Why It's Important to Update Your Shopify Theme and How to Do It
Until recently, Shopify placed some significant limitations on the creation of your own e-commerce, which have been overcome with the launch of Online Store 2.0 .
First, theme updates often include bug fixes , performance improvements , and security updates, which means that installing the latest updates will help keep your website secure and running smoothly . On top of that, Shopify themes are continually updated to provide new features and improve the user experience, which can help increase conversions and keep customers happy .
Shopify Store 2.0 is the new version of the famous e-commerce management system. It is a significant update of the platform that offers a series of new features and tools to help online store owners improve the performance of their website.
Using themes that support this version of Shopify, you can create a completely customized and flexible website, without having to rely on a pre-defined page layout. The template editor has been further improved, allowing you to change every aspect of your website.
While Shopify Store 2.0 offers an advanced template editor that lets you change every aspect of your website, you may need the help of a developer to get the best possible results .
Shopify Experts like us can help you create a custom theme for an ecommerce store that reflects your brand and meets your customers' needs. They can also help you integrate the new features of Shopify Store 2.0 to improve your customers' shopping experience and increase conversions . But we've already talked about that in this article .
While Shopify Store 2.0 has numerous new features and improvements, its main advantage is that owners get much more control and flexibility in editing, customizing , and maintaining their store.
Below, we have compiled a list of the most impactful features and their benefits .
| New Feature | Benefits |
| Improved theme editor | Simplified navigation and ability to make changes to the store |
| Sections available on all pages | Endless content possibilities. With the new management, sections can be used to create or customize each page of the store. In this way, landing pages can also be created for targeted marketing campaigns. This will help increase sales and improve the user experience. |
| Shopify Metafields Massive Update | Allows you to add details to individual products, collections, store and more. For example, if you have an item with different features or shipping times, you can easily add it through these new fields. |
| Improved product filtration system | Product filtering is now natively integrated into Shopify, so loading time has been reduced, which increases site speed and decreases store abandonment. Filter management and use becomes much easier |
| App Extensions Updated | Creating, maintaining, troubleshooting and removing apps is much easier. It also improves the fluidity of the site |
| Improved site performance | Faster loading times |
| New multilingual features added | No external integrations are needed, multilingual stores can be managed natively on Shopify through the official Translate & Adapt app |
Rarely are you lucky enough to be able to update the theme independently ( see image below ) through the theme editor and without losing any customization of your e-commerce.
More often , however, the possibility of updating the theme is not granted ( see image below ) and unfortunately you lose the opportunity to take advantage of the excellent services of - Section Everywhere - (Online Store 2.0) with the risk of having to configure the theme you are using practically from scratch .
What to do to have the theme updated without having to redo it from scratch?
In these cases, Shopify Experts like us take care of it: through the code it is in fact possible to update the theme while maintaining all the settings compatible with the new version.
What happens if the theme has no updates (Theme "Vintage")?
If the theme is no longer updated by the official developers, and is therefore considered a Vintage theme, it is still possible to make it compatible with the new Online Store 2.0 features through a series of interventions on the theme code; these changes will allow the use of the sections available on the Home page on all the e-commerce pages.
Finally, relying on a team of Shopify experts can make the difference between an average website and a successful tool that will help you achieve your business goals .
