Shopify has recently launched its new platform: Shopify Online Store 2.0.

We know you have several questions:

  • What is new and different compared to the original platform?
  • What are the benefits of moving to Shopify 2.0?
  • Should you immediately upgrade?

Shopify’s developers have made significant changes to the platform in Online Store 2.0, aimed primarily at improving site speed and performance as well as usability.

Overview

Shopify’s new Online Store 2.0 is going to revolutionise the platform as we know it today.

The new editor within Online Store 2.0 gives store owners much more control over building new page templates, storefronts and adding apps with ease to specific parts of their store.

The main release is rolling out the ability to to edit every page structure (even product pages and blogs), not just the homepage!

Shopify also has revealed a whole host of new features and capabilities with a focus on best-practice development.

Their theme used for reference is 35% faster than the current default themes on Shopify! Which is great news for everyone.

Narelle, our lead Shopify web designer, walks you through the changes and shows you what to look out for:

Baked-In Functionality Speeds Up Site

The number one end-benefit that Shopify users will enjoy is this:

Because so much more functionality has been baked into Shopify, there will be a reduced need to use Apps, resulting in much faster page load speeds.

And the faster your website loads up, the higher your conversion rate will be = more money for you! Yay!

New Shopify Themes With Sections On Every Page

As Narelle demonstrates in the video above, a section is an element within a page – such as a banner or a text section.

Shopify sections allow customers to create a page by dragging and dropping multiple sections, arranging them how you like and adding content such as images and text to each section.

Historically, sections were limited only to the homepage. This meant, on the homepage you could add, remove and rearrange sections on the page to keep the store looking up to date and fresh. Other page types such as product, collection and blog pages were fixed structures only and only the content itself could be edited.

Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 brings sections to every page of a Shopify store, meaning store owners can add, remove and re-arrange sections throughout the entire site.

This new feature release is truly game changing, for example if you need to add a banner section that you have on your homepage to the bottom of a product page, you can simply do that directly through Shopify’s theme editor.

And you can now easily set up different product, collection, blog and page templates themselves within the same store without the need for a developer to add in the elements manually.

Metafields Now Included

What the heck is a Metafield? You might be asking…

Metafields are extra pieces of data that can be assigned to specific parts of your Shopify website, such as individual pages, customers or orders.

Previously, Shopify only allowed the page title and one single rich text editor for page content on any page, product or collection.

But what if you wanted to add more specific fields or information to go in a particular space of the page? Such as an ingredient list or a size chart for example.

Metafield apps were always a great choice to achieve this, but now this functionality has been baked into Shopify Online Store 2.0. Metafields even support a wide variety of file types with Shopify’s file picker!

So that’s one less App you will need to use.

App Blocks with Online Store 2.0

Previously, the way that an app worked within a Shopify store was fairly inflexible. Unless the app developer offered personalised integrations or specific compatible settings – then the app would appear on your store where it was originally intended to.

With Online Store 2.0, apps are now delivered in blocks within a page giving store owners and designers full control over exactly which pages it will display upon and also the location of the page it appears too. You can even update the app settings directly through the theme editor.

A good example here might be how and where you display your Reviews App.

Checkout Apps

Previously, the ability to edit the checkout was limited to Shopify Plus stores only.

Shopify have now announced that checkout apps will also be available to non-Shopify-Plus stores. These means regular stores using Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 can add extra checkout apps to their stores (though full customisation is still limited to Plus stores only).

One client we’ve worked with in the past wanted to add a date field to the checkout, which was not previously possible on Shopify. Hopefully this change would enable things like this to be customised.

Need Some Help Upgrading?

As Narelle explains in her video – if you are currently looking to design a new website or doing a theme upgrade, you should go straight to Shopify 2.0.

This may require choosing a new theme rather than simply upgrading your current theme, if it’s not yet compatible with Shopify 2.0.

If that’s you, and you need some help – my team and I would love to work with you!

First step is to book a call with us to discuss your requirements.