In the early days of traditional e-commerce, Shopify came swiftly off the heels of Wordpress’s woocommerce. The new platform revolutionized e-commerce to the point where it’s hard for a business to claim to be an online merchant—without knowing Shopify.
But that revolution didn’t come without drawbacks. A major one was the restriction in customizing your store. This became a challenge for store owners, as it required hiring Shopify developers for the most basic changes to the store.
All that is in the past now with Shopify online store 2.0. The new platform upgrade is the talk of every merchant in the e-commerce space—most are praising it for making adjustments to most of their most pressing challenges.
Today’s article will cover all you need to know about the new Shopify online store 2.0 and the changes making waves. Ready to dive in? Let’s go!
What Is Shopify Online Store 2.0?
The Shopify online store 2.0 is an upgrade to Shopify’s built-in functions that now provide merchants more room for flexibility and customization of their store.
This upgrade comes with additional features, like new page templates, customizable storefronts, and easy app integration on specific parts of your store. These new features allow you to edit any part of your store independently without drawbacks on other parts.
Another upgrade is the page speed of the new “Dawn” theme, which Shopify says is 35% faster than the previous theme.
Developers will also like this upgrade. The new theme is built with HTML and CSS semantic markup, allowing for store scalability without dependence on external libraries.
Loving the new Shopify online store 2.0 yet? Let’s explore some of the best new changes to the platform and how they can help your store.
What Are The Best New Changes In Shopify Online Store 2.0?
1. Adding and Editing Sections On Every Page
Previously, adding and editing sections was only possible on the homepage. If you wanted to do it on another page of your store, you’d have to reach out to an experienced Shopify developer.
And this involves code edits, block moderation, and integrating custom apps into your store’s backend. With the new upgrade, you can now add and edit sections on all pages without hiring a developer.
To use this new feature, follow these simple steps:
- First, navigate to your Shopify dashboard.
- Go to the online store section, and click on “Themes.”
- Select a theme you like, and click on “Customize.”
- On the left panel of your theme, click on “+Add section.”
- Pick a section or multiple sections and edit as you want.
Once you’re done editing your section(s), click save, and there you have it—a customized store.
Here's a demo from Shopify on how it works.
2. Easier Integrations With App Blocks
In the previous theme, merchants had no control over the customization of app blocks and where they could appear on the store’s site. The new adjustments to the theme’s architecture make app-block integrations easier. The Shopify online store 2.0 now allows apps extension into themes. This gives you complete control over deciding the app's location in your store.
Follow these instructions to add an app block to a section on your theme:
- Navigate to your Shopify dashboard.
- Go to the online store section and click on “Themes.”
- Select a theme you like and click on “Customize.”
- Select a section of your store you want to add the app block.
- Move to the right panel of your dashboard and click on “Add Block” from the Apps dropdown menu.
- Save your changes.
3. Customize Store Content With Metafields
Metafields is a fun name for product descriptions, and the new upgrade now makes it customizable. With the new theme editor, you don’t need APIs or code to change the properties of your meta fields. Instead, you need to go to your theme editor and edit your store’s content any way you want—you can add specific details about your product.
Here’s a demo to walk you through how the new meta fields work.
4. Flexible Meta field File Picker
An additional function to the meta field is the file picker that now allows images and PDF files. With this, you don’t have to hard-code a specific asset into your theme. Instead, all you have to do is simply upload your file on any of your product pages. You can keep track of media files in your store by navigating to your dashboard and checking the “Files” section under “Settings.”
5. Improved Checkout Experience
Customizable checkout and increased processed transactions per minute were accessible only to Shopify Plus merchants, but not anymore. The new upgrade in the Shopify online store 2.0 allows every merchant to use this feature.
This also allows merchants to use Shopify Checkout to accept orders and payments from wherever they sell their products. The Shopify checkout also offers easy app integration for merchants to add more functionality to their store.
For example, merchants can decide to offer either a cross-sell or upsell to buyers on their product post-purchase.
In addition to the functionality of this feature, Shopify introduces the acceptance of customers’ payment of choice. This becomes possible with Shopify’s integration with over 100 payment providers worldwide.
Recommended — Shopify Payment Gateway.
