Short answer: A Shopify theme update gives you a new copy of the theme, and some of what made your store yours may not come with it: code edits that conflict, apps that need switching on again, a section left off. Compare the new version against the old one page by page, starting with the pages that take orders, and look in your orders for information that stopped arriving.
What owners usually ask
“We updated the theme and something isn’t right.” Usually it starts with a symptom, not the update: a sale that didn’t show, a box missing on a product page, orders arriving without something they used to have, or sessions that seem to have dropped. The update is often weeks old by then, so nobody connects the two.
Asking “what did the update break?” is a good start. The answer depends on three things:
- What the store had that the stock theme doesn’t: edits to theme code, app blocks, custom sections.
- Whether the change was an update of the same theme or a move to a different one.
- Which of those parts a customer actually uses to buy or to give you information.
What’s usually happening
- Code edits weren’t carried over. Shopify adds the update as a draft named “Updated copy of” your theme and tries to bring your code edits with it. When they conflict with the new version, the theme card says “code edits could not be included”, and you have to copy them in yourself. Edits made by apps count too.
- Apps aren’t switched on in the new theme. Shopify’s help pages say that when you change your published theme, apps you added to it “won’t be active by default” and must be re-activated. App blocks also need a theme that supports them on that page type.
- A section or block is missing, hidden or not added back. Theme editor changes usually carry over in an update, but not when you move to a different theme. There, section settings, wording, templates and code customizations all have to be set up again.
- Nothing is visibly broken. The store looks fine to a shopper, so the first sign is in the orders or the reports, often weeks later.
How to check, in about ten minutes
- Find the old version. In Online Store › Themes, the theme you replaced is still in your theme library as a draft. Note its name and the date of the update.
- Read the theme card. If it says code edits could not be included, you already know where to look.
- Open the key pages in both versions. Preview the old draft and the live theme side by side: a product page, the cart, a collection, the contact page. Look for anything the old one shows that the new one doesn’t, especially fields a customer fills in.
- Check Apps in the theme editor. Open the live theme’s editor, then App embeds. Every app you rely on should be switched on, and its blocks placed where they were.
- Look at orders since the update. Open a few orders from before and after. If something your team used, such as a customer’s note, a personalization or a form field, stops on a certain day, that’s your date.
What we found on one store
The store sells seats in classes. When a business enrolls several employees, the product page asks for each attendee’s name and email, so the school knows who is coming, not just who paid. A product-options app supplies those fields.
In September, the person who handles their enrollments wrote to us: none of the sign-ups for an upcoming class said which student would attend. That had never happened before.
The update was ours. In June we had updated the store’s theme to keep it current with the changes Shopify had made to its themes. When we looked, the part of the product page that asks for the attendee’s details had not been switched back on. For about three months, the store looked normal, took orders and simply stopped asking who was coming.
What fixed it
- Found the gap. We checked the class product page against what it used to collect, and found the attendee section was off in the updated theme.
- Switched it back on. We re-enabled that part of the page the same day she reported it, and checked that the class page asked for the attendee again.
- Told her plainly. We explained what had happened and that it was fixed going forward.
What the evidence shows
- The fields were missing from June to September, the stretch between the update and the report.
- The fix took one day: reported and corrected on the same day, and acknowledged by the client the next morning.
What it doesn’t show: whether anything else changed in that update. Nobody had a list of what the store relied on, which is why a missing field could go unnoticed for a season.
When to bring someone in
- Your store has years of edits, apps and sections, and nobody has a list of them.
- The theme card says code edits could not be included, and you don’t read theme code.
- You’re moving to a new theme, not just updating the one you have.
- Something stopped arriving in your orders and you can’t find the day it changed.
- You want someone to own updates, and to check the pages that take orders after each one.
For a defined theme correction, request a website project. If you want someone to own recurring updates and agreed purchase-path checks, discuss ongoing support.