What Are The Benefits Of Shopify OS 2.0 & Why You Should Upgrade?

Shopify is a popular ecommerce platform that allows you to easily set up and run an online store. It provides all the tools you need to manage your business, from building a website and adding products to taking payments and shipping orders.

Example Shopify 2.0 Theme: RankHigherTheme v4.0 – Xclusive

Here’s a breakdown of Shopify’s key features:

• Easy to use: Shopify is designed to be user-friendly, even for people with no coding experience. You can create a professional-looking online store without needing to hire a web developer.
• All-in-one solution: Shopify offers a comprehensive suite of tools to manage all aspects of your online business, including inventory management, marketing, shipping, and customer service.
• Sell anywhere: You can sell your products on your Shopify store, social media platforms, and even in person using Shopify’s point-of-sale system.
• Scalable: Shopify can grow with your business. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re a large enterprise, Shopify has a plan that’s right for you.

If you’re interested in learning more about Shopify, you can sign up for a free trial here

Shopify itself isn’t an online store, but rather a platform that lets you create and manage your own online store. Here’s how it came about:

• The Birth of the Platform (2004): The story starts in 2004 when three friends in Canada attempted to launch an online snowboarding store called Snowdevil. However, they were frustrated by the lack of user-friendly e-commerce solutions available.
• Building their own solution (2004-2006): One of the founders, Tobias Lütke, being a programmer, built their own online store software for Snowdevil. This initial version wasn’t Shopify yet, but it laid the foundation.
• Shopify’s Launch (June 2006): Recognizing the potential of their solution for other businesses, Lütke and his co-founder launched Shopify in June 2006. The name “Shopify” signifies the ease of creating your own shop (store) with their tools.

So, Shopify wasn’t created out of a single moment, but rather evolved from the founders’ need for a better way to run an online store. They then turned their solution into a platform for others to build their own online businesses.

Since it’s inception, Shopify has become extremely successful despite it’s technical SEO issues.

There are two ways to look at Shopify’s success:

• Platform Growth and Market Share: This data indicates Shopify’s overall reach and influence in the e-commerce industry.
• Success Rates for Businesses Using Shopify: This focuses on how well businesses fare using the platform to run their online stores.

Here’s some data to consider for both aspects:

Platform Growth and Market Share:

• Active Stores: As of 2024, Shopify boasts over 4.6 million active stores globally [Yaguara – Shopify Market Share & Statistics 2024]
• Market Share: Shopify holds a significant share of the e-commerce platform market, with:
  • 29% share in the United States [Yaguara – Shopify Market Share & Statistics 2024]
  • 10.32% share globally [Yaguara – Shopify Market Share & Statistics 2024]
• Revenue Growth: Shopify’s revenue has seen consistent growth, with a 25.56% year-over-year increase in the twelve months ending March 31, 2024 [Macrotrends – Shopify Revenue 2013-2024]

What is Shopify 2.0?

Shopify OS 2.0, also referred to as Shopify Online Store 2.0, is a significant upgrade to the platform’s theme architecture. It essentially offers a new and improved way to build themes and addresses some key technical SEO issues with Shopify.

It was released on June 29, 2021. It marked a major update to the Shopify platform, introducing a new theme architecture and a focus on improved customization and user experience.

It basically offers a new and improved way to design and customize the look and feel of your online store.

Key Benefits of Shopify 2.0

Here are the key benefits of Shopify 2.0:

1 – Section Everywhere

If you’ve heard anything about OS 2.0 it’s probably this, which is being touted as the most significant feature. It extends the versatility and functionality of the platform considerably, enabling store owners to insert sections and blocks anywhere they like throughout their site.

In the previous version, it was only possible to add these to the home page which severely limited the navigation options.

Now it’s possible to list all the sections of any page, whatever its content. Not only will that make for smarter-looking designs, but it will significantly improve the user experience.

2 – Building from Scratch

What virtually every new ecommerce merchant wants from their platform is the ability to build their site quickly and easily from concept to execution.

This has always been an important focus of Shopify but OS 2.0 develops this capability much further, with all features and functionalities centralized. Extensions can be added and apps managed within themes.

3 – Meta Fields

These are pretty essential features for any ecommerce site, which allow you to add additional information about products without revealing the hidden data itself.

They are useful for syncing products from the platform to accounting systems or for tracking the popularity of the item.

Previously, you needed to use a meta field editor but in OS 2.0 you can do this without ever thinking about coding or APIs. When you add content to a product page or any other section of the site, you also create a space for features like lists of ingredients or size charts.

Adding meta field definitions as default settings makes it much quicker and easier to change information and upload images. The new meta fields are much more flexible, making it easier to import commerce data.

Standard meta fields have been designed to simplify the use of custom themes across market verticals and you can now add presentation hints in order to render store data.

