Reflections on the WooCommerce Releases from 2024

Marcel:
Alright everyone, welcome to 2025 and the Woo DevChat, the first episode of this new year. As always, I’m here with Mike. Hi Mike.

Mike:
Hey, happy new year, Marcel. Happy new year!

Marcel:
And so here we are again with New Year’s resolutions, with big promises for the whole year, fully motivated for another round. Do you have any special resolutions that you promised yourself to fulfill this year that you can share?

Mike:
I think I mentioned in our last recording with Brian that instead of making a long list, I have just one that makes it far more realistic. I haven’t come up with a professional one yet. Maybe, well, I launched the new homepage and now I want to fix the “About” page on the WP Bullet website.

Marcel:
Which is always one of those pages we don’t have time to dedicate to because if you do something that has an immediate impact or result, that’s far more interesting than just, “Oh, let me rewrite my bio” or “Let me change ’20 years of WordPress experience’ that I wrote 10 years ago to ’30 years.’” I’m just making up numbers here—WordPress didn’t exist 30 years ago—but that’s kind of it, right?

Mike:
Yeah. I think as developers and freelancers, working on our own stuff tends to be last on the priority list, even though it can be one of the things that makes a big impact on your sales flow or the public impression. So what about you? Do you have any goals for this year?

Marcel:
Well, actually, I’ve been working with WordPress projects and clients that obviously do WooCommerce and all of that, but I’ve also been working on my personal apps portfolio for iOS. I used to have a couple of apps on the App Store for different types of usage. One of the things I’d like to do this year is, obviously, continue everything I did last year professionally, but maybe expand my portfolio or work on upgraded versions of the apps I have there.

I’ve always loved working on desktop websites and tackling the challenges that come with them—interface, algorithms, all of that. Although we have mobile websites, it’s still one platform to work for. Then you have native apps, which have always been very interesting to program. They have special needs for interface design, buttons, the way the lifecycle of a view works, and so on. It’s very, very interesting to juggle both platforms, and I’ve kind of missed that over the last couple of years. So, I’m hoping to go back to being an indie developer—which is a very nice title!

Mike:
Very cool. Do you see any parallels between app development and commerce development?

Marcel:
Well, probably the most interesting parallel I see right now is the way I—being a Gutenberg and blocks guy—compare clarity programming on the iOS platform to block-based development. The way you define different parts or sections of the view and write that code is very similar to how components or blocks fulfill the space of a screen.

The way you manage a specific view’s state, declare those, and make changes that reflect in the UI feels very similar to iOS development using SwiftUI, for those who know what I’m talking about. That’s one parallel. Another is API usage and the decoupling between the frontend and backend. Apps have long needed decoupled data to fill the screen, whereas local storage or databases are more niche now. Most apps, like WooCommerce sites, rely on remote data. Those would be the two main parallels I’d draw.

Mike:
Interesting. It’s cool that different technologies have similar logic or design flows that repeat because sometimes there’s just no better way to make sense of a process. User experience is one of the hardest yet most important things to get right these days. If something isn’t easy to use, snappy, and intuitive, people get frustrated, and all the developer’s efforts are wasted.

Marcel:
Right. It’s also interesting to observe how people use technology today to bridge the gap between web and native apps. I’m not talking about those old, web-view-based hybrid apps. I mean complex frameworks that let you write native apps in React or JavaScript. It’s a different beast altogether. Honestly, this could be a whole podcast topic!

That said, I’m excited about this year. I hope to contribute to the mobile scene within the WordPress or WooCommerce community. Who knows?

Mike:
Maybe there’ll be some overlap—like with progressive web apps—and you can bring what you learn in the app world back to WooCommerce.

Marcel:
Alright, on today’s episode, we wanted to look back at 2024 and just browse through all the new features and releases that came out for WooCommerce. Full disclosure: we don’t know all of them by heart—honestly, who would? But maybe a couple of people I know! What we want to do is go through last year’s releases, highlight the features we think are most useful, share the ones we’ve personally used in client projects, and comment on them.

There were a bunch of updates in the block-related area—which I’m a big fan of. There were others in areas we’ve discussed countless times on the podcast, like full-text search and the experimental high-performance order storage. So, we’re just going to casually go over some of these releases and their significance as developers.

Mike, I sent you this list beforehand so we could prepare. Were there any features you didn’t know existed?

