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Should you upgrade to Shopify 2.0?
What you need to know before making the switch.
Kyle Tully
March 22, 2023
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Morning Commerce!
Here’s what we’ve got for you this week:
Should you finally make the transition to Shopify 2.0? (And what to look out for when migrating)
An inspo store in the hemp wellness market that oozes quality from every pore
Which online retailers are the worst offenders for using deceptive “dark pattern” strategies?
Shopify finally has a native GA4 integration!
Huge announcements in Shopify Editions Winter ’23
And much more…
This issue is brought to you by Nerdify, they build Shopify stores that convert.
Hot Links
Acquisition
Conversion
Email Marketing
Getting started with reporting in Klaviyo (link)
Shopify News
Inspo of the Week
A subtly gorgeous colour scheme, refined font choices, and custom illustrations have us oohing and aahing at Prima.co
Should you upgrade to Shopify 2.0?
If you haven’t yet made the jump to a Shopify theme built for Online Store 2.0, then you might still be wondering what all the fuss is about… and whether it’s even worth the hassle of upgrading.
At Nerdify we’ve spent the better part of the last 18 months helping dozens of clients big and small make the transition, and I can say without hesitation the short answer is…
Online Store 2.0 is fantastic and yes you should upgrade.
However, before you leap, there are some pitfalls and things to be aware of.
For example, it’s NOT a one-click upgrade. In fact, for many brands, it’s going to be a major project not dissimilar to a new site build. One of our Shopify Plus clients with a dozen stores has a custom theme with different customisations across each of the stores. It’s a BIG project.
The good news is if you haven’t upgraded yet, then your current theme is getting quite old and probably due for a refresh anyway. And now that all new themes are 2.0 compatible there’s an abundance of great themes to choose from.
So before you take the leap, I’ll walk you through what you need to know.
First, some basics:
What is Online Store 2.0?
Shopify announced Online Store 2.0 way back on 29 Jun 2021.
It was the biggest update to Shopify since it first launched. It introduced:
upgraded theme architecture
sections on every page
theme app extensions
more flexible store content
theme editor enhancements
and new developer tools
Why should you care?
All this sounds great, but unless it actually helps your business make money, save money, or work more efficiently then what’s the point? I gotchu fam.
Here’s why you should upgrade
Personalise your entire store — sections on every page gives you the same drag-and-drop visual editor you have on your homepage available across your entire store. As the name implies, this lets you add sections on every page… without needing to pay for a developer. Game. Changer.
Easy app install/uninstall — theme app extensions lets you install apps via the theme customiser, without needing to touch any code. Not only does this simplify app installs (and let you do it without the help of a dev) but it also eliminates ghost code left by apps you uninstall that can slow down your site.
Fewer developer expenses — more flexible store content lets you easily add metafields to products (for things such as size charts, product dimensions, or ingredients) and then add them to the product page using the theme customiser.
Faster load speeds — the upgraded architecture along with some of the more techy backend updates and overall newer theme code means your store will load faster. And faster stores lead to higher conversions.
Spend money on things that matter — clients we’ve migrated to 2.0 find they need us less for minor day-to-day code changes (which they can now do themselves without code), and can instead prioritise those budgets towards larger more meaningful projects.
More productive developers — we’ve found all the new developer tools extremely helpful both in terms of our development speed and in supporting clients. For example, one client noticed their site became really slow on a certain day. We were able to look at the GitHub logs and see they had installed a specific app on that day and identified the problem in a matter of minutes.
Don’t let the gotchas get ya
After migrating dozens of stores we’ve identified a few things you should be aware of to make the transition pain-free.
The main thing you need to understand is the upgraded theme architecture of Online Store 2.0 is incompatible with your old theme. So there’s no simple way to upgrade even if you’re using the same theme. It’s basically like starting over with a new theme.
(If you’re using one of the excellent themes from Out of the Sandbox then you can use their Theme updater app to copy over all your basic theme settings and home page content. But any custom code will need to be migrated manually.)
Pay attention to:
Home page content will need to be rebuilt.
Custom templates will need to be rebuilt.
Custom sections will need to be re-coded or rebuilt.
You may want to redo existing page content using sections.
Theme customisations and custom code will need to be redone.
Apps may need to be reinstalled and reconfigured.
Depending on your theme and the complexity of the customisations you have made, some of these can simply be copied over from the old theme to the new one and will work right out of the gate. In other cases, customisations will need to be completely redone from scratch to work with the new theme.
How to upgrade to Shopify 2.0
There are 3 different ways to get your store on 2.0:
Choose a brand new theme from the theme store. (The nuclear option, good if you’re not satisfied with your current theme and want to start over with something fresh.)
Download a new version of your existing theme. (Good if you like your current theme and have only made minor changes. Most of your theme settings will copy across, but customisations will need to be redone.)
Manually migrate your existing theme. (Good if you’ve made significant changes to your theme or are using a custom theme. Full migration guide here. You’ll need a dev for this option.)
No matter which option you choose, you’ll want to spend plenty of time testing before you go live to ensure everything is working as expected.
Testing tip: Preview your new theme in one browser window, then open your current site in a new private window. This will let you browse both themes at the same time. Split your screen 50/50 so you can see the themes side-by-side and go through the site page-by-page to make sure everything looks good.
How we can help…
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