6. The New “Dawn” Theme Editor
Dawn is the most talked-about feature in the Shopify online store 2.0. The 35% increase in page load speed seems to be the reason for this, but there’s even more. All of the new changes we’ve mentioned earlier run on the new theme editor because of the associated customization of its properties.
According to Shopify, the goal of the new theme editor is to give merchants complete control over their stores without relying on developers for most adjustments. This also comes with certain advantages, such as building your store as you want without depending on the theme’s properties.
7. Buy Now, Pay Later With Shop Pay
Merchants won’t run their stores if there are no buyers, and this is something Shopify understood when building the online store 2.0. Introducing the buy now, pay later feature with Shop Pay. This allows buyers to split their payment into four interest-based installment plans for $50-$1000 orders in the US.
8. Personalized App Recommendations
It was a hassle finding compatible Shopify apps with which to run your store, but not anymore.
Depending on your store or product’s category, Shopify will recommend personalized apps that promise to help you improve customer experience and drive the most revenue for your store.
9. A Shoppable 404 Page
Google says 404 pages don’t affect your site’s rankings or performance. And although that might be true, it does affect conversion if customers bounce from your website due to this error page. But you can change that starting with the new Shopify upgrade. Your 404 page won’t just be an error page; instead, you can customize it to display anything you want.
For instance, you can customize your 404 page to display your best-selling items. Or you can customize it to display your discount sale. This way, customers won’t be bouncing off your website immediately if they see a 404 error page.
10. Re-Opening of The Shopify Theme Store
Building or searching for themes for your Shopify store is quite challenging, and Shopify also doesn’t make it easy when it comes to compatibility. There’s now a solution to that with the Shopify theme store reopening to partner developers. This will allow developers to submit their themes for review and, if approved, will be published on the Shopify theme store.
Also, one of the perks to this reopening is the announcement made by Shopify on revenue share with developers. For the first $1 million you make on the Shopify theme store selling themes, Shopify takes zero percent in revenue share.
Once you make $1 million, you pay 15% in revenue share on subsequent incremental earnings. And when a new year starts, your earnings from the previous year resets. So you won’t pay any revenue share in the new year until you make another $1 million.
To participate in this, Shopify requires you to pay a one-time subscription fee of $99 per account, and you’ll incur a 2.9% processing fee on all transactions. If you want to join the Shopify Partner Program, sign up here.
How Can You Upgrade To Shopify Online Store 2.0
Your upgrade to the Shopify online store 2.0 is theme-dependent. This means all you have to do is either switch to the new theme or update your existing theme.
1. Switching To The New Theme
Gaining the customization abilities in the new update is possible when you switch to any compatible theme on the Shopify theme store. For new merchants, the default theme, “Dawn,” has all you’ll need to get started. And you can also go through the theme store and pick a compatible theme for your store.
If you wish to keep your existing theme, then the second option would work for you.
2. Updating Your Existing Theme
Check in the update section of your existing theme to see if the developer has provided an updated version with new compatibilities. If your theme is custom-made, reach out to your developer to help you manually migrate your current theme in order to gain access to the new customization properties.
Note: In updating or switching your themes, some apps might not work, and you’ll have to either update them or uninstall them.
How Will Shopify Online Store 2.0 Impact Your Site’s Performance?
So far, we’ve not recorded any side effects to merchants upgrading their store to Shopify online store 2.0.
One area where we’ve seen most users see improvement is with page load time after upgrading. The default theme is responsible for the recent increase in page speed, with as much as a 35% increase compared to the previous theme.
A Better Way To Improve Your Shopify Performance
While the default theme promises an increase in load time, your site's overall performance falls behind without proper optimization. In estimating the overall performance of a website, we’ve seen that page speed is only one of several factors that impacts conversion. And in terms of speed, there are several Core Web Vital metrics we’ve seen contribute to a site’s performance.
With so many factors to keep track of, getting your site to perform optimally might be a problem. But it shouldn’t be. Edgemesh’s Headless Ecommerce solution provides an easier way to scale your store performance. Some of the benefits of our headless solution include:
- Faster integration process
- Improved customer engagement
- Increased website speed and performance
- Better competitive advantage
- Business scalability and stability
- Reduced cost in customer acquisition
With our solution to help your Shopify store attain the best performance possible, you’re guaranteed to see an improvement in your bottom line.
Ready to improve your Shopify store performance? Go Headless in 5 minutes.
