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How to Choose the Best Shopify Theme for Your Store
Aug 17, 2020 | 05 min read
1. Overview
In today’s online world a website is judged of its cover, so you have to make sure your Shopify store’s theme tells about your brand. As a Shopify merchant, your website is the first place where a customer will interact with products.
It is not sufficient only to have a simple site with a checkout system, now it has to be a fresh and amazing experience for each customer that they truly enjoy. It is important to remember that your website is your first media. With an e-commerce platform such as Shopify, you can create a beautiful online store, and can also easily browse all available Shopify themes.
In this blog, let’s take a look at What is a Website Theme & Why is it Important, What to Consider When Choosing a Shopify Theme for Your Online Store, How to Pick the Best Shopify Theme and Steps to choose a Shopify Theme in the Shopify theme store.
2. Why is a Website Theme important?
The look of your website is the first impression of your brand in the customer’s mind and to attract them towards your products. Selecting a Shopify theme for your online store is as important as the products you sell, as it represents what you and your brand stand for. Your store theme will also have an impact on factors like customer experience.
Like every step of building your e-commerce store, you have to make a perfect choice and find the right Shopify theme for your brand’s success. This is also why you should pay attention to the smaller details while choosing a theme.
Generally, websites that have a strong header and a sidebar on the left-hand side of the website are most creative for first-time users. While putting so much importance on the theme is necessary because it will form the public perception of your brand.
As a merchant on Shopify, all you need to do is download one of the Shopify themes and install it into your website and then you can customize the colors, fonts, layouts, and options of the theme to make it more beautiful and amazing.
3. How to Pick the Best Shopify Theme
Your Shopify Theme should Look Familiar
Shopify themes are perfect for your store as they have a consistent look and feel. These themes have the potential to convert your visitors into paying customers.
First, take a look at a poorly-designed website template as shown in the below image:
- The product image is placed between the product description and a button of the price.
- A variety of product images are not shown.
- Photography of products is very important. The pictures on this product page are in one-dimensional.
- The features of this product are not clearly defined.
Now let’s view the product page of an e-commerce website theme as follows:
This is a Shopify theme for beauty products. The creativeness is so amazing.
- The Shopify theme allows this product page to be interactive with the user. If you click around the image you can zoom into the image of the product. You also browse through different pictures with just a few clicks.
- This product page includes a detailed description of exactly what the product includes, that place at just next to the product.
- It displays other products that are similar to the same product line.
- You can simply click on the plus sign to the right of “details” and get extra info of a particular product.
- You can add your email address on the same page, and sign up for more updates about the products.
Look Your Products on the Shopify Theme
When you are checking any Shopify themes, you can also view how your products will look like on various Shopify templates. Shopify theme designers insert premium product images into their themes.
You can try this using images of your products, also make sure you get familiar with the design that will look the same when you install the Shopify theme into your own store. Remember only use high-quality product images while checking Shopify templates. Take your time to test your store and install the multiple free or paid themes and compare how they work and look before choosing a theme for your store.
Select Lightweight Shopify Themes
Do not choose the Shopify website templates including elements like busy loaders, unnecessary animations, or fancy scrollers. These elements will only decrease your page speed. Try to make your Shopify theme as easy as possible for users, so they will find the products they are looking for, and buy it.
Always focus on your store theme should be simple, lightweight, and clean. The unnecessary animations make the website heavy and slow.
The Theme should be Mobile Friendly
Keep in mind while selecting a theme and not paying attention to the mobile view of the theme will not be considered. The desktop view of the theme is important but if you think about website traffic most of it is coming from mobile so when choosing a theme make sure you will take a look into the mobile view.
Also, see your Shopify theme on both your smartphone and tablet before you launch your store to the public. The above image is an example of a Mobile view.
4. What to Consider When Choosing a Shopify Theme for Your Online Store
SHOPIFY THEMES & YOUR PRODUCT
One of the best factors of using Shopify themes is you can preview how your website and products will look with your new theme before you download the theme to your site.
When creating Shopify themes, the designers use high-definition, and color-coordinated images to make their designs pretty in the Shopify theme store to attract the users.
Once you like the theme you can actually set up the theme onto your store. You are able to preview the theme that helps you find any mismatched themes with your branding so you can be sure that you download the right Shopify theme for your store.
SHOPIFY THEMES & SPEED
If you don’t want visitors to lose interest in your website, then choosing a Shopify theme is necessary to avoid elements such as animations or live banners as well as any typical navigational elements. They will only add bulk to your website and slow down the speed of your website.
The “lighter” your Shopify theme is, the more focus there will be on improving the customer’s experience on your website that will increase conversion rates. Visitors don’t like to wait for sites to load and on average, they will wait 3 seconds and then click away if the site does not load.
So, keep in mind the point of speed while picking a template for your store.
Consider Theme Support as a Deciding Point
Theme support is another important factor to consider when deciding the right theme. Shopify supports all free themes through the Theme Support team
All third-party developers have their own support team, so if you are using a theme that is of third-party, you can contact their team directly if you get any issues.
5. Steps to Choose a Shopify Theme in your Shopify Theme Store
The Shopify store provides free themes that are developed by the Shopify team, and some third-parties designed paid themes.
Here, are following steps to choose the theme for your store:-
- Step 1: Go to your “Online Store” sales channel.
- Step 2: Select “Themes” from the menu.
- Step 3: Click “Visit Theme Store” in the “Shopify Theme Store” section.
The Shopify Theme Store has more than 100+ different theme styles that you can use on your Shopify store. Browse the store for both free and paid themes. Filters allow you to browse themes that have a special feature, and layouts. You also have the ability to search for themes based on industries or collections.
Examples of industries include:
- Art & Photography
- Clothing & Fashion
- Electronics
- Home & Garden
- Sports & Recreation
