Hey, Scott Austin here. In this episode, I want to talk about a lot of the changes that are happening in the Shopify platform.So that you can understand what's coming down the road as you get different messages from Shopify and different deadlines showing up. You'll be aware of what's happening and what you need to do to make the changes happen on your side, so that it doesn't disrupt your business.Now these changes are coming from different parts of the Shopify admin.One of those is in the Shopify account, which is how you and your store staff log into your Shopify admin. Another one is in customer accounts, and that's how your customers log in to the front end of your website.And the last one is in the thank you in order pages.AndI'm recording this in late February. And just last week Shopify sent out an email with some deadlines about that. And that's causing a lot of confusion for people. So that's why we're going through this whole episode to explain those things.So I'm going to break down each one of those three buckets.I'm going to start with the easiest one. And that is the Shopify accounts that you log into the Shopify admin with.If you go into your Shopify admin and click on settings in the lower left hand corner, the fourth item down will either say Users and Permissions or users. If it says users, you're on the newShopify staff account system. If it says users and permissions, you're on the old one and your store will be automatically upgraded behind the scenes by Shopify.So you don't have to do anything for this one. But what may happen is, if you're still on the old system and you get upgraded to the new system, different people in your store may lose certain access that they have, because the rule set in the old system was different than the rule set in the new system. So for me, as a Shopify agency, I've lost a lot of my connections to the stores as they get upgraded, which have permissions to do a certain thing, and then I no longer do so.Then I sit down with the store owner and explain to them how to change the permissions and give me the permissions that I used to have under the new system.So it's a little bit of a pain if it happens to your store where the permissions are lost, but it just takes you a couple of minutes to set it up under the new system, and then you'll be fine.And if you find yourself already under the new system, when you go to the settings, you see users, then you're already upgraded and there's nothing to worry about.So the next one is customer accounts. And this one does have some impact in stores and the customer experience.Now the new account system uses what's called passwordless accounts. So if people just put in their email address or their phone number and they get sent a code, they don't have a password in the system.Now there's pros and cons behind that, but that's the direction that Shopify is set to go in. So that's the way Shopify is going to be in the future.and everyone needs to upgrade by August of this year to the new system and any stores that are being created from scratch in the Shopify platform right now, they're automatically using the new system.Now if you go into settings and your Shopify admin, you will see a item for customer accounts. And if you click on that, it'll quickly show you right at the top, whether you're on the legacy or the old systemthe newsystem is now called customer accounts. And if you're still on the legacy and we'll say it, it recommends you go to customer accounts.Now, upgrading to the new accounts is actually pretty easy, but there's some things to keep in mind.So all you have to do is click new accounts and it'll upgrade for you.But that can impact a couple of things. The first one it can impact is if you have an app like for subscriptions or customer loyalty that is using the old accounts. And that app doesn't support the new account system yet. You don't want to yet upgrade. So if you've got an app for subscriptions or loyalty and you're thinking about upgrade, I would reach out to their customer support and ask them if their app is ready to be upgraded.Secondly, if your customers are used to putting in a username and passwordthat process is going to change. So you may want to be aware until your customer support people that, hey, there may be some customer confusion and come up with a script to set their mind at ease and say, yes, it is different now, but this is the new way and this is the benefits of it and all that good stuff.Now, one of the nice things about the new account system is there are some benefits to it in that apps can integrate into that account system. So we now have a new account management page for customers.And in that page they can see their orders and their order history. And they can also see other things. So apps can put on a tab. For example, in the store I'm looking at right now, there's a my reviews tab that was placed there by Judge Me. And the customers can click on that and see any reviews they've left in the app.Allows it. They could edit those, or if there's a loyalty app that's integrated with it, they can see, you know, their points and awards that they're getting. So there'll be one integrated experience for your customers to manage their accounts with all the different apps and services that you're providing. Now, one of the negatives in my mind is that this new account page doesn't have a lot of branding control for you, and it's actually managed by a different system than theme customers that we use for most of our store.So a lot of the things that you're doing in theme customization or apps that you've added in theme customizations don't help you inside of the account, trying to make it look and feel like your brand. So there is a little bit of a jarring experience when you go from the store to the account page, because it doesn't look like the same site.If you've got some heavy branding in your store. So what we started doing for our clients is actually rolled out a private app where we are putting some information and some branding on that page to improve the experience for the consumers and support the brand. And we're actually going to rule that out as a public app pretty soon, because we see a definite need for having more branding capabilities and messaging capabilities in that account.Set up.Now, the other thing you're going to want to do when you set up the new accountsBy default, if you upgrade to the new account system and someone logs into your store, the URL they see is shopify.com with a long number, which is yourstorage number, and then account,in the URL so they don't see your domain anymore. But you can easily add that.In the Shopify admin, if you go into settings under customer accounts.it will down at the bottom and talk about the URL and allow you to change that URL.and that's going to require you to do a DNS entry into your domain registrar.So if you go there you have to log in to GoDaddy and update some settings. There. It's a little bit technical, but it'll walk you through the process. And once you're done, your customers will now see your domain when they're in your account pages.Want to build a loyal community around your brand. Events and classes are the perfect way to connect with your customers. But only if your calendar looks as professional as your store. But embedding a Google Calendar just won't cut it, as the calendar looks clunky and doesn't reflect your brand. That's why we created branded calendar, the Shopify app that lets you embed Google Outlook or Apple calendars in your store while seamlessly matching your store's branding.Originally crafted for our private clients, Branded calendar was so successful, we turned it into an app for every Shopify store with branded calendar. You're in control of how your calendar