Developers who build for the Shopify App Store will now pay 0 per cent revenue share, down from the current 20 per cent cut, for the first $1M they earn annually on the platform starting on August 1, Shopify announced at Unite 2021 on June 29.
Moreover, the $1M benchmark will reset annually and the same revenue share model will also be available to over 1.7M Shopify Theme Store developers. For all gain above $1M, Shopify’s revenue share will be 15 per cent of marginal revenue, the company said.
“The internet is the world’s largest city, and Shopify is building its commerce infrastructure,” Tobi Lutke, chief executive officer of Shopify, said at the event. “The future of commerce on the internet relies on creative expression at every touchpoint. Together with developers, we are building the infrastructure to make this possible.”
Additionally, Shopify announced greater levels of flexibility, customization, and creativity across all areas of Shopify’s infrastructure updates, from storefronts and checkout to the Theme Store.
Online Store 2.0
The company unveiled Online Store 2.0, coming with a whole slew of new developer features including sections on all pages for end-to-end store personalization, a new editor experience, and theme app extensions. These features enable merchants to create better online customer experiences in a low-code/no-code environment. This means brands are no longer constrained by technical limits and have free creative control over their customer experience.
Shopify also showcased several new developer tools, including a new integration with Github, Theme Check, development themes, and improvements to its Liquid platform. A new default theme named Dawn is also on its way which, the company says, is faster and will be the new standard for Shopify theme development, with built-in Online Store 2.0 features. The Theme Store will open for new developer submissions on July 15.
New content management platform
The company also announced it will be adding support for additional Metafields later this year, which will allow merchants to add their own attributes to models like products and product variants, with support for other models like customers and orders.
To be launched soon, the new Custom Content feature will build atop the new Metafields infrastructure and will serve as Shopify’s content management platform. It will allow merchants to store content in any format within Shopify.
New React framework and hosting platform for Shopify Custom Storefronts
Shopify is soon launching Hydrogen, a new React framework for developers to build custom storefronts and their new hosting platform, Oxygen.
The company also announced that it has expanded its hosting to every continent, with Shopify commerce logic running in over 100 server locations that will directly serve API requests for Custom Storefronts for faster response times.
Other new improvements to Shopify’s Storefront API include new cart functionality that estimates the cost of products, with taxes and discounts; selling plans that enable merchants to set up subscriptions, pre-orders, and other direct integrations with Shopify’s native checkout; international pricing to offer localized buyer experiences by serving up per-country pricing according to buyer location; and local pickup so buyers can purchase a product online and pick up from their desired location.
These new features became available on July 1.
New checkout extensions and payments platform
The new checkout extensions will allow developers to build apps into Shopify Checkout. The post-purchase checkout extension is available now, so developers can build experiences like upsell and donation requests that render after checkout, with additional checkout extensions rolling out later this year. These checkout customizations will also work in Shop Pay. In addition, the company has introduced Payments Platform which allows merchants to integrate third-party payment gateways into Shopify Checkout.