Shopify POS: How 6 Updates Unify In-Store and Online Commerce

Retail trends change constantly. Yet one trend with staying power is consumers’ ever-increasing demand for consistent shopping experiences online and in-store. This puts retailers under pressure to meet buyers where they are: everywhere. 

To keep pace, retailers need a point-of-sale (POS) partner that rapidly innovates—especially as channels get more interconnected and as the industry evolves. 

At Shopify, we know that the future of commerce is unified. That’s why our POS product enhancements center around driving harmonious customer experiences across all channels: web, in-person, social, and anywhere in between. 

In this blog, we’ll explore six of the 150+ product updates from Editions—Shopify’s twice-annual product announcement event—and how they turn in-store experiences into omnichannel growth. 

1. Email capture at checkout

Retail store locations offer a prime opportunity for your business to get to know customers, understand buyer behavior, and build lasting relationships. But without connectivity between in-person and online channels, customer data gets siloed, making it difficult to engage customers after they leave your store. Now with Shopify POS’s email capture feature, retailers gain new tools to connect in-person sales with online customer profiles. 

Since email capture launched in May, Shopify retailers are seeing an average 5.5% increase in retail transactions that are associated with customer information. This makes acquiring repeat customers easier and more cost effective.

What it is

The email capture feature in Shopify POS allows retailers to easily collect more first-party buyer data during the in-store checkout process. 

Benefits

• Gain a more comprehensive, omnichannel view of in-store shoppers by connecting in-store and online purchases. 
• Better understand your customers and their buying behavior by collecting more buyer information. 
• Reduce friction for customers and staff by automating email entry and making it easy to opt in to marketing.
• Deliver more tailored, personalized marketing efforts with more complete customer data.

With email capture, Shopify retailers are seeing an average 5.5% increase in retail transactions that are associated with customer information.

How it works 

When customers pay with a credit card, email capture instantly matches in-store transactions to the Shop app’s network of 150+ million users. Customer emails are populated and displayed at checkout, so customers can skip manually typing their email address. When customers make their purchase, they can choose to receive a digital receipt in the Shop app and opt into marketing communications. 

To get started with email capture in Shopify POS, follow these steps: 

• In the admin, navigate to your Settings in the Point of Sale sales channel.
• Then go to Customer receipt selection and toggle Customer receipt selection on.
• From there, you can enable email capture for all your locations or select from your location list. 

2. Rebuilt ship to customer 

Omnichannel customers demand flexible fulfillment options that meet them where they are. If customers can’t receive their orders on their terms, retailers risk losing out on a sale—and it's a negative customer experience. To drive more sales and meet customer needs, retailers can consider allowing in-store checkout and order home delivery. But offering a variety of shipping options is a challenge if you’re using separate platforms to manage in-store and online sales. 

That’s where ship-to-customer functionality in Shopify POS comes in. Imagine a customer is visiting a furniture store while out of town and doesn’t have room in their suitcase for a lamp they want. By offering a ship to customer fulfillment option with Shopify POS, the retailer earns the sale and the customer gets convenient delivery. 

Businesses are growing with ship to customer today. In 2023, Shopify retailers generated $850 million in sales by shipping orders at checkout on POS. 

What it is

Ship to customer is a fast, intuitive workflow that allows retailers to add, edit, and remove items in a shipping cart—directly from the Shopify POS checkout workflow. This update is backed by upgraded order-routing logic and shipping tools in Shopify POS.

Benefits

• Generate more revenue by meeting fulfillment preferences for more customers.
• Build long-term customer loyalty by offering convenient home delivery. 
• Empower store staff with more fulfillment options that drive more sales.

In 2023, Shopify retailers generated $850 million in sales by shipping orders at checkout on POS.

How it works 

Shopify offers shipping as a checkout fulfillment method directly in the POS app. Store staff can either start an order as a shipping order, or convert an order into a shipping order after adding items to the cart. 

Staff can then add the customer and their preferred delivery address to the cart. Staff will select the shipping method. From there, Shopify POS calculates the order total, including shipping fees, and deducts inventory based on your fulfillment logic. The staff member then completes the sale in-store, and the order is shipped directly to your customer’s preferred location.

To start using ship to customer in Shopify POS, you need to first go into Shopify admin and ensure your shipping settings are complete. To get more details, you can review this help center document. 

3. Ship from store

Ship from store is another flexible fulfillment method available in Shopify POS as part of the app’s shipping upgrades. With it, you can maximize your inventory by making more of your products available to both online and offline customers. 

Ship from store functionality allows you to fulfill online orders with in-store inventory, increasing customer convenience and cutting costs for retailers. This is a prime example of omnichannel retail at work. 

What it is

As the name suggests, ship from store is a Shopify POS feature that allows retailers to route orders to retail locations for fulfillment. With this update, retailers can essentially turn their stores into mini fulfillment centers. 

Benefits

• Reduce shipping costs and save time by using your existing resources, including inventory, staff, and location. 
• Expedite shipping timelines by shipping from a store near the customer. 
• Move more in-store inventory by making products available to online customers. 
• Improve staff productivity by empowering them to pick and pack orders. 
• Accelerate sales and order fulfillment by fulfilling orders directly from retail locations. 

How it works 

When an order is ready to be fulfilled, the Shopify POS app will alert store staff with a push notification. Permissioned staff can then navigate to the Orders index to view orders that are due for shipping, including product details and quantities. Staff complete the task by picking and packing the order, printing the packing slip, and purchasing the shipping label. Staff will then mark the order as fulfilled, and the order is ready for carrier pickup.

