Shopify is one of the leading e-commerce platforms for companies looking to create an online store and operate their retail business on the internet. The platform manages commerce for over 1.7 million businesses worldwide.
In a recent event, Shopify announced significant improvements to its e-commerce platform, emphasizing performance, ease of use, and developer control.
Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 is one of the platform’s most significant improvements to date. With this update, developers will be able to create spectacular experiences for merchants and shoppers.
What Is Online Store 2.0?
Online Store 2.0 was announced with other significant updates for Shopify in a live event called Shopify Unite on June 29, 2021. The event presented improvements and modifications on the e-commerce platform intended to improve the shopping experience on Shopify stores.
Shopify has completely redesigned the online store experience and is releasing a new set of developer tools to assist developers in creating exceptional experiences for merchants and customers.
Shopify has rebuilt three leading areas of its online store: Themes and the online editor, store content, and developer tools. For non-developers, the custom storefront with CMS improvements and the online editor will have more impact.
The overall update will give more power to the developers with the developer tools and a 0% revenue share for developers on Shopify. We’ll explore these new tools and features to see how they affect the user experiences on Shopify Stores.
1. A Customizable Online Store
With the release of Online Store 2.0, your Shopify store will become modular and customizable. You can easily add and rearrange your webpage content with sections and blocks.
You don’t need to learn how to code to play with the blocks. This new update will give merchants more creative flexibility to design their Storefronts with “no-code” knowledge to get started quickly. The “max code” access for developers will give them more freedom to extend and customize.
This new feature of the Custom Storefronts platform ensures that every merchant’s business can thrive on Shopify, regardless of their size, technical expertise, complexity, or scale.
This update opens the door for more themes with exciting features.
The Online Store 2.0 will also allow retailers to showcase their items more effectively by providing more product information.
2. More Product Information to Attract Customers
Previously, you had to alter your code to add more information about product items, customers, or orders, which was difficult.
Now, with this update, you’ll soon be able to add and modify metafields from your Shopify dashboard without having to touch your code.
This feature will allow you to add additional information for your products. For example, you can mention special care instructions to your buyers on the product page.
The new Shopify Store will also allow you to store more data about your products, customers, orders, and more in your Shopify account. With more information on your product page, you can now get more customers. The new feature improves their checkout experience on your store.
3. Better Checkout Experience
Checkout on Online Store 2.0 will be considerably faster, allowing any store to process tens of thousands of transactions per minute.
Developers will be able to safely integrate Shopify apps inside Shopify Checkout thanks to the upcoming Checkout Extensions. These checkout customizations will also function with Shop Pay, giving retailers another unique brand interface with the fastest method to pay on the internet.
Shopify will soon allow retailers to provide more payment methods for shoppers to have a more localized shopping experience, and merchants increase their conversion rates.
Also comes the buy now pay later option to improve the shopping experience on your online store.
4. Buy Now, Pay Later Choice for Buyers
The notion of buy now, pay later has lately gained popularity. It allows buyers to pay less upfront while merchants see an increase in conversions and average order values.
Shop Pay Installments will allow customers to buy now, pay later, or split their bills into four interest-free installments. The installment option, however, is available only in the US for orders between $50 and $1000.
With the pool full of Shopify apps, merchants often could not pick the one that would suffice their needs. Online Store 2.0 solves this problem.
5. Personalized App Recommendations
Different businesses have different app needs. It was tricky to find the exact match for apps in the previous version.
However, in the Online Store 2.0, Shopify App Store will provide personalized app recommendations that other similar merchants use for their store. This feature will save time to find the best match app for your store.
Online Store 2.0 will be accompanied by Dawn, a brand new store theme that is 35% faster than its current default theme.
6. The ‘Dawn’ of Online Store 2.0
Dawn, the open-source standard theme, is optimized for performance, versatility, and usability. The new default theme takes advantage of all of the Online Store 2.0 features, including app blocks and sections.
The company says Dawn will replace Debut, which is the present default theme. Shopify designed Dawn with speed as the prime goal, and as a result, the new Dawn will be 35% faster than Debut.
The new standard theme Dawn, with other features, will bring more freedom for theme developers to create new theme designs efficiently.
Talking of the developers, Shopify has more in store for them.
7. 0% Revenue Shares From Shopify Developers
On the Shopify App Store and the Shopify Theme Store, Shopify announced a developer-first business model. As per the announcement, Shopify’s commission for the first $1 million in a yearly revenue of Developers on Shopify will be 0%. Shopify’s revenue share will be 15% after $1 million in sales, down from 20% before.
The Shopify developers will be motivated to create more applications and themes with this revenue-sharing proposition.
The Beginning of a New Era for Online Business
The developers have plenty of opportunities to use their creative ideas and grow on the platform. The new Online Store 2.0 will provide merchants the much-needed control and freedom to do more on the platform. With the new shop, anybody can develop, configure, scale, and monetize their own Shopify business.
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