There were no shortage of announcements at Unite. Many of them were more technical in nature but here are the ones I think directly impact teelaunch customers:

• New sales channels: Shopify is opening up their sales channel system up a bit more and they’ve announced some new channels such as Wish, Kik and soon, Buzzfeed. More places to sell will hopefully mean more sales.
• Checkout improvements: They are launching a feature called smart buttons which identifies which payment method your customers will likely use on mobile and they’ll put that payment method first. They can then complete the transaction right there on the product page (for things like Apple Pay) without having go through the entire checkout flow. They’ve also developed their own payment solution called Shopify Pay which is like Apple Pay but it works across all Shopify stores.
• Mobile app improvements: If you use the mobile app they are going to start allowing you to access apps from it. Their goal is to let you manage 100% of your store’s functions from the palm of our hand.
• POS: They unveiled their new chip card reader and man is it cool. Not only does it look really nice (the designed it from scratch) but it works great. Better yet, they are giving them away to Shopify store owners for free. You can preorder one here.

Day 2 was very interesting. While we were on the bus heading over to the venue power went out in parts of San Francisco, the part of San Francisco where the venue was located. We weren’t allowed inside the building while the power was out so we spent most of the day chilling outside (we have the sunburns to prove it).

They still managed to hold a couple panels as well as the ever popular AMA with Tobi. All in all in was a pretty good event and the teelaunch team will be in Toronto for Unite 2018.