In our network, most people fall into two categories:

• Store Owners / Operators focused on growing and running a business
• Developers / Builders focused on crafting high-performance, scalable storefronts

Here’s our curated recap of Shopify’s Summer 2025 Editions, tailored to both.

‍For Store Owners and Operators

1. Sidekick Gets Smarter

“Powerful reporting and real-time strategy”

Shopify’s AI assistant Sidekick now uses multi-step reasoning to offer tailored insights.
Example: It can analyze a sales dip and recommend the right promotion. Think of it as having a growth strategist built into your admin.

2. Shopify’s New Design Foundation: Horizon

“Modular design with unmatched flexibility”

This is a huge step toward democratizing design.
Shopify introduces Horizon, a system of themes and design components that are:

• Built with 10 new high-converting themes, ready to go out of the box
• Powered by drag-and-drop customization for product cards, layouts, and sections
• Enhanced with tools like:
  • Hover-to-preview
  • Block categories
  • Right-click shortcuts
  • Collapsible sidebars
  • Copy/paste functionality
  • Custom block naming

No code required, just control.

3. Build Faster with Theme Blocks

“Webflow-style flexibility for everyone”

Theme blocks now offer:

• Full drag-and-drop reordering
• Nesting and conditional logic
• Predictive search within the block picker

This means faster builds and easier iteration for both teams and solo operators.

4. Smarter UI and UX Enhancements

• Interactive product cards: Quick views, color swatches, and dynamic hover states
• Discount fields in the cart: Reduce checkout friction
• Checkout and thank-you page controls without apps or dev work

‍For Developers and Builders

1. Skeleton Theme + Liquid Enhancements

A new Skeleton starter theme built for Horizon ships with:

• Improved LiquidDoc syntax
• Support for static parameters
• Cleaner JS and CSS management for blocks

This speeds up ramp time and reduces technical debt on theme builds.

2. Write Custom Blocks as Code

Now you can:

• Build and plug in custom blocks that live natively within Horizon
• Use Liquid, JS, and metafields seamlessly
• Write decoupled logic to enhance maintainability and performance

3. Editor & Workflow Upgrades

• Native support for discount codes in the cart via Ajax Cart API
• Metafield visibility and control directly in the editor
• Conditional logic settings for block behaviors
• Enhanced editing experience:
  • Hover previews
  • Section collapsing
  • One-click text editing
  • No JSON files required
  • Versioning, naming, and duplication tools built in

Final Thoughts

Another total banger from the Shopify team.
This release is a true evolution of the platform not just more features, but better infrastructure for commerce and design at scale.

📍 See you in Toronto for the live deep dive at Shopify Editions 2025, May 29–30.

👉 Read the full release here

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