Unpacking the Boring Shopify Winter Edition 2025 for B2B and D2C eCommerce

It’s that time of the year again when Shopify agencies like Folio3 get all excited about the new Shopify release. The Shopify Winter Edition, which rolls out during the holiday season, is always an exciting event to look forward to. 

This time, however, Shopify packed its 150+ updates in what it called ‘The Boring Edition’. Except it wasn’t boring at all. It was a good move by a software company that has been on this upward trajectory since when it was founded and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. 

Why is the Shopify Winter Edition 2025 called the Boring Edition?

While Shopify was leading this marathon of eCommerce platforms and democratizing D2C and wholesale commerce, people wished Shopify would focus more on improvement instead of innovation. This winter, Shopify proved that it was really listening to their partners and customers.  

Instead of releasing a major core update with exciting new features that would make a big marketing hype, Shopify focused 6 months on just making things better. 

Hats off to the marketing guy for being able to make a big hype out of these updates and improvements. Don’t let the name ‘Boring Edition’ fool you.

So, back to the point, Shopify called it The Boring Edition because this release was all about improving performance, making existing features better, making APIs faster, fixing technical debt and making everything work together like it’s supposed to do. 

Unpacking the Shopify Winter Edition 2025 and What It Means for Retailers and Wholesalers

Here’s a summary of the key updates and new features introduced in the Shopify Winter Edition 2025, also known as “The Boring Edition,” which focuses primarily on enhancing the platform’s existing capabilities for both B2B and D2C eCommerce:

B2B eCommerce Gets a Major Upgrade with Updates to Draft Orders 

Draft orders in Shopify allow merchants to create orders manually on behalf of customers, offering a flexible way to handle sales that go beyond the standard online checkout flow. This feature is particularly useful for:

• Custom B2B Orders: Creating tailored orders or negotiated quotes for wholesale clients.
• Assisted Selling: Taking phone, email, or in-person orders and guiding customers through the purchase process.
• Custom Discounts and Line Items: Adding special discounts or creating custom products not listed in the online catalog.

When a draft order is created, merchants can manually input customer details, add products, apply discounts, and send a secure checkout link for payment. 

Customers then complete their purchase via Shopify’s standard checkout, ensuring a seamless payment experience.

Alternatively, merchants can accept payment directly or defer payment, offering flexibility for scenarios like deposits or invoicing.

Before the Winter Edition 2025, merchants faced several challenges with draft orders that often required manual workarounds or added complexity. Many features like Checkout extensions, payment rules, Shopify functions etc. did not previously extend to draft orders.

In the Winter Edition 2025, Shopify unified the experience across draft orders so that features like checkout customizations, payment rules, and order management extend to draft orders too.

Here are the key updates to draft orders: 

• Price Locking: Merchants can now lock product prices in draft orders to ensure quoted prices remain stable, regardless of catalog changes.
• Bundle Support: Draft orders now allow both fixed and custom bundles, providing greater flexibility for managing bundled sales.
• Deposits (Shopify Plus): Shopify Plus merchants can collect deposits on draft orders, securing customer commitment for large or custom orders.
• Vaulted Credit Cards (Shopify Plus): Easily view and charge vaulted credit cards directly within draft orders for faster payment processing.
• Checkout UI Extensions (Shopify Plus): Customize draft order checkouts with UI extensions, such as adding shipping messages tailored specifically for B2B customers.
• Shopify Functions Integration: Checkout customizations and rules created using Shopify Functions, like dynamic shipping or payment options, now apply seamlessly to draft orders for a consistent experience.

Checkout Customization Update and Checkout Blocks

One of the most notable updates in Shopify Winter Edition 2025 is the checkout customization update and the introduction of checkout blocks. 

Previously, deep checkout customization was only available to Shopify Plus merchants, but this update brings greater flexibility and control to businesses across all Shopify plans.

What Are Checkout Blocks?

Checkout blocks allow merchants to customize specific pages in the checkout process and post-purchase experience. These include:

1. Thank You Page
2. Order Status Page

With the addition of checkout blocks, merchants can insert dynamic and personalized content to improve customer engagement, deliver key information, and even upsell or cross-sell post-purchase.

How Checkout Blocks Work

Shopify has made it easy to create and implement checkout blocks using a free app called “Checkout Blocks”. 

Using the app, merchants can create customizable content blocks with various elements such as:

• Personalized messages (e.g., “Thank you, [customer name]!”)
• Call-to-action buttons (e.g., links to join a Facebook group, sign up for newsletters, or access loyalty programs)
• FAQs in accordion format to address common post-purchase queries.
• Banners for promotions, offers, or upcoming launches.

Content can be dynamic, meaning it adapts based on order-specific data. For example, a merchant can create a block on the thank you page that says “Thank you, Sarah, for your order!” or any other personalized message that displays the customer’s order number, name, etc.

The ability to customize checkout pages is a powerful tool that allows merchants to enhance customer experience and increase upsells and cross-sells.

Customer Account Pages Can Now Be Customized

One of the standout improvements in Shopify Winter Edition 2025 is the enhanced customization ability for the customer account page. 

Historically, the account page in Shopify has been fairly rigid, with limited options for merchants to tailor its functionality or appearance. 

With this update, Shopify has laid the groundwork for a much more personalized and branded experience for customers managing their accounts, orders, and profiles.

Merchants can now customize the navigation menu within the customer account page. Previously, the menu was fixed and offered little flexibility. With the new update, you can tailor this menu to guide your customers more effectively. 

For example, you can replace the default menu with your main menu or a custom menu that aligns with your store’s structure, directing customers to important areas like FAQs, loyalty programs, or support pages.

