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In sales, data is power. More data? More power to analyze, compare, act. 

To boost your ability to make better, data-driven decisions at any time, we’ve made our Online Store Dashboard more comprehensive and effective, starting with this big change: if you’re a multi-channel merchant you’ll now have data from all your channels—not just your online store—right in front of you, in an easy-to-scan one-look overview.

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By the end of July, your customers will no longer be directed to checkout.shopify.com to complete their purchase. Instead, their entire shopping experience—from homepage to checkout—will take place on your domain. No more domain switching.

Today, as you log in to Shopify to check your sales or fulfill orders, you’ll notice a change: we’ve had a makeover. The new look and feel is part of a broader effort to build the future of Shopify and supporting apps with one design mind, using the same set of guidelines.

But why does it matter to you?

We know that change can be hard sometimes, but these changes were actually designed to simplify your day-to-day. The fresh look brings consistency across Shopify products, helps pages load faster, and makes content and menus easier to find and read.

On April 20, a thousand Shopify Partners from around the world gathered together in San Francisco for our 2nd annual Unite conference: a two-day event to discuss all things Shopify, commerce, and technology.

Unite is about connecting with our partner and developer communities who build the powerful apps, beautiful ecommerce themes and stores for our merchants. Special keynote presentations from Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein, CEO Tobi Lütke, and Director of UX Lynsey Thornton presented partners with a challenge:

Help Shopify find new and innovative ways to make commerce better and easier for everyone.

Here are some of the game-changing announcements we made at Unite this year, and how it will benefit you as a merchant.

The launch of Multichannel Shopify in 2015 was the beginning of Shopify connecting you to millions of new customers on channels like Facebook Shop, Pinterest, and Wanelo. Over a dozen channels have since been added, including Messenger, to help you sell to and support customers over chat, as well as Amazon, to simplify managing your products on the world’s largest marketplace.

Nearly 60% of merchants like you have installed at least one channel in the last year. With more channels being added to Shopify along with new and convenient mobile workflows, channels can help you find more customers faster than ever.

Starting today, Shopify merchants in the US and Canada can display calculated USPS and Canada Post shipping rates to customers through Shopify Shipping. With calculated shipping, you'll no longer need to manually enter estimated flat rates for all the places you ship, and you'll always charge the right amount for shipping.

The Shopify integration with Amazon makes it possible for anyone selling in USD or CAD to easily list on the world’s largest marketplace and get next-level product and brand visibility.

Your online store showcases your brand, enables you to communicate with loyal customers, and offers the best buying experience. Expanding the ways you sell with Shopify allows you to do even more: you'll be able to increase sales by reaching millions of customers hunting for products like yours. 

From trading cattle with your neighbor, to buying pizza online—it’s clear that commerce has changed tremendously over time.

But what was the catalyst for it all? How did something like ecommerce become this $1.915 trillion industry?

In celebration of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we decided to play detective to find the truth behind the history of ecommerce. We wanted to uncover the first product to ever be sold online.

Our findings were pretty surprising.

Click, drag, drop, save. It’s never been easier to build your online store.

Starting today, you can easily create a unique online store, one that perfectly represents your brand—no design or coding skills required. With just a few clicks, you can add, reorder, or remove anything from your home page, giving you the freedom to build an online store that really lets your brand shine through.

We’ve already made it easy for you to chat with your customers in real-time using Facebook Messenger. Now, we’re making it easy to turn those conversations into sales.

Starting today, your customers will be able to browse and buy products in Messenger—all while chatting with you in real-time. To shop in Messenger, your customers will simply start a conversation with you, and then tap Shop Now to view your product catalog. When they discover something they love, they can buy it with just a few taps using Shopify’s checkout.

After an order is placed, it will appear in Shopify just like orders from other sales channels like your online store.

Typing your address and credit card details will soon be a thing of the past. By this fall, shoppers will be able to buy from Shopify stores using just a phone and fingerprint.

Apple Pay is coming to the web, and Shopify-powered online stores will be among the first to accept it. With Apple Pay, your customers will be able to quickly and securely check out from your online store using Safari on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac by simply tapping the Apple Pay button and scanning their fingerprint.

Virtual reality is best described through the moments—or rather the memories—of the things you experience when you have that headset on.

When I put on the HTC Vive and experienced virtual reality for the first few times:

• I played fetch with a robot dog in a futuristic laboratory.
• I threw a baseball hat into the sun.
• I leapt away from the low groan of a zombie behind me.
• I tried to use my virtual hand to scratch my real nose when it was itchy.

In virtual reality, I became an active participant in an environment completely removed from reality. And that’s what makes VR a wildly different experience from watching a movie or even playing a video game.