Merchants must have complete control over the appearance and feel of their website. They must be able to create a unique user experience that is tailored to their consumer base and designed in a way that symbolizes their brand. With the growing business need for companies to create entirely customized, dynamic and creative buyer experiences across many channels, developer need for implementation flexibility is increasing as well. So, if you also want to build your custom Storefront for your business, hire a Shopify developer.
Recently, Shopify brought new improvements in the Storefront API. It introduces improvement in the product filtering through the storefront API, new product taxonomy object, and additional meta fields definition on collections, order, and customers. With it, the merchants can customize and scale their business.
Also Check: https://www.shopify.in/partners/blog/shopify-api-release-oct-2021
List of API changes associated with the latest version
The Storefront API powers custom storefronts, which are one-of-a-kind shopping experiences. In this blog, we will be discussing the improvement brought in the Shopify APIs.
Product Filtering in Collections
The new release of the Shopify API showcase that the merchant can filter the products in a collection to narrow down the search results given to the customers. Moreover, you can filter products in a collection based on the vendor, product type, variant options, price, and whether or not the product is in stock after retrieving them. With the new mutation, the merchant can send order invoices and new error codes for bulk mutations to retrieve a translatable resource.
Cart API
Managing carts using the Storefront API has had several significant problems in the past. And the only way to access real-time product availability, pricing, and discounts is to develop or update the checkout. When you hire a Shopify expert, they will throttle the checkout to maintain a high-quality experience for the buyers. Moreover, the request to manage this pseudo cart would count against the checkout throttle limit.
With the latest version of Shopify API, the professionals can use Storefront API to communicate directly with the carts. Moreover, this cart API is a huge step forward in terms of versatility to allow you to retrieve all of the relevant details about an upcoming order without having to create a checkout until the customer is ready to pay. Furthermore, they are not bound by the checkout throttle. Instead, these carts follow the same guidelines as other storefront requests.
Undoubtedly, the upgrade benefits flash sales also. Also, the checkout queue is available for the cart generated using the Storefront API.
Enhancements to the Storefront API
Shopify also introduces new fields. So, the professionals can add new fields in the QuertRoot Object to reduce the fetching of particular resources. Moreover, the merchants can use an ID or a handle to query blogs, collections, pages, and products. Instead of searching through a list of all returned resources from the index or using the search endpoint and traversing the edges and nodes for the returned resource in GraphQL response, you can use these fields to quickly and efficiently fetch the resource you need. Hire a Shopify developer to build your custom storefront at a reasonable price for your eCommerce business.
Webhooks for Bulk Operations
To know when Shopify had finished processing a bulk operation in previous versions, you had to poll the status of the bulk operation. Shopify includes webhooks last year to inform customers when a bulk job gets completed, fails, or terminate. Webhooks further lessen the impact of bulk operations on the API call limit. It allows you to relax and wait for the webhook response. Further, it will include the status of your bulk action.
Holds for manual fulfillment
For the merchants who use fulfillment orders, the improved version API includes support for a more complex fulfillment workflow. Also, the Apps can now set fulfillment holds on items for things like backorders and pre-orders before the product is available for fulfillment.
But these new actions are applicable only through Fulfillment Orders, not via the legacy fulfillment platform. And for this, you will need to hire a Shopify expert from a reputable development agency. As always, any clients dealing with fulfillments should do so through Fulfillment Orders rather than the legacy order fulfilment endpoints.
Consent through SMS
With the improved Shopify Storefront API, the client can add, retrieve, and update the customers’ consent to receive marketing materials through SMS. However, when the preference gets changed, the customers’ marketing consent update webhook will get triggered. Moreover, it allows you to stay informed about the customer’s marketing preferences.
All applications that undertake marketing activities in Shopify must update the customer record with any marketing preferences the consumer has provided. Because Shopify stores up-to-date information about a customer’s marketing preferences. All apps on the store may respect each customer’s marketing preferences. However, all the filters are then combined with the products to find the items in a collection with a specific set of more complex characteristics.
Metafield definitions on Collections, Customers, and Orders
In July, an update in the Meta field has come which allows custom meta field types on Products. The improved version of the meta field adds support for collections, customers, and orders. Additionally, Meta field can perform validation on 18 various sorts of data. Further, it allows you to store validated data for display on storefronts or within apps.
Order Invoice
Moreover, with the help of the apps, the merchants can now send invoices for orders. It is all due to the new mutation.
The orderInvoiceSend mutation allows you to submit an order ID and email content and then email a customer directly to request payment for an order that has yet to be paid. So, this is a fantastic opportunity for merchants to automate what was previously a tedious operation.
Product Taxonomy
The new Product Taxonomy API is the best approach to keep products on merchant’s storefronts structured and discoverable by customers. StandardizedProductTypes are predetermined product categories that can help increase product discoverability on the Storefront and make it easier for merchants to sell products on platforms like Facebook that need products to fit into a specific set of categories.
You can use the custom product type field on the product object for product types that don’t fall into one of the standard categories.
Conclusion
To make changes in the Shopify platform, hire a Shopify developer. Our article has covered almost all the pointers about the new update related to the Shopify APIs. So, if you want to avail any of the above API for your custom eCommerce store, you can reach out to the Shopify development agency. So, adopt all these latest changes to improve the quality of the apps and streamline the experience.
