Shopify Cheat Sheet

The core ideas of Shopify distilled into a single, scannable reference — perfect for review or quick lookup.

PiqCue — piqcue.com/shopify/cheatsheet

Quick Reference

Shopify Admin

The back-office dashboard where merchants manage products, orders, customers, analytics, and store settings. It serves as the central hub for day-to-day store operations.

Shopify Themes

Pre-designed storefront templates built with Liquid, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that control the visual layout and user experience of an online store. Themes can be customized through the theme editor or by editing code directly.

Shopify Payments

Shopify's built-in payment gateway powered by Stripe that allows merchants to accept credit cards, debit cards, and digital wallets without needing a third-party payment provider. It eliminates additional transaction fees charged on external gateways.

Liquid Template Language

Shopify's open-source, Ruby-based template language used to render dynamic content on storefronts. Liquid uses objects, tags, and filters to pull data from the store and display it in themes.

Shopify App Store

A marketplace of thousands of third-party and Shopify-built applications that extend store functionality. Apps cover marketing, SEO, accounting, shipping, customer reviews, subscriptions, and much more.

Shopify Plus

Shopify's enterprise-tier plan designed for high-volume merchants, offering advanced features like Shopify Flow automation, Script Editor for custom checkout logic, higher API rate limits, and a dedicated launch manager.

Shopify POS (Point of Sale)

A system that allows merchants to sell products in person at retail locations, pop-up shops, or markets, with inventory and sales data synced to their online Shopify store in real time.

Sales Channels

Integrations that let merchants sell products beyond their primary online store, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, Google Shopping, and the Shop app, all managed from a single Shopify Admin.

Shopify Checkout

The conversion-optimized, PCI-compliant checkout flow that handles payment processing, shipping rate calculation, tax computation, and discount code application. Shop Pay accelerates checkout by saving customer details.

Headless Commerce (Hydrogen & Oxygen)

An architecture that decouples the front-end presentation layer from the Shopify back end, allowing developers to build fully custom storefronts using Hydrogen (a React-based framework) hosted on Oxygen (Shopify's edge hosting).

Key Terms at a Glance

Shopify:A cloud-based SaaS e-commerce platform for building and managing online stores.

Liquid:Shopify's open-source Ruby-based template language for rendering dynamic storefront content.

Shopify Payments:Shopify's integrated payment processing gateway powered by Stripe.

Shopify Plus:The enterprise-tier Shopify plan for high-volume merchants with advanced features and support.

Shopify POS:Point of Sale hardware and software for in-person sales with online inventory sync.

Theme:A customizable storefront template that controls the visual design and layout of a Shopify store.

Sales Channel:An integration that enables selling on platforms beyond the Shopify online store, such as Instagram or Amazon.

Shop Pay:Shopify's accelerated checkout that saves customer payment and shipping information for one-tap purchases.

Shopify Flow:A workflow automation tool using triggers, conditions, and actions to automate merchant tasks.

Metafield:A custom data field for storing additional structured information on Shopify resources like products and customers.

Collection:A group of products organized either manually or by automated rules for merchandising and navigation.

Storefront API:A GraphQL API for building custom buyer-facing experiences outside the default Shopify storefront.

Admin API:REST and GraphQL APIs for programmatically managing store data including products, orders, and customers.

Hydrogen:Shopify's React-based framework for building custom headless storefronts.

Oxygen:Shopify's global edge hosting platform designed to deploy Hydrogen storefronts.

Get study tips in your inbox

We'll send you evidence-based study strategies and new cheat sheets as they're published.

We'll notify you about updates. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.