Mike:
When I looked over the list last night, I thought, “Wow, they must be such a busy team!” It’s not just one team, though. There must be multiple teams working on blocks, accessibility, the dev end, full-text search, and everything else. The WooCommerce crew is definitely productive.

Marcel:
Right. They all have their specific corner or niche they’re working on. It’s amazing how much can happen in just one year. I get the sense that many clients and developers aren’t fully aware of everything WooCommerce accomplished. Hopefully, we can shed some light today.

Mike:
Yeah, maybe we’ll mention something that makes someone think, “Oh, I didn’t know that—it could help my client!”

Marcel:
Exactly. If someone takes 30 seconds to learn something valuable from today’s episode, that’s a win for us.

So, we’ll start by opening up some links we’ve gathered. We’re not going to go through every single changelog entry—that would be boring. It would sound like, “We’re pleased to announce the release of WooCommerce 8.5. This release is backward-compatible…” You get the idea. Instead, we’ll focus on highlights and key features that stood out.

Let’s start with WooCommerce 8.5, which was released on January 9th. There are two things I want to mention: first, the WooCommerce blocks were merged into the WooCommerce core. This is huge. We’ve seen this pattern before with feature plugins—developed separately to prove their value before being merged into core. That’s what happened here, and it brought a lot of new functionality.

Second, there were updates to the command palette. Now, Mike, putting you on the spot—do you use the command palette? Did you even know it existed?

Mike:
I had no idea what the command palette is. When I hear “palette,” I think of colors. What is it?

Marcel:
Great question. In this context, “palette” refers to a list of options or commands you can quickly access. If you’re familiar with Mac’s Spotlight search, it’s similar. You press Command + Space, start typing, and instantly see apps, files, or documents related to your search. The command palette in WordPress is similar.

When you’re in the block editor, there’s a clickable title link at the top of the page. Clicking it opens the command palette, where you can start typing things like “Create a new page” or “View analytics.” It’s a quick-access tool for many WordPress features.

Mike:
Okay, that makes sense. I’ve seen something like that on Android devices where you can search for apps or other items.

Marcel:
Exactly. Let’s say you’re building a product page and suddenly remember you need to check analytics or create a new product. Instead of navigating through menus, you can use the command palette to quickly jump there.

Mike:
Reducing clicks and simplifying navigation is always a win.

Marcel:
Another feature introduced in this version was order attribution tracking. It uses last-click attribution to identify where a sale originated—whether from a UTM link, organic search, a referral, or something else. For example, if someone clicked a product link on Instagram and completed the checkout, it’ll show the source as Instagram in your order details.

Mike:
I wonder how it distinguishes between different sources. Does it track the referrer header, or does it rely on UTM parameters?

Marcel:
That’s a great question. If anyone listening knows, feel free to comment! Oh, wait—this isn’t a YouTube video. Anyway, it’s a helpful addition, especially for marketers.

Mike:
Some of my clients have mentioned the lack of rich analytics in WooCommerce, which forces them to rely on tools like Metorik. It’s good to see WooCommerce addressing this natively.

Marcel:
Exactly. WooCommerce is clearly working to close gaps with platforms like Shopify by integrating more features into core—things you’d otherwise need plugins for.

Moving on, WooCommerce 8.6 was released in February. One big update was the new product details block. It brought a fresh design option for product pages while retaining the classic WooCommerce look.

There were also six new collections for the product collection block. Now you can display recommended, top-rated, best-selling, or on-sale products, as well as featured items and your full catalog. This gives merchants more flexibility when designing their homepages or archive pages.

Mike:
And wasn’t this the version where they started phasing out the legacy REST API?

Marcel:
Yes. They announced it would move to a separate extension in version 9.0.

Another notable feature in 8.6 was the introduction of a log file browser. As a developer, I love this. It saves so much time during client support. You can now search, filter, and manage log files directly within WooCommerce, whether it’s for fatal errors, debug logs, or plugin-specific logs.

Mike:
Do these logs stay on the server, or are they stored in the database?

Marcel:
They’re stored in the wp-content/uploads/wc-logs directory. There’s also a retention period—older logs are automatically deleted to save space.

Mike:
That’s a nice touch. I’ve seen client sites where debug logs balloon to several gigabytes and fill up the server’s disk space. When that happens, nothing works—you can’t even log in. Do they have alerts for log size limits?

