eCommerce News

Get to know all the latest happenings from the eCommerce industry right here. From upgrades, partnerships, to any new development, we'll deliver all the insights as soon as it happens.

WooCommerce Improves its Home Screen to Improve Store Management

July 20, 2021

Merchants on WooCommerce will now get to manage their online stores more efficiently. From getting an overview of tasks and getting alerts, the store management has become more efficient. Merchants gain a glimpse of how the store is performing and can access quick links to standard pages straight from the Home screen. The upgraded home screen allows store owners to focus more on their business and less on managing their day-to-day operations. Merchants can access all the essential metrics, such as daily sales, net sales, orders, and items sold. Even get to control and view the notifications from the home screen. WooCommerce has made store management more efficient.

WooCommerce and DHL Break New Grounds With International Shipping

July 20, 2021

U.S-based Merchants that use WooCommerce shipping with DHL stand to strengthen their shipping model. They get to unlock more opportunities by expanding their reach around the world. On WooCommerce Shipping, all store owners need to add an international shipping zone. Once done, they'll automatically see DHL as a shipping service and get to print DHL Express labels. U.S-based businesses can print DHL Express labels and ship their products around the world with ease. However, this update only applies to those who already have WooCommerce shipping on their online store. If you don't, you can still install the same for free since WooCommerce Shipping is built into the WordPress dashboard.

WooCommerce Merchants Get to Sync Their Product Inventory With Google Listing

July 20, 2021

WooCommerce store owners can upload their entire inventory to Google for free. They can connect their WooCommerce store seamlessly with Google merchant center to create free listings, run ad campaigns, and analyze their performance. Merchants get more visibility across Google's search engine, Shopping, Images, and YouTube. List products for free in the "Shopping" tab and appear in Google search, Google image, and Gmail. Syncing with the Google merchant center allows merchants to update their product and store info automatically. Merchants can start ad campaigns to improve their impressions on Google Search, Shopping, YouTube, and more. The ads display your inventory to anyone searching for related products. Install the Google Ads and Listings extension, connect the Google Ads account and monitor your campaign straight from WooCommerce.

MailPoet Becomes Part of WooCommerce

July 20, 2021

MailPoet, a WordPress plugin that allows merchants to send, edit, create, and automate emails is set to join WooCommerce. From transactional emails to abandoned cart emails, merchants can find an all-in-one solution for managing emails in MailPoet. MailPoet will enable WooCommerce merchants to improve their email messaging, communications, and marketing. MailPoet contains features such as built-in email customizer, time-saving automation, analytics, a follow up option for abandoned carts and recommendations. MailPoet hopes to simplify email marketing campaigns for store owners. A central dashboard within the plugin will help the merchants launch, manage, and measure their email marketing activities. MailPoet offers a beautiful way to combine content with Commerce.

WooCommerce Mobile App is Set to See a New Feature

July 20, 2021

The WooCommerce mobile app that was launched in 2019, and has since witnessed periodic updates and revisions is set to get a brand new feature. The app will go beyond order management, billing verification, and multiple store management. The new "in-app product creation" feature allows merchants to create simple, grouped, and external products directly in the Woo Mobile App. Merchants will be able to name it, photograph it, price it, publish, or save it as a draft for later. Merchants can do more than just view and edit the products. This feature helps them add products on the go. The new feature will go live in the 5.5 version on both iOS and Android.

AutomateWoo Comes Out With Bookings Automation

July 20, 2021

A brand new solution for bookings has popped up on WooCommerce, that allows merchants to inform and update their customers about bookings. If you run reservations, appointments, etc., from your WooCommerce site, then it makes perfect sense to install AutomateWoo 5.3 on your online store that automates your booking related manual processes. AutomateWoo 5.3 allows you to send custom confirmation emails, collect post-booking feedback, it lets you to set up workflows, customize emails, and much more. Overall, merchants can respond swiftly based on the status of a user's booking. Merchants can vary the email content for different products. The latest release also includes some bug fixes and improvements.

Adobe Commerce Launches an Upgrade Compatibility Tool

July 20, 2021

Adobe Commerce decided to launch the Upgrade Compatibility Tool to make the upgrade process more transparent, predictable, and seamless. The tool allows store owners to easily upgrade to the latest version of Magento in no time. Merchants can easily switch to the newest version of Magento Commerce and make the most out of the eCommerce platform. The tool helps merchants identify incompatible customizations before an upgrade, making the upgrade process more predictable and economical. The Command-Line Interface (CLI) tool analyzes customizations on any Magento Commerce version and detects code, validates Magento PHP APIs and GraphQL schema to identify issues that must get resolved before performing an upgrade.

Adobe Commerce Sees the PHP Upgrade From 7.3 to 7.4

July 20, 2021

PHP 7.3 will reach its end of support in December 2021. The Adobe Commerce 2.3.7 release includes support for PHP 7.4. It is suggested that merchants upgrade to the 2.4 version. Since support for PHP 7.4 in 2.3.7 is intended only to help merchants maintain PCI compliance until they can upgrade to 2.4. Adobe Commerce 2.3 reaches end of support in April 2022. Adobe Commerce 2.4 will remain compatible with PHP 7.3, however it is recommended that merchants who have upgraded to 2.4 also upgrade their PHP to 7.4. All merchants to upgrade to PHP 7.4 before December 2021, even the ones still using Magento 2.3.

