When you think of taking your store online, what first comes to mind? Almost all merchants think of Shopify. In fact, curating tangible goods for online sale is a common business model today, and defines many users of Shopify today. A new term that is being talked about among merchants is Shopify Hydrogen. And after its launch, it is predicted by industry experts that it would be the future of Shopify storefronts for merchants.
Shopify wants to enhance merchants’ experience by giving them more options to personalize their stores and make them more smooth for desktop and mobile search. Shopify Hydrogen is the most recent and important announcement at Shopify Unite 2021. It is a React-based framework that the eCommerce giant recommends for building dynamic eCommerce stores.
Shopify Hydrogen Is Available In Developer Preview
Shopify announced that Hydrogen is now available in the developer preview mode. Hydrogen combines Shopify’s advanced commerce-optimized components and a quickstart environment to make it easy to create custom storefronts.
This allows Shopify developers the ability to create “headless” stores. The headless stores give developers access to API to manage products, reviews and blog posts on any screen or device. In addition, they get the freedom to use the content using any framework they want.
What is Shopify Hydrogen?
Shopify has partnered with StackBlitz to bring this React-based framework. Shopify’s Hydrogen framework is completely React-based and provides pre-built components to create a custom storefront.
It is a JavaScript library that allows Shopify developers to create interactive user interfaces. React framework integration in Hydrogen makes it easy to create engaging user interfaces. It instantly updates your data and renders the correct components if you use simple views.
Developers and clients won’t be limited to pre-designed templates when designing their stores. From the beginning, they will be able to create a completely new online shopping experience. Hydrogen connects one’s shopfront to Shopify via webhooks. This allows one to take advantage of Shopify’s reflexive eCommerce features and retain total access to the frontend user interface.
Benefits For Frontend Designs
Custom solutions are key to achieving business growth. The new Shopify React framework is designed to help you create a unique shopping experience to grow your online business.
1. More design freedom
It separates the customer-facing part of your website from the section that holds all data and functionality. This headless feature in an online store allows for more design freedom, and allows you to enhance the layout and content changes.
It makes it easy to create a new frontend and share it with your team via Oxygen. Then, you can deploy it as a Shopify Hydrogen store using a simplified workflow. Everything snaps together because the front and back end of your website communicate via Hooks and APIs. You don’t have to worry about your store breaking after a redesign.
2. Superior Performance
Hydrogen is a hybrid of client and server components. It uses very little JavaScript. It reduces the amount of bandwidth required to load a page significantly.
Hydrogen will likely reduce page load times from several seconds to a few milliseconds after you switch. This will result in a significant increase in Core Web Vitals and possibly an increase in search engine rankings.
3. Easier Personalization
React-based framework in Hydrogen allows you to make storefronts with dynamic content and personalize the customers’ online shopping experience. You can create blocks that offer product recommendations based upon customer interactions, past orders or even location.
You can also offer targeted discounts by customer type or region to provide your customers with an exceptional shopping experience.
Google’s 2019 study found that personalized shopping experiences are 40% more likely to make customers spend more than their budget. Shopify’s Hydrogen is a tool that can increase sales, increase order values, and retain customers.
How Does It Work?
Hydrogen allows Shopify developers to build custom storefronts. It comes with a Vite plugin, which offers three features.
- Server-side rendering (SSR),
- Hydration middleware
- Server and client component code transforms
The SSR and the hydration middleware are similar to current Vite SSR implementations.
Additionally, Hydrogen includes React Router, which allows you to manage routes on your Shopify website via dynamic routing.
Hydrogen includes commerce components, hooks and utilities that can be used to support Shopify features and concepts. You can use it to create custom storefronts, saving your time and allowing you to focus on creating unique experiences.
Limitations of Shopify Hydrogen
Hydrogen is only available for the creation of Shopify storefronts. There is currently no support for other types of storefronts in Hydrogen, such as mobile apps, video games, or smart devices.
Future Of Shopify Hydrogen
Hydrogen opens up new possibilities for online retailers. Hydrogen offers unlimited design possibilities, faster loading stores and the ability to personalize shopping experiences. Although Hydrogen won’t replace Liquid in the near future, it would be an important step to spread Shopify’s online infrastructure.
You can easily achieve the majority of Hydrogen’s offerings using Shopify’s current technologies. You just need the right team to create it. Base2Brand has helped Shopify merchants to create unique shopping experiences and automate their business operations via integrations.
Commerce’s future is personalized, contextual and dynamic. Shopify Hydrogen is a React-based framework that allows developers to build custom and creative storefronts. It gives them everything they need to quickly start, build, and deliver dynamic and personalized buyer experiences using Shopify’s APIs and platform.
Hydrogen is designed and built to fulfill the following three requirements:
- Best-in-class merchant capabilities: personalized and contextual commerce
- Fast user experience: Quick loading and responsive
- Great developer experience: simple, manageable, and enjoyable
Shopify Oxygen Will Also Be Available Soon
The most exciting announcement for us was the introduction of Shopify Hydrogen and Oxygen. These announcements have not yet been made live, but they are still the most important moment of the conference.
Its preview was launched recently at the Shopify Unite 2021 event. It is being praised by many industry experts as the future platform. While it allows you to create custom storefronts, Shopify Oxygen provides hosting. These powerful Shopify upgrades are just the beginning.
Shopify Oxygen is also soon to launch. This platform will allow you to host Hydrogen storefronts. Shopify has invested heavily in its global infrastructure which will allow Oxygen to have over 100 server locations around the world.
Conclusion
Merchants using Oxygen or Hydrogen will be able to store any type of content in their stores. They will enhance the customer experience with the store and make a significant amount of profit from Shopify’s upgrading features.
