone visiting your Shopify store from Amazon is likely to be closer to making a purchase than someone who has visited your store from a social media platform. Turn these visitors into customers with personalised offers.
- Add smart reviews - you shouldn’t just allow customers to leave reviews on your products. You should allow them to leave smart reviews. For example, allow reviewers to add extra details such as height, weight, build, skin colour etc. These reviews will feel much more personal to web visitors who share those characteristics - making them much more likely to proceed to purchase.
Add that level of personalisation to your Shopify store in 2024, and you’ll stand a good chance of significantly increasing the conversion rate of your website - great news if you have ambitious growth and sales targets to hit this year!
Photorealistic 3D models
2D just ain’t gonna cut it in 2024. With an increasing proportion of shopping being done online, brands are exploring new and better ways to display their products.
Enter photorealistic 3D models.
Allowing consumers to manipulate, rotate and view products in far higher fidelity, photorealistic 3D models give shoppers a much clearer picture as to what they’ll get if they make a purchase.
Match 3D renders with other tech such as AR (Augmented Reality) and shoppers will even be able to picture how products will look in their own home, or do ‘virtual try-ons’ in the case of clothing items.
As you can imagine, providing a much more detailed insight into what a product looks like leads to an increase in conversions. One company that provides WebGL 3D rendered graphics found that its clients saw 40% higher conversion rates compared to when they used basic 2D images.
A 40% increase in conversion rates is definitely not to be sniffed at!
Velstar: Shopify development and growth marketing in one
So, there you have it; the Shopify trends that every eCommerce manager needs to know in 2024.
Now that you know them, it’s time to implement them.
That’s where Velstar steps in. As the UK’s leading Shopify development and growth marketing agency, we can help implement and execute the development and marketing strategies outlined above that’ll boost your brand in 2024.
Want to find out more? Then let’s chat…