Magento Commerce is Now Adobe Commerce

July 20, 2021

Magento has officially consolidated the branding of its licensed commerce product from Magento Commerce and Adobe Commerce Cloud to the single brand of Adobe Commerce. The official name will go as Adobe Commerce, powered by Magento. However, the market focus and product priorities, the support merchants get will remain unchanged. It still continues to focus on helping businesses across their commerce journey. Adobe continues to further multi-channel commerce, best-in-class experience and marketing capabilities. Empowering the global community of merchants, partners, and developers to collaborate, contribute, and extend the Magento capabilities is still very much a focus. Adobe acquired Magento in 2018 and with this change Adobe reasserts its alliance with the Magento ecosystem even more.

CedCommerce Launches New Magento Extension

July 20, 2021

CedCommerce, which has been providing eCommerce services to merchants on the Magento platform has come up with a new Magento Integration. The latest extension helps to simplify the order management and sales management processes for the sellers. However, the extension is limited to those merchants who use the range marketplace to sell their products. In essence, this solution makes uploading and selling products on the online Range marketplace even easier. The extension connects the Magento store to the online Range marketplace. Thus, merchants can directly control every aspect of their presence on the marketplace, like sales, performance and other metrics straight from the dashboard on Magento.

Magento Association Connect Event of 2021

July 20, 2021

Magento Association Connect virtual event for the year 2021, held on April 29th proved to be a successful and enlightening discussion. The event focuses on providing a learning opportunity for all participants. The bright members of the community gathered around once again and discussed the latest developments around Adobe Commerce in an interactive session. The event touched upon Adobe Commerce Product Roadmap and delved into other areas such as, PayPal Pay Later, preserving Google traffic while migrating to Magento 2, the security components of Magento 2, the SWAT - Site-Wide Analysis Tool and so much more. All in all the event proved to be a great hit for all attendees, speakers, and sponsors.

Live Search,Powered by AI is Part of Adobe Commerce

July 20, 2021

Live Search powered by Adobe Sensei will help merchants create better site search experiences on their eCommerce websites and help consumers be more efficient with their time. Live Search utilizes the power of Adobe Sensei AI to return relevant and highly accurate search results. This helps merchants create better search experiences in their store. Shoppers can quickly find what they want and sometimes even discover products that fulfill their expectations better than the one they had in mind. Merchants get to control the attributes of the search experiences from the admin panel. Merchants can boost products, bury products or even hide products. Plus, get to manage synonyms for each product.

Shopify Launches Subscription Support for PayPal Express

July 20, 2021

Shopify has launched subscription support for PayPal express. This launch is a landmark change since it'll be the first time that Shopify offers leeway for additional payment gateways. Earlier it had offered the same for Shopify payments, but that has always been part of the Shopify ecosystem. The launch provides an opportunity to support merchants around the world. Merchants using subscription apps integrated with Shopify checkout can now use PayPal express. Earlier, merchants residing in countries where Shopify Payments wasn't supported could not use any other payment gateway. Now, they can rely on PayPal express for their subscriptions. Their customers can complete the transactions through PayPal.

Shopify and Google Deepen Their eCommerce Partnership

July 20, 2021

Shopify has decided to expand its partnership with Google to help merchants win through improved discovery and a higher-converting checkout. In a way, Shopify wants to help merchants unlock the value of the Google channel by leveraging Shopify's expertise and Google's leadership in search and discovery. Regardless, this partnership is only going to make selling more seamless. Furthermore, Shopify is also looking to simplify the onboarding process for its Google channel. Shopify plans to implement a frictionless experience to help merchants get started on Google faster and list their products with just a few clicks. This cuts down the time to launch and makes it much easier to start selling through the Google platform.

Shopify’s Shop Pay Extends to Facebook and Google

July 20, 2021

Shopify's Shop Pay becomes the first product to extend beyond the Shopify platform. It'll soon be available to any business selling on Facebook and Google. The best part, the one-click checkout feature will be available to merchants even if they don't use Shopify. Independent brands on other portals will soon be able to integrate this on their page. Shopify aims to bring a best-in-class checkout to every buyer, merchant, platform, and device. Shop pay's accelerated checkout will help merchants deliver a better checkout experience for their consumers on Facebook and Google. This is the first time that a Shopify product will be available to merchants who don't use Shopify.

New Changes on Shopify for Metafields and Custom Content

July 20, 2021

Merchants now get the support for additional metafields. This allows merchants to add their own attributes to products, as well as product variants. In the future, Shopify would enable the same for customers and orders page as well. Furthermore, Shopify will build Custom Content on top of the new Metafields development and will serve as Shopify's Content Management platform. Custom content will help merchants on the Shopify platform to store content of any format within Shopify. This ability allows more room for flexibility, as it helps merchants to store all the data within one platform, which then makes data retrieval easier. The improved levels of flexibility and customization applies acrossOnline Store 2.0 and Custom Storefronts.