Marcel:
I don’t think they have alerts for log sizes specifically, but there’s a retention system that purges logs after a set number of days. Each day creates a separate log file, and older ones are automatically removed. So, if you set a 30-day retention period, the oldest logs are deleted on day 31. This helps prevent excessive log file accumulation.

What’s also cool is the improved user interface for browsing these logs. It’s much easier to navigate, search within logs, and view formatted data like JSON or arrays, where you can collapse and expand sections. I even use the WooCommerce logging API for custom plugins because it integrates so well with their system.

Mike:
It sounds like a huge improvement, especially for non-technical users who might otherwise struggle to locate and analyze log files.

Marcel:
Absolutely. Before we move on to version 8.7, I want to mention another feature in 8.6: the transient files engine. This laid the groundwork for some exciting features in later versions.

Now, 8.7 was released in March, and two major updates stood out for me. First, they introduced the receipt rendering engine. It allows WooCommerce to generate public, temporary URLs for receipts. These URLs can be shared with printing services, downloaded by customers, or accessed for record-keeping.

Mike:
That’s handy. Do you know if the receipt is generated on the fly, or is it pre-generated when the order is completed?

Marcel:
Great question—and I’m not entirely sure. My guess is that the receipt is generated when the order is completed and stored temporarily, but it can also be re-generated on demand via an API. This ensures the data is always accurate and up-to-date without requiring users to log into their accounts.

The second big update in 8.7 was the introduction of additional fields in the checkout block. This was a long-awaited feature for developers. Previously, the checkout block was very restrictive, with limited slots for custom fields. Now, you can add extra fields that integrate seamlessly into order admin pages, customer accounts, and even emails.

Mike:
I imagine developers were clamoring for this. Custom fields are essential for many use cases, and not being able to add them must have been frustrating.

Marcel:
Absolutely. When WooCommerce first introduced the block-based checkout, they intentionally kept it simple and streamlined to avoid the cluttered, over-customized checkout pages we often see. But this simplicity came at the cost of flexibility. With this update, developers can strike a balance between maintaining a clean checkout experience and adding the custom fields they need.

Mike:
Yeah, that’s a big win. I assume the fields can also appear on the order page as a column, right?

Marcel:
Exactly. They can be displayed wherever you need them, including order admin pages and customer emails.

Moving on to version 8.8, released in late March, this update focused on design customization. WooCommerce introduced new tools for merchants to change their store’s look and feel without writing code. This included features like color palettes, fonts, and headers, bringing WooCommerce closer to full site editing.

Mike:
That’s a big step forward. Simplifying design changes for non-technical users makes WooCommerce much more competitive with platforms like Shopify.

Marcel:
Exactly. They also added a post-purchase note field in the product editor, which allows merchants to display custom messages on the thank-you page. For example, you could inform customers about backordered products or include instructions for pre-orders. It’s a small feature, but it makes a big difference in communication.

Mike:
I like that. It’s always the little details that improve the user experience.

Marcel:
Definitely. Moving on to version 8.9, released in mid-April, one major feature was the ability to manage custom fields via the new product editor. This made it easier for merchants to add and organize custom fields without needing a developer.

Another improvement was the optimization of the cart and checkout blocks. By reducing JavaScript payload sizes, WooCommerce made these blocks more efficient. The cart block saw an 11% reduction in payload size, while the checkout block saw a 17.9% reduction. This is critical for ensuring fast load times, especially during high-traffic events like Black Friday.

Mike:
That’s impressive. Performance is such a key factor, especially for larger stores.

Marcel:
For sure. Version 8.9 also expanded order analytics with new filtering and sorting options. You can now group orders by attribution source—like newsletters, organic search, or referrals—and gain deeper insights into what’s driving sales.

Mike:
I saw a screenshot of that feature—it shows sources like “Newsletter,” “Referral,” and “Google Organic.” I’d love to know how it calculates those attributions.

Marcel:
It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Attribution data is invaluable for marketing and sales strategies.

Now let’s move to WooCommerce 9.0, released in June. This version was all about improving accessibility, particularly in the checkout block. Accessibility in React-based systems can be challenging, but WooCommerce made significant strides here.

Mike:
That’s great to hear. Accessibility is often overlooked but so important.

Marcel:
Absolutely. They also introduced UI improvements for the checkout block, making it more intuitive for users. One big change was the introduction of multi-step checkouts, where fields are grouped into logical steps. This reduces cognitive overload and helps guide users through the process more smoothly.