looks and where it appears on product pages, contact pages, blog articles, or even your home page. Keep your customers informed with schedules for retail hours, classes, or events. You can even share multiple calendars to meet different needs.And the best part? Branded calendar includes a robust, always free plan so you can start building community. Risk free. Engage your community and stay on brand with branded calendar.And the next we're going to talk about is the thank you and order status pages.And where you see those is under the settings in your Shopify admin. And then click on checkout and up at the top. If you still need to upgrade, it'll actually say with a little blue background text, upgrade your thank you in order status pages.Now there's some things you have to think about and look at before you just click the button and upgrade this one. On this checkout section, if you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see, field it's order status page, additional scripts. Now this is where in the past we would add scripts to track things at the checkout. So the fact that your ads platforms could see that a person purchase something in your store, we would add code here to do it.We would also add code here for things like Hotjar and screen captures. And there were lots of different ways you would manually add code into this box. And this additional script box is going away in the new system.So one of things you want to look at is are you using the additional scripts box and what are you using it for?In my J Puma store, for example, I've got clarity for screen captures and hotjar for screen captures showing up along with some Google Analytics stuff. So there's a few different things going on in there. And what I want to make sure before I upgrade it to the new process is that I have a way for those scripts to capture that data in the new system or the new process.Now, the way that happens is apps can now add code to the checkout process instead of just manually adding it in this box.So if you're using the Google and YouTube sales channel or the Facebook sales channel, those apps are going to cover you for the advertising scripts needed for Facebook, Pixel and Google.Now, if you're doing something like Pinterest advertising, you're going to want to add those scripts another way. The way that we're doing it at Puma is we're using Google Tag Manager to add in scripts that don't have apps that support the script needs.Now, that does get quite a bit technical, so if you're going to do that level of upgrading, you're probably going to want to hire a Shopify expert or developer to help you out through that process.And once you've upgraded your store to the new account process, one of the ways where you can see how those different code snippets are being covered in your checkout is go into your Shopify admin and go to settings. And then on the list farther down there's a section called Customer Events.And if you click on that, you'll see what apps and what code snippets are being placed in your checkout. And if it's done by an app or by a custom code. So it's a nice way for you to get in and see what is happening with all those snippets. So, for example, in the store that I'm looking at right now, the Clio app is showing up and I can see that it's already connected and things are all green.So you want to make sure that all the tracking that you're doing on your different apps and services, when you upgrade to the new process, that they're all transferring from the old way we did it, which was those JavaScript code snippets in the checkout section to now having apps or custom pixels added through the customer events section that's been added to your Shopify admin.Now, the last thing I want to talk about is a problem we've been having with a couple of our client stores.we upgrade to the new customer account system. There's been some confusion on the customer side because of some things. It took us a little while to figure out, but we got to figure it out.So, and I'm not sure if this is happening because of the new customer accounts or if this is just something that happened in some other change that happened in the Shopify ecosystem somewhere along the way. But when customers are logging in and we're seeing this a lot in wholesale stores where we will set up a normal Shopify store and put in some custom code to make it a wholesale store,and we'll require customers to log in before they can see anything on the site so that everyone is getting that login page under the new customer account when they, you know, go to the main URL for the store.And the problem that's been happening is with shop. Hey, if you've got that turned on, if the customer is logged in to the shop ecosystem, then they're going to log into your store or automatically through Shop Pay. Instead of using yourcustomer account system. And what happens when they log in to the shop?Pay? When they go to check out, they automatically go to the shop, pay checkout. And it's really confusing, especially in a wholesale store where you have customizations for things like price and payment types and shipping options. While in shop pay the customizations you add it to your Shopify store. Don't show up in that shop. Paycheck out. So if you know a wholesale customer is supposed to get 40% off or of retail price and they're automatically getting logged in via shop pay when they go to check out, they're not seeing their price discount that you have probably an app added to add that price discount in the checkout process for them.So what we've been doing in some of our wholesale stores is actually going in and disabling Shop Pay and turning it off inside of that store. Now, you're not going to want to do that if you are getting a lot of customers through shop pay in a retail store. And I do wonder there's kind of like cart and a horse, they're like, are you getting a lot of shop pay customers showing up in your order history because Shopify is automatically logging them into shop Pay first, or are they coming to you via shop pay?My guess is it's the former, not the latter, but that is just a guess. So you definitely gonna want to stay on top of this for your store and understand the user behavior.So that way you can go into your store and turn off shop pay is go to your Shopify admin and go to Settings and then click on payments.And then you don't want to click on the Manage Shopify Payments button in the upper right. And it's a little bit deceiving because now you're on the Shopify payments page, and the upper right hand corner is a button that says Manage Payment methods. But it's great. So it looks like it's not active, but you can actually click on it.It is active. And then in there you'll see a list of all your payment methods.and you'll see Shopify listed. And you can just toggle it off. And if you're doing that, you know, toggle it off for shop. Because of a wholesale store type experience, you may want to do the same thing and turn off Apple Pay, Google Pay and Amazon Pay further down the list.And that way there's just the credit cards that are showing up, and you may, in a wholesale store, have or net terms options added as payment types via an app customization to your checkout process.But that's what you can do if you're having shop pay issues, you can actually turn it off as an option. Like I said, there's pros and cons behind that, so understand how your store is using shop pay and how your customers are using it.Before you take that action.All right. So that's a lot of the changes that I'm seeing happening right now that's causing confusion in stores. From the Shopify updates that are ongoing at this time. So hopefully that helps you understand them and navigate them for your own store. Thanks for listening.