4 – App Extensions and App Blocks

Now that the majority of online searches and a very substantial proportion of ecommerce transactions are carried out on mobile devices, apps have become a major tool for online retailers.

One of the main benefits of Shopify OS 2.0 is to make it much easier to install apps using app blocks. Without ever going near code, a merchant can integrate their apps into the theme directly from the theme editor.

Removing apps is equally simple, with any ghost code automatically deleted.

Using app blocks is a much safer, cleaner way of making changes because you don’t need to open the theme code and risk affecting other functionalities or settings.

5 – Liquid Input

This is another important upgrade to the theme editor. The Liquid input setting, which is similar to the HTML setting enables a merchant to add custom Liquid code from within the editor.

As with many of the features of OS 2.0, the great benefit of this change is the elimination of any need to use coding. When you add code for apps using Liquid you’ll no longer need to change any of the theme code.

6 – Page Loading

It is very well-known that the online attention span of consumers is severely limited and if a page is slow to load, a significant number of visitors will give up and go elsewhere.

Dive Deeper:

Best Shopify Theme For SEO

Importance of Page Load Speed Stats

How To Improve Your Shopify Store Speed

7 User Friendly Shopify Speed Optimization Hacks

All of the new templates in Shopify OS 2.0 have been developed with high-speed loading in mind.

7 – Enhanced Checkout

The user experience from end to end needs to be fast and as close to seamless as possible. If the process from browsing through selection to purchase is not efficient, a customer may lose confidence in the store’s professionalism or simply reconsider their decision and leave the site with an abandoned cart.

Another of the benefits of Shopify OS 2.0 is its significant checkout upgrade, which has enabled it to handle seven times the volume of transactions.

You will also discover a new freedom to integrate new features into sections that were previously beyond the reach of the theme editor.

8 – File Picker

The meta fields element in the new operating system has vastly increased the type of media supported in Shopify, such as PDFs, photographs, and graphic images.

There is no longer any requirement to hard-code a file type to a theme. With file picker, you can simply upload the media file directly to the product page making it much easier to publish video content.

9 – New Developer Tools

Although many of the upgrades on Shopify OS 2.0 have been introduced to make the platform easier for merchants without coding skills to use, the new operating system also contains many tools that will be of particular help to developers.

Despite the ease of 2.0, there will always be certain functions you’ll prefer to delegate to an external developer.

The new Shopify Github integration allows developers to collaborate in safety as they edit themes, and enables them to implement workflows in which all amendments can be reviewed through GitHub before going live on the storefront.

10 – Theme Checker

This is a valuable resource that acts as a linter – a tool for analyzing code – which assesses the JSON template and Liquid within your theme to identify any errors and ensure that your site conforms to Shopify and Liquid best practices.

The kind of problems it can unearth include liquid syntax errors, unused variables, missing templates, and performance issues. For a more technical explanation for developers checkout this article:

https://www.shopify.com/uk/partners/blog/shopify-online-store

In Summary

Shopify 2.0 comes will a whole host of improvements that will help your store perform better. Here’s what the upgrade will translate to for you and your customers.

Enhanced Customization: Shopify 2.0 empowers store owners with more control over the look and feel of their online store. It introduces sections, which are essentially building blocks for your store’s pages.

You can add, remove, and rearrange these sections to create a unique and customized layout without needing extensive coding knowledge. This is a significant improvement over Shopify 1.0, which offered limited customization options.

Mobile-First Focus: In today’s mobile-driven world, it’s crucial for online stores to provide a seamless experience for mobile users. Shopify 2.0 takes a mobile-first approach.

The theme editor allows you to preview your design changes and ensure they render well on smartphones and tablets. This ensures your customers have a positive experience regardless of the device they use to browse your store.

Streamlined App Integration: Shopify apps extend the functionality of your online store. Shopify 2.0 simplifies the process of integrating apps with your store.

App developers can create “app blocks” that function consistently across different themes. This means you can easily add functionalities offered by these apps (like customer reviews or social media feeds) to specific areas of your store’s layout, without worrying about compatibility issues.

Improved User Experience: The overall user experience for store owners is also enhanced in Shopify 2.0. The theme editor is more intuitive and user-friendly, making it easier to make changes and manage your store’s design.

Additionally, features like dynamic content and metafields allow for more targeted content delivery and data storage, ultimately contributing to a better customer experience.

Faster Loading Speeds: Shopify 2.0 themes are generally faster loading than those created with the older architecture. This is because the new architecture is optimized for performance.

Faster loading speeds are crucial for e-commerce stores as they can significantly impact conversion rates.

By combining these benefits, Shopify 2.0 empowers store owners to create unique and engaging online stores that offer a positive customer experience, ultimately contributing to the success of their businesses.