Shopify, the e-commerce platform that reportedly powers 25% of all commerce in Australia, has launched over 100 new and improved features aimed at helping Australian retailers grow their businesses.

The updates are designed to help merchants convert more buyers, sell to more customers, and streamline operations. The new features are part of Shopify's Winter '24 Edition and are expected to enhance the shopping experience for customers of retailers like JB HiFi, Culture Kings and July.

The new features include multiple merchandising upgrades, a free Subscriptions app, and improvements to the way products are discovered and listed on Shopify. The platform's research found 53% of retailers are focused on customer-centric strategies to retain loyalty during the cost of living crisis, with 66% stating customer experience is a key driver of growth.

Among the new features is a 2,000 variant limit, combined listings, better product classification, a web performance dashboard, global infrastructure improvements, semantic search, a native subscriptions app, one-page checkout, checkout extensibility, checkout sheet kit, sales representative permissions, and headless B2B storefronts.

“The demands of commerce are constantly changing, and Shopify is moving fast to keep our merchants at the forefront of innovation," Managing Director, APAC at Shopify, Shaun Broughton, said. “The release of our Winter ’24 Edition will help our merchants grow their businesses, while providing them with the strong foundations that are fundamental to success.”

E-commerce B2B sales are estimated to be worth $7.7 trillion globally, more than double the size of direct-to-consumer, and expected to grow by 18% annually until 2030. Australia's B2B e-commerce market is estimated to reach AU$45.7 billion by 2025, with 80% of all B2B sales expected to occur online by 2025.

Shopify's new features include a 2000 variant limit per product via its new GraphQL APIs to better manage complex catalogues. Better product classifications through a new taxonomy also see a new 'category' card on the product page automatically applied to category specific product attributes, such as colour, size or age group.

There's also a web performance dashboard, infrastructure speed improvements making the platform 35% faster, semantic search using AI, a new app for merchants to manage subscriptions via the Shopify admin, and a redesigned, one-page checkout.