This summer Shopify announced that it was releasing its largest update to date: Online Store 2.0. It changes the way that its templating language (Liquid) functions as well as introduces a JSON-based approached to managing template assets that is akin to how WordPress does it with its popular Guttenberg editor. In addition, it introduces a new feature set called “App Blocks”.
With App Blocks Shopify is introducing a more modular approach to how apps can interact with its (Shopify’s) platform versus how it was done before with direct theme integration. This will allow apps to more easily integrate with themes built for Shopify Online Store 2.0. In short, Shopify is adding “App Modularity” so apps can insert or remove UI/UX components as needed without having to resort to direct access to a merchant’s theme coding.
For merchants, there is now an easier way to add meta fields and properties to nearly any page. If you want to add custom content, tables, lists, charts, etc – this is now more readily available through the updated metafields functionality.
Put Shopify sections on any page.
The new online store 2.0 format uses a JSON template file that defines a page’s components. It then saves additional configuration data for additional sections that a store owner may want to display.
For example: You may want to have different collections sell a different way. This allows you to modify how certain collections behave and sell their products without a lot of heavy, time-consuming workarounds.
Imagine a store that needs to be able to sell standard inventory along side “configure to order” products like laptops, gift boxes and other bundles products. This makes it easier to do so by allowing more flexibility within the Shopify ecosystem.
Shopify & GraphQL – together at last.
Shopify is introducing a new version of their Files API that will give access to the Settings/Files and allow merchants to use or reuse different files for different apps. You can add dynamic and custom information to any setting in your theme by connecting the setting to a dynamic source.
Shopify & Collection Filtering.
With Shopify 2.0 you can now allow your customers to filter collections (categories) based on availability, price and more. Prior to this you could only filter individual product displays based on these attributes or various tag-based workaround. This open up a lot of different options for sorting by price points.
Old Theme Versus Shopify 2.0 Theme Features.
Source: Shopify Help
You May Need Help Upgrading Your Theme and Apps.
If you are already using a Shopify theme that is 2.0 compatible, then you may not have to do anything at this point. Theme authors have been working frantically to push out updates to their themes so they remain compliant with Shopify Online Store 2.0. If they don’t – then Shopify will not let them sell their themes on there platform anymore.
Updating a theme for a store that is fairly standard and “out of the box” – meaning they just sell products with little customization, is generally not going to be a huge issue.
If you are a more mature store with years of customizations that have gone into your theme, then you will most likely need to involve a developers to help you migrate things manually to this new format.
Shopify provides details on what it takes to manually migrate themes to their new 2.0 format here.
Shopify has also announced that they will be forcing all store to upgrade by 12/31/2021 – so time is running out.
If you would like to discuss how we can assist you with these changes that are coming to the Shopify platform, please reach out to us and we’d be glad to help.
