Shopify Online Store 2.0

Shopify has redesigned their Online store 2.0 experience and has also just released Hydrogen a new set of developer tools to assist developers in creating exceptional experiences for merchants and customers.

Shopify has rebuilt three leading areas of its online store: Themes and the online editor, store content, and developer tools. For non-developers, the custom storefront with CMS improvements and the online editor will have more impact.

Online Store 2.0 is all-embracing. With the new store, everyone gets an option to create, customise, scale and monetise on Shopify.

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1. Sections Everywhere

As the title suggests merchants can now add sections to all pages, not just the home page as was the case with Shopify 1.0, this will unlock a range of new opportunities to personalise every aspect of your store. Now to create a new page template you can do so directly in the customiser meaning you'll be less reliant on developers.

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2. Better App Intergration

Traditionally, there’s not been that much flexibility in how you embed apps and how they interact with your Shopify store.

This changes with Online Store 2.0. It delivers apps in blocks within a page. This new modular approach to apps means that you’ll have full control over which pages the app appears on, as well as the page locations.

You can add or remove apps and change app settings through the theme editor too.

Currently there are a limited number of apps available to 2.0 themes though as Shopify app developers race to catch up with already impressive amount of Shopify 2.0 themes available to merchants, there is a deadline of the end of 2021 set by Shopify.

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3. Metafields

Another really useful feature of Shopify 2.0 is the metafields function. Metafields are extra bits of data you can add to individual pages or items. This will enable you to create unique pages with dynamic content specific to each product.

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4. Dawn 2.0

The reference theme Dawn, the new standard storefront theme is 35% faster than the previous standard theme, Debut. So if you're currently using one of Shopify's free themes it's a no brainer to upgrade to the Dawn theme and take advantage of the superior site speed and new features available in Shopify 2.0.

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5. Github Repository Integration

The GitHub integration with themes will allow developers to collaborate safely when editing themes by introducing native support for version control. When working on a merchant’s store, developers can now implement workflows where changes to themes must be reviewed and merged on GitHub before populating to a live theme.