For B2B merchants, the Customer Account Extensions introduced in the Winter Edition take account page customization to a new level. Businesses can now integrate third-party apps or custom-built apps to create advanced B2B workflows and self-serve features directly within customer accounts. For example, you can:

• Add dedicated pages for quotes using apps like O: Request a Quote.
• Enable buyers to view and download invoices through apps like Sufio.
• Allow bulk order uploads with tools like Upro, where buyers can populate carts via CSV files.
• Offer features such as switching company locations or managing multiple purchasing accounts directly from the profile page.

With Customer Account Extensions, businesses can transform the customer account page into a powerful hub for B2B buyers, enabling them to self-serve efficiently while reducing reliance on sales or support teams.

Update to the Search and Discover App

The Search and Discover app, a free tool by Shopify, received key improvements in the Winter Edition 2025 update. 

These enhancements may seem small on the surface, but they deliver significant benefits to merchants by optimizing product discoverability, improving search results, and offering better filtering controls. 

For eCommerce businesses, especially those with extensive product catalogs, this is an important step in enhancing the customer experience and driving higher conversion rates.

Traditionally, search results in Shopify would display all product variants (child products), which could overwhelm customers and clutter the search experience. With the new update, merchants now have the option to:

• Display parent products only (grouping variants under a single listing).
• Display child products only.
• Combine both parent and child products for greater flexibility.

This improvement reduces clutter in search results, ensuring customers find the right product faster. It also creates a cleaner and more streamlined browsing experience, increasing the likelihood of purchase.

Filtering and Sorting Mechanism Using Category Metafields

The Shopify Winter Edition 2025 introduces a major improvement to the filtering and sorting mechanism with the addition of category metafields. 

This update enhances how merchants can organize products and enable more precise filtering for customers, delivering a streamlined browsing experience and improving product discoverability.

What Are Category Metafields?

Category metafields are custom fields that allow merchants to define specific product attributes or categories that go beyond Shopify’s default options. 

These metafields can now be utilized to enhance filtering and sorting within a store’s product listings and search results.

For example, merchants can use metafields to create filters like:

• Material (e.g., cotton, leather, wood)
• Size and Fit (e.g., XS, Small, Medium, or “True to Size”)
• Occasion (e.g., casual, formal, outdoor)
• Style (e.g., vintage, modern, minimalist)

Subscriptions and Promotions Integration

The Shopify Winter Edition 2025 brings a noteworthy enhancement to the Subscriptions feature with the integration of promotions. 

This update makes it easier for merchants to create compelling offers that incentivize customers to subscribe, adding more flexibility and value to their subscription-based offerings.

One of the biggest changes is that Shopify’s Buy X, Get Y promotions can now be applied to subscription products. 

Previously, promotions for subscriptions were limited to simple discounts, but with this update, merchants can offer additional incentives to encourage customers to subscribe like:

• Gift with Subscription: “Subscribe to Product X and get a free gift.”
• Bonus Item: “Buy 2 subscriptions, get 1 free.”
• Tiered Offers: “Subscribe for 3 months and get 20% off your next purchase.”

This flexibility allows merchants to create more creative and attractive subscription promotions to drive customer sign-ups.

Bundles Become Better this Winter

Shopify’s Winter Edition 2025 includes updates to its bundles feature, addressing some long-standing limitations.

While Shopify’s native bundles tool has always been relatively basic, this update brings improvements to how bundles are presented, managed, and reported, making them more efficient for merchants and easier to understand for customers.

Previously, bundled products were displayed as individual line items within the cart, making it difficult for customers to understand that they were purchasing a bundle.

With the update, bundles are now grouped and displayed as a single unit within the cart and checkout.

Bundles now not only look better and cleaner but also have better inventory tracking, reporting and analytics. 

In the past, managing inventory for bundles was a challenge because the individual items within a bundle were often treated separately, leading to discrepancies.

With the update, Shopify accurately tracks inventory for both the bundle as a whole and the individual items within it.

If one of the items in a bundle runs out of stock, the entire bundle can automatically be marked as unavailable. We can now also tell if a particular bundle is performing well or not with dedicated reporting on bundle sales. 

It provides clarity on whether bundled pricing strategies are driving additional revenue or boosting average order value (AOV).

Shipping Has Become More Dynamic

The Shopify Winter Edition 2025 introduces several new and improved shipping features aimed at streamlining operations, improving accuracy, and enhancing customer experience. 

These updates address key areas like unified fulfillment, address validation, bulk label creation, and carrier integration, ensuring merchants can manage shipping efficiently at scale.

• Ship to Store: Allow customers to buy online and ship orders to their preferred store for pickup, available on all plans.
• Unified Fulfillment Logic: Apply order routing and fulfillment rules consistently across subscriptions, draft orders, and imported orders to prevent overselling.
• Improved Bulk Label Creation: Customize columns, add order tags and notes, and filter by date to streamline bulk label purchases.
• Address Validation Everywhere: Validate shipping addresses across draft orders, customer profiles, shipping labels, and B2B company locations.
• Metafields for Order Routing: Use custom metafields to dynamically control order routing and fulfillment processes.
• Simplified Location Management: Use improved filters and search to quickly access POS location settings and manage fulfillment locations.

And these only scratched the surface. What sets this release apart is its emphasis on making every part of the Shopify ecosystem work smarter, faster, and more cohesively. 

For retailers and wholesalers alike, the Winter Edition 2025 removes friction, simplifies operations, and empowers merchants to serve their customers more effectively. 

In short, Shopify has proven once again that continuous improvement—even under the guise of being “boring”—is what keeps the platform ahead of the curve.