What Is Shopify 2.0

Do I need to Update My Shopify Site?

Shopify is one of most popular ecommerce platforms with over 1.7 million sites. This is because it has always been one of the most intuitive ecommerce platforms for day to day management of your store. There has however always been a need for developers to create customisations for individual needs. Shopify 2.0 is the biggest update in the history of the platform and it has been done to enhance the functionality of the platform while reducing the need for many third party apps.

So What Is Shopify 2.0?

Shopify 2.0 empowers store owners by making the platform more flexible for non developers.  In other words it allows site owners to cusomise their site pages and products without the need for developers or expensive site slowing apps.

What are the Benefits of Shopify 2.0 for Site Owners?

There are lots of technical improvements that make Shopify 2.0 better including improvements for app developers that are not seen or of real interest to most Shopify site owners.  There are however some real benefits that will impact the way site owners are able to display products and customise individual page layouts and also improve site performance.  The most beneficial improvements from Shopify 2.0 for site owners are as follows.

Improved Theme Editor

Previously in Shopify, if you wanted to customise the way a particular product or collections page looked, you needed to learn to duplicate templates and sections within your theme which was messy and easy to get wrong.  Alternatively you could add an expensive Page Builder app to help you overcome Shopify's shortcomings.  With Shopify those days are gone. 

Shopify users will be familiar with the way you could add or remove sections within you home page. Sections are content blocks that you can place on your site to customize the appearance of your store. For example your theme more than likely has an image slider available for the home page.  However, unless the theme developer had built an image slider section into the collections pages or product pages you simply didn't have access to that functionality unless you customised the theme yourself.  With Shopify 2.0 you have "sections anywhere" functionality.  That means that in a Shopify 2.0 theme you can add any section included in the theme  to any page in the theme. 

You rarely will have the need to edit code in a Shopify 2.0 theme because you can create as many unique versions of each page type (product pages, collection pages etc) as you need from within the theme editor.  Its simply a matter of clicking on the dropdown to select the page type and then clicking "Create Template".   This new template can now be assigned to a single collection or product using the sections or content blocks that you want for that template.

Shopify 2.0 Means Easier and Better Landing Pages

Shopify is now a much more powerful platform to integrate into your marketing campaigns.  You can now create custom Shopify landing pages with a few clicks so that when advertising any particular product, you can use the content blocks that are going to showcase that product the best.  This opens up huge potential for store owners to maximise the effectiveness of marketing and advertising campaigns.  You can now modify landing pages to maximise sales and minimise bounce rates.  The faster loading speed of Shopify 2.0 will also help in this area

Shopify 2.0 Site Performance Improvements

Shopify 2.0 code upgrades also help your site performance. Site loading times will be faster will be lower because of:

Streamlined code base
Built in product filtering
Improved metafields (see below)
Reduced dependence on third party apps that add to the code being loaded

Faster loading sites have lower bounce rates and rank better in search engines meaning more visitors. More visitors and a lower bounce rate means more sales.

Product Metafields

Most Shopify website owners have never considered using metafields. That is because prior to Shopify 2.0, Shopify Metafields sucked. Now they are a powerful option that can be used to better showcase individual products.

So what are Shopify metafields? Think custom fields that you can use to add to your product display. For example, if you were selling robotic pool cleaners, you might want to display the maximum recommended pool size for each model. Previously you would have had to tack that information into the description but by creating a metafield for pool size, you can add the data into the metafield for the products that need it and then display that information on your product page. It means better. clearer data for your customers. Other examples of popular metadata given by Shopify are:

• part numbers
• color swatches
• product release dates
• featured products or variants
• product star rating
• files for download
• ingredient lists

Should You Upgrade To Shopify 2.0?

Not necessarily. You should analyse your store and decide just how well it is working for you. If your site is fast loading (don't rely on Shopify's numbers, test at gtmetrix.com), has high conversion rates and is responsible for you being able to sit on a beach in Bali and watch the money poor into your bank account, don't mess with it. Shopify will continue to support older sites.

Every ecommerce website needs to be regularly reviewed, updated and refreshed, so for most businesses the upgrade to Shopify 2.0 should fit into the normal lifecycle of your website reviews. Of course if your site is not performing as well as you think it should, then now is probably a good time to consider the benefits of upgrading to, or migrating to Shopfy 2.0. Whter to upgrade or migrate (migration means creating a whole new store from scratch) will depend of how much code baggage comes with your existing site. If you have a lot of apps and theme customisations you may be better to take the migration path to rid the site of excess code that is slowing it down and which could cause problems.

When reviewing your existing Shopify store, the following are red flags that could indicate un upgrade/migration is due:

Your store is outdated and lacks features that your competitors have
Your store would benefit from adding unique information on individual product pages
You need better product filtering on your site
You want better results for ad campaigns that would come from better landing pages
You are using third party page builders and complex customisations to get the results you want

If you are ready to do a review of your websites performance and are considering whether Shopify 2.0 is for you, or if you have made the decision to move to Shopify 2.0 already, contact us today.