Shopify Hydrogen vs. a theme 2.0? Here’s a good rule-of-thumb for when to use what.

Shopify themes have become a fan favorite for brands looking to launch an ecommerce storefront without friction. And with good reason — they’re easy to set up and manage.

If you’re just starting out, a theme is the right way to go. Exceptions to this rule are extremely rare.

However, as you continue to scale, achieve product-market fit, and drive more revenue, your shopping experience will demand more flexibility and customization. 

This article will highlight the signs that your store should evolve past its Shopify theme while providing guidance on how to scale your storefront within the Shopify ecosystem using Hydrogen.  

Plus:

• How brands are scaling their storefronts with Shopify’s innovations in the headless space

• Maximizing the ROI of Shopify’s headless offerings with Pack

Let's dive in!

1. You’re looking to unlock higher frontend performance

As brands using Shopify themes scale their product catalogs, integrate more third-party apps, and launch content-rich experiences, they often have to start getting creative to speed up their page load times. When each second of load time can impact CVR by 17%, and core web vitals influence your store's Google rankings, it’s clear why site speeds are of paramount importance for any brand. 

The most common approach from brands encountering slow site speeds is tapping a technical team to make site optimizations—like reducing image sizes, improving scripts, or adding new scripts to help improve load times. However, this eventually becomes the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a broken arm. Site speed optimizations require pulling developers away from other business objectives, and are generally a short-term solution.

“Going headless” used to be seen as the long-term “fix” to the site speed problem, but it can also come with some massive drawbacks in site cost and complexity if you take the standard approach (here’s an in-depth overview of whether or not you should go headless, and the best ways to do it).

2. You’re planning to expand your site

Once you've done basic optimizations for site speed, you’ll want to consider what other tech or content investments you’re planning on moving forward. Typically, there is a conflict between maintaining site speed and continuing to add new functionality. 

If you are going to continue to request new functionality, add apps, and expand your product catalog while maintaining snappy performance, this is where brands may face diminishing returns from their development resources.

3. You need more content flexibility

When integrating feature-rich content (i.e. a quiz, high-def videos, product pickers) makes day-to-day content creation and deployment a process that leaves your marketing and development teams scrambling, it’s a sign that your brand could benefit from a Hydrogen storefront.

While Shopify themes provide built-in CMS capabilities, Hydrogen is a better solution once you start looking to add:

• Content diversity: As a dedicated ecommerce platform, Shopify focuses primarily on the management of your core shopping experiences. If your brand relies on content-heavy pages or dynamic content, a theme might leave you wanting more. 

• Connected page structures: Customizing content or creating intricate page layouts can be difficult without altering the theme’s code or integrating additional apps. What type of features and efficiencies get unlocked when building these experiences with a more modern framework?

• Workflows for marketers and devs: Mid-market and enterprise-level brands may start running into challenges as multiple users manage content and streamline content release cycles. 

A traditional headless CMS can mitigate some of these issues, but they’re generally extremely complex, which hurts your team’s ability to make rapid content changes or launch campaigns, especially as you test and iterate.

4. You’re looking to boost CVR and ROAS

In today’s increasingly competitive ecommerce landscape, most brands invest heavily in paid ads on platforms like Meta and TikTok. While paid ads drive site traffic and get your brand in front of new audiences, redirecting shoppers from a social platform—which loads instantly— to your website—where page load speeds are much slower—decreases your chances of successfully converting that ad spend to revenue.

While you could opt into the platforms’ native shopping features, that further limits your customization options, a fully branded experience, and the potential for repeat purchases.

5. You’re looking to broaden your technical talent pool

Shopify is an excellent backend platform for brands and operators, but developers want to work with tools that unlock efficiency and flexibility. 

Top technical talent will always gravitate toward businesses—whether it’s your own business or an agency—that are leaning into tomorrow’s tech. Not only are newer technologies and frameworks (like React) highly efficient—meaning devs need to write less code to achieve the same ends—coding in modern frameworks is much better for their personal career development. Developers looking to expand their skill set beyond Shopify Liquid and work with the newest frameworks will often seek other opportunities.

Shopify’s solution for your growing pains? Meet Hydrogen

The ideal step for brands who have outgrown their Shopify theme is a Hydrogen storefront. 

A Hydrogen storefront delivers front-end flexibility — empowering your brand to deliver content-rich experiences that scale with your success. Meanwhile, developers gain the flexibility to use modern coding frameworks to build custom features that improve your customer experience. Plus, you can shave down page load times significantly, which in turn boosts conversion rates.

With a Hydrogen storefront, your brand can:

• Deliver a blazing-fast and content-rich shopping experience

• Exceed UI and UX limitations of Shopify themes

• Unlock flexibility for your storefront

While Hydrogen storefronts help brands scale beyond Shopify’s themes, building a headless storefront from scratch is expensive, high-risk, and time-consuming. Because Shopify owns and maintains Hydrogen, and hosting on Oxygen is included in your subscription for free, operating within the Shopify ecosystem empowers your brand to unlock the full value of Shopify.

So, how do brands take advantage of Hydrogen’s developer tools and frameworks and end up with a site that’s blazing-fast and easy to use? Simple, they partner with Pack.

Pack unlocks your Hydrogen storefront—so it’s easy for anyone to use

Pack’s comprehensive Digital Experience Platform (DXP) combines the ease of use of a Shopify storefront with the speed and flexibility of a custom headless tech stack. 

Rather than forcing brands out of Shopify, we help them unlock the full value of Shopify’s Hydrogen toolset.

What does this look like in practice? Let’s use our partner Public Rec as an example. 

Pack helped Public Rec implement a new headless PWA storefront that would support its growing catalog of products — while maintaining the ease of use of Shopify.

Since launching their new storefront, Public Rec has seen: 

• 52% faster page loads

• 26% increase in CVR

• 10% increase in AOV

Are you ready to launch a blazing-fast Hydrogen storefront?

At Pack, we're firm believers in the power and flexibility of Hydrogen. 

When you're ready to explore a storefront that’s built on Shopify’s cutting-edge technology, we'll be here to help you every step of the way. 

Book a call with our ecommerce experts, or check out this blog article to decide if it’s time to make the switch.