What is Shopify 2.0?

Shopify 2.0 provides enormous opportunities for developers to build themes and apps for merchants in Shopify. It has brought new theme architectures and more customization options and integrations. Shopify 2.0 brings with itself JSON templates that can be used in addition to Shopify’s liquid template language. JSON stores the JavaScript data in text format which allows faster processing. This has accentuated the user experience. With Shopify 2.0, let us see what features have been integrated by Shopify Plus experts.

1.   Upgraded Theme

Shopify Plus developers have added new themes which provide greater freedom for merchants for customizations. These themes can easily be customized by merchants to suit their specific business needs.

2.   Store Content

The updated theme editor is flexible so that merchants can add meta fields or properties without codes or APIs. This entails that merchants can now add things like size charts, and ingredients without having to make changes in the core store editor. These meta fields support different file formats like PDF and JPEG for easy integration, without having to hardcode an asset into the theme.

3.   Theme Editor Enhancements

Instead of having to narrow down on different sections, the editor displays a tree view of all the contents. When the sidebar pops up, the merchants can make changes in all the blocks, barring the header and footer (which can be edited, but not removed). This feature added by the Shopify plus developers makes it easy to maintain page hierarchy.

4.   Advanced Developer Tools

Shopify Plus Experts can now take advantage of the Shopify and GitHub integration to make theme development and maintenance easier. This integration will allow developers to collaborate securely while editing themes as it introduced native support for version control. With Development Themes you can now create a development theme in the store you are working on. What makes it a smart addition is the fact that it doesn’t meddle with your theme limit and is deleted after a week of inactivity.

With the Theme Check integration by the Shopify Plus Developers, you can now run a test to check if there are errors in the theme and if the theme aligns with the best practices. The debugging is made easier as the error notifications are provided with a link to the failed check’s documentation.

5.   A New Dawn

Shopify 2.0 was launched with a default theme titled Dawn which brings together all of the features talked about already. It is built with HTML and CSS instead of its earlier reliance on external libraries and this makes it friendly with all kinds of browsers. To put things into perspective, the minimalistic approach can be seen with the load speed of Dawn which is 35% faster than Debut, Shopify’s initial default theme.

6.   Theme Store Reopens

The Shopify theme store also reopened on the 21st of July this year. You will now be able to submit themes for review and they will be published as soon as they are approved. This year Shopify 2.0 has mandated that merchants will not need to pay a share of their revenue in the first million dollars. This mark will reset every year and only when you cross the million-dollar mark you will be asked to pay 15% of your revenue.

If you have not migrated to Shopify 2.0, now is the time to do it. Shopify 2.0 presents a whole range of possibilities, from aesthetically pleasing UI to optimized user experience, being a merchant just got easy. The flexibility of OS 2.0 is something that you would want to take leverage of sooner rather than later.