Mike:
That’s a smart move. A simpler, step-by-step checkout flow can make a huge difference in conversion rates.

Marcel:
Exactly. And, of course, this version also included the highly anticipated full-text search (FTS) feature for WooCommerce. FTS dramatically improves search performance, especially for stores with large inventories.

Mike:
I remember enabling FTS for a client and being amazed by the difference. It was like magic.

Marcel:
It’s a game-changer, especially for stores with thousands of products or orders.

Marcel:
Alright, moving on to the later part of 2024, WooCommerce had several more releases. Let’s jump straight to version 9.5, which came out on December 17th.

One of the standout features in this release was the addition of cross-sell and handpicked product collections in the block editor. These blocks allow merchants to display curated product recommendations directly on the cart or checkout page, making it easier to upsell or cross-sell.

Mike:
That’s awesome. I know a lot of merchants rely on upsells to boost revenue. This makes it much easier to create targeted recommendations without relying on plugins.

Marcel:
Exactly. Another interesting feature introduced in 9.5 is the dynamic payment status on the thank-you page. This is particularly useful for merchants using payment methods where the transaction isn’t instant—like digital wallets or bank transfers.

Here’s how it works: instead of a static thank-you page, WooCommerce dynamically updates the page to reflect the payment status. So, if a customer completes the payment via a third-party app, the thank-you page automatically updates to show the order as paid and issues the receipt.

Mike:
That’s really smart. I’ve seen situations where customers are redirected to external payment platforms, and the lack of feedback on the thank-you page can be confusing. This should reduce friction significantly.

Marcel:
Exactly. It’s all about improving the customer experience. Another notable addition in this release was the ability to convert guest shoppers into logged-in buyers. Traditionally, merchants had to force account creation during checkout, which could hurt conversions. Now, WooCommerce lets customers create an account after completing their purchase.

Mike:
That’s such a simple yet impactful feature. Asking for account creation after checkout makes way more sense—it doesn’t distract the customer during the purchase process.

Marcel:
Exactly. All the customer needs to do is set a password on the thank-you page. It’s much less intrusive and can significantly boost the number of registered users without affecting the checkout flow.

Another update in 9.5 was the introduction of more sorting options for product collections. For example, you can now sort products randomly, which might not seem practical at first, but it could be fun for specific use cases—like surprise bundles or flash sales.

Mike:
Random sorting might not be everyone’s go-to, but it could work well for unique campaigns or seasonal promotions.

Marcel:
Definitely. Lastly, I want to briefly mention AI. While it wasn’t a core part of WooCommerce releases last year, we’ve seen several AI-related plugins emerge. These range from tools that generate product descriptions to those that analyze customer data or manage SEO.

Mike:
I’m curious about AI’s practical applications in WooCommerce. There’s been so much hype around it, but I feel like we’re still figuring out where it truly shines.

Marcel:
Exactly. I think 2025 will be the year where we start to see AI settle into its role. It’s no longer just about the excitement of what AI could do—it’s about real, actionable use cases that benefit store owners and developers.

Imagine being able to ask an AI: “What’s the conversion rate for Product A over the last 30 days?” or “Which marketing channel generated the most revenue last quarter?” That kind of proactive, data-driven insight could be a game-changer.

Mike:
Absolutely. I think the key will be integrating AI in ways that make life easier for store owners, not just adding another layer of complexity.

Marcel:
Exactly. AI can also be proactive—analyzing your sales data and suggesting actions without you needing to ask. For example, it could notify you that a recent campaign is outperforming expectations and recommend doubling down on it.

Mike:
Or even suggest experiments: “Based on past data, changing the product images or cross-sell recommendations might increase conversions by X%.” That would be incredible.

Marcel:
100%. And the best part is that this kind of AI isn’t making guesses—it’s working with your actual store data. There’s no hallucination or overconfidence, just actionable insights grounded in reality.

Mike:
Yeah, that’s the sweet spot. I’m excited to dive deeper into AI and see how it can reshape eCommerce.

Marcel:
Same here. That wraps up our look back at 2024 and what’s ahead for 2025. Thanks for joining me, Mike!

Mike:
Thanks, Marcel. Happy New Year, and I’ll see you next time.

Marcel:
Happy New Year to you too. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in! Catch you all in the next episode.