"i only speak liquid" #69: Adapting to Shopify's new customer accounts

Hey everyone,

We have a new writer: Storetasker expert: Miguel Ángel!

Miguel (a Storetasker Member) is an experienced Shopify developer based in Colombia. He brings a wealth of operational experience having been on in-house teams, at agencies and now freelance.

Let’s GO 📚

What I’ve been thinking about:

The evolution of Shopify's customer accounts has been a hot topic in the development community, and for good reason. These new customer accounts might feel unfamiliar at first—detached from your Shopify theme, styled by Shopify, and offering only the essentials out of the box. However, after spending significant time working with them, I’ve come to appreciate their flexibility and security.

Shopify has recognized my app, Hubble, as one of the partner apps for this new feature, meaning I’ve had the opportunity to deeply explore their capabilities. If you're a developer or merchant looking to adapt to these changes, here’s what you need to know.

The Shift to a Unified Experience

With legacy customer accounts, merchants were at the mercy of their theme’s capabilities. If you were lucky, you had a theme that extended customer accounts beautifully. If not, you either had to settle for its limitations or purchase a new theme altogether.

Now, with the new customer accounts, Shopify levels the playing field. Every merchant, regardless of their theme, gets the same baseline experience. Shopify controls the styling, ensuring consistency across all stores. While this might seem restrictive at first, it actually brings several advantages:

• A Cohesive Look and Feel: Since Shopify handles the design, merchants don’t have to worry about mismatched styles or clunky integrations.

• Security and Performance: The new customer accounts are built with modern security measures, reducing vulnerabilities that previously existed in custom-built implementations.

• Faster Custom Development: Because Shopify provides built-in components, what used to take a freelancer four days to build might now take just two or three.

Extending the New Customer Accounts

Customization is still very much possible, but the approach is different. Instead of modifying your theme, you extend customer accounts using customer account UI extensions and apps. This means you don’t have to worry about whether things "look right"—Shopify ensures a seamless design.

For merchants, this is a game-changer. Instead of being locked into a theme’s capabilities, they can now choose from a growing ecosystem of apps that integrate effortlessly with customer accounts. And for developers, this opens up opportunities to build modular, reusable solutions that work across stores.

What Can You Do With Custom Apps and UI Extensions?

With the right app or developer, you can:

• Add Personalized Content: Display tailored content to customers based on their behavior and purchase history.

• Integrate Loyalty Programs: Offer rewards and incentives directly within the customer portal.

• Enhance Order Management: Provide additional details, upsells, or related actions within the order history.

• Streamline Customer Support: Embed FAQs, support tickets, or live chat integrations.

Why This Matters

The new customer accounts represent a shift in how Shopify merchants engage with their customers. Rather than treating the account page as an afterthought, Shopify is pushing for a standardized yet powerful hub that can be enhanced through apps and extensions.

This also means that Shopify is making it easier for developers to create and deploy solutions quickly. The more standardized the environment, the faster we can build custom features without reinventing the wheel.

3 links you can’t miss:

1. Understanding the Differences Between Legacy and New Customer Accounts: Shopify's Guide

2. Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up New Customer Accounts:Shopify's Official Guide

3. Building Your Own Customer Account UI Extension: Shopify Developer Docs

1 app I like:

Hubble: Target Customers - The app I’ve been building allows merchants to customize customer accounts with bespoke content blocks and powerful actions. It also enables segmentation, letting merchants serve personalized content based on customer data.

One learning as a freelancer:

As freelancers, we often think in terms of the technical work we deliver. But in reality, we’re trading time for money. The merchant isn’t just paying for the code we write—they’re paying for the time it saves them, the efficiency it brings, and the revenue it helps generate.

A Mindset Shift for Freelancers:

• Negotiate Wisely: When discussing pricing, think in terms of the time and value you provide, not just the effort you put in.

• Focus on Outcomes: Clients care more about results than the technical elegance of your code. Frame your work in terms of business impact.

• Optimize for Efficiency: The faster and more effectively you can solve problems, the more valuable you become to clients.

Final Thoughts

The new customer accounts might seem like a significant shift, but they’re ultimately a step forward for both merchants and developers. By embracing the standardized approach Shopify is pushing, we gain a more secure, scalable, and customizable solution—one that benefits everyone in the ecosystem.

Whether you’re a merchant looking to improve customer engagement or a developer building new extensions, now is the time to explore what’s possible.

-Miguel