As an added bonus, Shopify has secured preferred rates with global carriers to further support omnichannel sales.

To set up ship from store at your business, learn more in this help center document. 

4. Return rules

Returns are inevitable, but retailers can still stay ahead of costs and potential fraud with transparent policies that apply to both online and in-store purchases. Without effective policies in place, returns can cost retailers dearly. Costs like shipping, handling, and labor add up and chip away at revenue. Retailers need return rules that staff can enforce and that customers understand.

What it is

Return rules in Shopify POS allow retailers to easily enforce strong, clear policies for in-store returns. Shopify’s return rules help staff quickly determine whether or not a product can be returned, and they supply staff and customers with clear reasons about why. 

Benefits

• Retain revenue and shield your business from losses by preventing out-of-policy returns. 
• Reduce overhead and uncertainty for staff by clearly stating which orders are eligible for returns. 
• Share clear context about why certain orders cannot be returned.

How it works

You can create custom return rules in Shopify POS that will automatically determine if a product can be returned based on factors like the return time window or final sale. When a return process begins for a product that is ineligible for return, Shopify POS flags that return and surfaces the reason why to store staff, so they can inform customers. 

To start using return rules in Shopify POS, follow these steps: 

• Go into your Shopify admin > then Settings then > Policies. 
• In Policies, you can manage your return policies by turning return rules. 
• You can then configure the rules to match your return policy. 

5. Discounts

The right discounts can become powerful incentives for buyers and key revenue-generating initiatives for retailers. Your discount strategy can increase average order volume and encourage customers to add more items to their cart. Discount strategies can be even more effective when they operate across channels. 

Having unified discount features across in-store and online purchases ensure a consistent buying experience for customers, no matter where they choose to shop with you. Imagine a customer sees a deal online, visits your store, and learns that deal doesn’t apply in person. That’s an avoidable negative experience when your discount promotions are cohesive across channels. 

With several new discount updates, Shopify POS empowers retailers to take more control of their discounts and ensure the same discounts that appear online, are available in-store, and vice versa. 

What it is

Three updates in Shopify POS empower retailers to unify and customize discounts based on business needs and customer preferences: 

• Buy X, Get Y: Entice your retail customers with Buy X, Get Y discount codes.
• Stack discounts: Combine and process multiple discounts in a single retail checkout. 
• Discount functions: Custom build discounts with second- and third-party apps to meet your unique needs.

Benefits

• Customize your discount promotion strategy with even more in-app ways to give customers deals and combine discounts.
• Incentivize customers to place higher value orders and purchase more products. 
• Gain greater extensibility with access to more developer tools to meet your unique business needs and customer preferences. 

How it works

Retailers can create customized discounts in the Discounts section of the Shopify admin. You can then select the type of discount you want to create, such as Buy X, Get Y.

Using the Create Discount action, you can generate a Discount creation card. There, you can input the discount name, quantity or purchase amount, the value, eligibility, active dates, and combinations. 

You can create omnichannel discounts by selecting the channels where you want to activate the discount. For POS, you would select the Point of Sale channel. This allows retailers to deliver consistent shopping experiences across in-store and online. 

Discount functions allow for even more flexibility and customization, so your business can deeply personalize discounts for your customer base. For example, if you want to create a discount based on attributes like a customer’s lifetime value, you can use discount functions to surface that promotion on Shopify POS.

6. POS UI extensions

Retailers can continue customizing Shopify POS with even more functionality available through POS UI extensions. Unlike most POS systems, Shopify POS is extensible by design, so you can build it to your business’s specifications. 

UI extensions help you push the bounds of what’s possible, no matter how complex or niche the use case. Here are a few ways retailers have used UI extensions: 

• Creating a loyalty workflow that captures customers’s attributes, like birthdays.
• Building the ability to create a work order to charge for custom services to customers.
• Validating orders to customize catalog items or track for payment and commission payouts. 

We’ve had some complex discounts and we were able to build a UI extension that applied them right at checkout and drastically improved efficiency.

Use cases like these can help retailers collect better customer information in stores and connect it to online customer profiles. This can drive omnichannel growth and build long-term customer relationships. 

What it is

POS UI extensions are a developer tool that help merchants create and implement high-performing, custom POS app extensions to support their retail business strategy. 

Benefits

• Drive faster, more efficient checkouts for customers and staff with faster load times compared to other technical solutions.
• Leverage extensions that perform and look like native Shopify workflows. 
• Develop and deploy extensions quickly with Shopify CLI and components for maximum cohesion and customizability. 

UI extensions is best-in-class technology. You need to see it to understand it, it will blow people away.

How it works 

UI extensions are built on the Shopify CLI, a command-line interface tool, which allows developers to generate, build, and develop extensions locally and deploy quickly. UI extensions are made using a comprehensive set of components. These components help you create a custom app extension that looks, feels and performs like a native Shopify workflow. 

Plus, because UI extensions use Shopify components, app extensions are also highly performant, loading 10x faster than other technical solutions.

Shopify POS: Building for the future of omnichannel retail 

Shopify is on a mission to build the world’s most unified POS system. As shoppers' buying behaviors continue to evolve, we’ll continue delivering new technologies to equip retailers for success—in-store and well beyond. Shopify’s tradition of innovation means there’s so much more to come.