This year's Shopify Unite presentation was the e-commerce platform's biggest yet, revealing a giant leap forward for the service provider and their users. Here are the top new announcements, much anticipated launches, and upcoming changes that will take both Shopify and your store to a truly global level.

Sections Everywhere Finally Arrives

First announced in 2018, then followed by three years of radio silence, the now renamed Online Store 2.0 will give store owners unprecedented  levels of flexibility and customization, allowing you to personalize every single aspect of your shop, from interface to checkout. Not only that, the interface and tutorials  for learning how to use these tools are more user friendly than ever. 

Along with the release of Hydrogen, a new React framework, and Oxygen, a future hosting platform, users will have more freedom than every to build their store their way.

July 15 will also see the Shopify Theme Store accepting submissions from developers, allowing store owners to share their unique builds and tools with others.

Shopify Truly Goes Global

Unite saw the announcement of 3 planetary-scale updates for users: 

1. Major investments in server farms around the word, speeding up the ecosystem until it is an incredible 50 milliseconds away from any buyer on Earth, achieved by installing so many servers that no one is ever more than 100km away from one
2. An expansion of payment options beyond the tried and true, but regionally locked, Paypal. From Venmo and Interac to the many cryptocurrencies currently in circulation and beyond, your store will be able to accept payments however really works best for your customers
3. New theme apps and customization features that will allow your store to offer localized shopping for almost any location worldwide

No customer or market will be out of your Shopify store's reach ever again

Putting Their Money Where Their Mouth Is

Beginning August 1st, Shopify is letting shop owners keep more of their money by not only rolling back all revenue share for businesses with less than $1 million in sales per year, dropping that cost from 20% to nothing, they're lowering their take on larger brands from 20% to 15%. 

This goes the same for Theme Store developers offering their builds, and the $1 million benchmark resets every year

What Wasn't Mentioned

While Unite 2021 was packed with announcements, there were a few notable developments that were noticeable no-shows 

• The Shopify Fulfillment Network 
• The Shopify Bank & Card

Whether or not these developments will appear a few years from now under a different name, like Sections Everywhere, or if they fell to the wayside due to the effect Covid-19 had in speeding up e-commerce expansion, Shopify fans will just have to wait and see.

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