Upcoming Shopify API Enhancements Bring Both Potential and Pain

Take a deep breath.

Significant updates are coming to Shopify's APIs that will shake up the app ecosystem. These are not "newly announced" (some I recall at Unite last year) but they are getting closer.

What's happening? 3 Things.

1 - Checkout Customization.

This is a way to brand checkout (Branding API) as well as a way to use Functions and Apps to add functionality to checkouts.

This completely bypasses having to edit checkout.liquid files, which only developers could do.

These types of apps can only be installed on Plus Stores from what I can tell.

Which, I can't tell how I feel about the Shopify Plus-only part yet. I think Shopify will likely pull down any essential apps into Core over time, as they determine that. Developers, you are sometimes building Shopify's roadmap ahead of them. That's part of the game.

2 - Some Apple-level privacy enhancements for apps surrounding customer data.

The instructions are detailed and difficult. It protects all data that identifies a particular customer's transaction: events, customer records, order records, fulfillment, shipping rates, store comments (could this mean UGC?), gift cards + payments.

Even more restrictions if you want name, address, phone, e-mail.

Your app will need rewrites if it's impacted. And extra approvals.

Deadlines? New apps April 2023.

Existing Apps July 2023.

3 - A complete reimagination of how pixels work

This will affect any app that attempts to track customer behavior. Which is to say, everyone?

Essentially, Shopify is going to become its own pixel / data manager (like a Segment), which will govern the behavior of pixels including what events you can publish and subscribe to. You will have to register with Shopify. Including what events and Javascript functions you can access.

I admit I haven't gotten my head around how substantial this part of it is.

These updates are controversial. Some developers will give up and stop. Others will see this as an opportunity. API changes are like that.

Shopify is the "opinionated Cloud platform" (more on this later). If you walk backward from "Shop Pay is essential to our business and customer experience" then checkout customization becomes tricky (don't want people disabling it) and requires a carefully thought-out extensibility model. Enter Checkout Extensions.

In 2022, if you are allowing access customer data, then privacy needs to be a top concern. I applaud Shopify for getting ahead of the narrative here.

The reason? The downside risk for Shopify is much worse. Having no policies, and rogue apps stealing data (think: Meta/Cambridge Analytica) -- if it can happen, it will happen.

For the upset developers and merchants, I encourage you to read and re-read a copy of "Who Moved My Cheese?" and think about the ecosystem you want to be in.

If you want to play in D2C, it's hard to avoid Shopify.

Strap in.