New Improvements to the Shopify Storefront API

July 20, 2021

From July 1st, the Shopify Storefront API will feature a host of new upgrades and improvements. From a New cart functionality to various selling plans, and international pricing. The new cart functionality is optimized for top-notch performance and correctly estimates the cost of products, with taxes and discounts. Plus, it is designed to scale without any store-wide rate limits. The selling plans help the merchants to set up subscriptions, integrations with Shopify’s checkout, and create pre-orders. The international pricing update will offer buyers a chance to view the pricing of a product on their local currency. The local pickup update will help buyers to collect their order from a nearby location.

Entrepreneurs and Developers Get Limitless Creative Power Over Their Store

July 20, 2021

In a new development on the Shopify platform, developers and merchants will get even more potential to build unique experiences. In the Shopify Unite 2021 event, a major set of changes were announced that will give merchants endless possibilities to improve the presentation of their brands on the platform and to grow their businesses. Merchants stand to get custom storefront capabilities, online Store 2.0 (the biggest update to the Shopify liquid platform), and a faster Shopify checkout. Furthermore, the new development features more investment into API-powered storefronts that will allow developers to unlock the fast, feature-rich, and flexible Shopify platform's true potential.

BigCommerce and WineDirect Get Into a Partnership

July 20, 2021

BigCommerce and WineDirect entered a partnership to build a world-class online presence for thousands of brands in the WineDirect ecosystem. The said brands can extend their reach, improve the visibility of their brand, engage with buyers, and sell their products to regions that were previously inaccessible. In essence, wineries get to take their eCommerce capabilities to the next level. BigCommerce hopes to support its winery partners by providing them with the best eCommerce tools available in the wine industry. WineDirect’s BigCommerce store will roll out in time for the holiday season this year. BigCommerce also hopes to minimize the impact from COVID-19 on retail businesses by giving them a Direct to Customer (D2C) channel online.

BigCommerce Lets Merchants Take Full Control of Their Store Data

July 20, 2021

Store owners on BigCommerce can now make data-driven decisions for their business using pre-built integrations with top analytics tools such as Google BigQuery, Google Data Studio, and more. Merchants can compile, assess, understand, and use store data to gain insight into user behavior and improve their decision-making process and business performance. The Big Open Data Solutions is accessible through the BigCommerce Control Panel. Merchants even get the flexibility to use these pre-built integrations with Twilio Segment and transfer their data to a warehouse or customer data platform (CDP). Merchants can also generate personalized reporting across their customer, order, and product catalog data.

BigCommerce Launches a B2B Edition of its Platform

July 20, 2021

BigCommerce announced a B2B Edition of its eCommerce platform, a new offering that elevates the eCommerce experience for B2B enterprise merchants. The B2B Edition provides an advanced suite of B2B features to help merchants facilitate seamless online operations, provide swift transactional functionalities, and convenient self-service capabilities for their customers. The B2B edition is bound to make B2B business processes a lot smoother and frictionless. The B2B edition promises exclusive sales features and seamless integration with point-of-sale and ERP platforms. Furthermore, B2B companies can now manage complex operations more efficiently, add new channels quickly, and create B2C experiences. The B2B edition is set to simplify and support B2B goals more effectively.

Gooten Partners with BigCommerce

July 20, 2021

Gooten, a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that provides smart supply chain solutions for print on demand businesses, has established a partnership with BigCommerce. What this means is, certain BigCommerce merchants will gain access to Gooten’s on-demand manufacturing supply chain. Gooten provides brands with tailored solutions, helping them make personalized products and expand their product lines. Through the partnership with Gooten, BigCommerce illustrates their commitment to providing store owners, the highest-caliber technologies and service providers. And as it so happens, Gluten shares the same ideology to help merchants sell more, grow faster, and maximize success. End of the day, this collaboration will benefit the end customers.

Authorize.net and BigCommerce Team Up for SMBs

July 20, 2021

Authorize.net and BigCommerce team up to offer small businesses a quick way to upgrade their eCommerce footprint, start accepting digital payments, protect against fraud, and other business risks. SMBs that run the risk of getting affected by payment frauds and mainly stay localized on offline payments can start accepting virtual payments. BigCommerce and Authorize.net hope to help SMBs broaden their payment capabilities. So, they too achieve the digital transformation that is slowly taking over all the business segments. Being able to accept payments online and deviating from a cash or check-only model will see an improvement in sales, revenue, and profits.

BigCommerce and Amazon Get Into a Partnership

July 20, 2021

The BigCommerce partnership with Amazon allows any merchant to use the Amazon service called Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF). Normally, this would be typically reserved for existing third-party sellers on Amazon to fulfill orders on their own websites. However, the BigCommerce deal extends the capability to merchants that don’t sell on Amazon, using a new Amazon MCF app that integrates with BigCommerce stores. Using the Amazon delivery network, sellers can dispatch the goods to the buyers based on their shipping speed, instead of relying on UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc. In fact, the order could have been placed on the merchant's eCommerce site or on a marketplace. With this deal Amazon sends a clear signal of its broader shipping ambitions.