Glossary
Shopify Glossary: Plain-English Definitions
The Shopify terms you’ll hear from developers and agencies, explained simply.
About this glossary
This glossary explains common Shopify terms such as themes, sections, Liquid, metafields, Markets, Shopify Functions, checkout extensibility, Hydrogen and Core Web Vitals in plain English, so you can follow conversations with developers and make better decisions about your store.
- Admin
- The back office of your Shopify store, where you manage products, orders, customers and settings.
- App
- An add-on from the Shopify App Store or a custom developer that adds features to your store.
- Canonical URL
- The preferred address of a page, telling search engines which version to index when duplicates exist.
- Checkout extensibility
- Shopify’s upgrade-safe way to customise checkout using checkout UI extensions, Functions and branding settings.
- Collection
- A group of products, created manually or automatically by conditions such as tag or price.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google’s measures of real-user experience: Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift.
- Dawn
- Shopify’s free reference theme for Online Store 2.0.
- Headless
- Running Shopify as a back end while a separate custom front end shows the store.
- Hydrogen
- Shopify’s framework for building custom headless storefronts; Oxygen is its hosting.
- Liquid
- Shopify’s template language, used to build themes.
- Markets
- Shopify’s feature for selling to multiple countries with local currencies, languages, domains and pricing.
- Metafield
- A custom field that stores extra information on products, collections, customers or orders.
- Metaobject
- A reusable custom content type, such as an ingredient or a size chart, that can be linked to products.
- Online Store 2.0
- Shopify’s theme architecture with sections and blocks on every page.
- Section
- A customisable block of a theme page, such as a hero banner or product grid, edited in the theme editor.
- Shop Pay
- Shopify’s accelerated checkout that saves customers’ details for faster payment, where available.
- Shopify Flow
- An automation tool for triggering actions, such as tagging orders or sending alerts, based on events.
- Shopify Functions
- Custom server-side logic for discounts, shipping, payment and checkout validation.
- Shopify Plus
- Shopify’s plan for high-volume and enterprise merchants, with advanced checkout, B2B and automation.
- Storefront API
- The API used by custom and headless storefronts to read products and create carts.
- Theme
- The design and code that control how your online store looks and works.
- Transaction fee
- A Shopify fee on orders paid through third-party payment gateways, which varies by plan.
- Variant
- A version of a product, such as a size or colour, with its own price, SKU and stock.
- 301 redirect
- A permanent redirect from an old URL to a new one, used to keep links and rankings during migrations.
FAQ
What is Liquid in Shopify?
Liquid is Shopify’s template language. Themes use it to load store data, such as products and collections, into HTML pages.
What is a metafield?
A metafield is a custom field that stores extra information on a product, collection, customer or order, such as care instructions or ingredients.
What is Online Store 2.0?
Online Store 2.0 is Shopify’s theme architecture that lets merchants add sections and blocks to every page in the theme editor, without code.
Have a question we didn’t cover?
Ask us. We’re happy to explain anything about Shopify in plain English.