How To Choose The Right Shopify Theme

What is a Shopify Theme?

A Shopify Theme is the template which determines the structure, look and feel your customers will experience on your website.

Creating a whole new website from scratch using HTML can take someone months to learn if they are new to it and that’s not even including user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) and other parts of the website. It is a very daunting task to try and undertake.

However, Shopify offers an array of themes that take the difficulty out of creating a website with the potential to lead to conversions.

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Why should you use a Shopify Template?

With a Shopify template, you don’t need design and coding expertise to create an amazing, user-friendly website.

The key benefit here is that you end up spending less money than you would if you hired a web designer. After all, you will end up with a professional user-friendly website.

Alternatively if you do know how to code, there is the option to edit an existing theme to suit your needs.

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User-Interface vs. User-Experience – What’s more important?

A recent Forrester Research mentions how a well-designed user interface (UI) could raise your website conversion rate by up to 200%, and a better user experience (UX) design could yield conversion rates up to 400%.

When someone comes to your website, you have one chance to convert them into a customer. Investing into an amazing user experience which allows customers to browse seamlessly, view a pleasing aesthetic and enjoy the amazing performance of your website will leave a lasting impression on them and potentially lead to higher chances of conversions.

Shopify offers a variety of free and paid themes and it’s important to carefully select the right one to suit your business as choosing the wrong theme can prove to be costly. There are a variety of themes available on Envato, Shopify and Themeforest.

Choosing the RIGHT Shopify Theme

Now that we have established the importance of choosing the right theme, let’s take a look at what to look for when choosing a theme:

Understand what your expecting from your website

Before you start looking at themes, narrow down the top three features that support your purpose as a business. For example, Instagram feed feature, videos, full width banner, drop-down navigation, product page layout etc.

Once you have determined these features, you can move on to browsing and creating a shortlist of the themes that offer exactly what you need.

Find your perfect page layouts

Shopify themes come with sections that are subject to the page layout. For example, in most cases you can’t use the sections you designed your homepage with on every other page such as product, collection and information pages.

Always look through the various page formats individually and check if they fit your purpose.

Check the theme developer

Find out if your theme comes with a theme developer. Shopify Themes are quite easy to edit and design yourself. However, you might want to make certain changes. If you’re making basic customisations, the theme’s web developer can code these changes for you.

However, if the changes you want to make are more extensive, you will need to contact Shopify’s experts who usually charge a fee.

Mobile Optimisation

This is so important!

Although your website may look amazing on desktop, it is vital to make sure it is mobile optimised as mobile accounts for 65% of all e-commerce traffic and 53% of sales. Make sure your site is easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile.

Also, because mobile requires more scrolling, ensure your mobile website is absolutely optimised which requires a minimal amount of scrolling. You want your customers to have a seamless mobile phone shopping experience.

Check the reviews

Before buying or using a free Shopify Theme, it’s vital to research the themes you would like to use. Many Shopify users have left reviews on the themes they are using and you can gain insight on the good and bad aspects of the theme by reading these.

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How to get started

Start off by making a list of the top three key features, then browse though the themes to find your perfect one. After which you check the theme developer and make sure your website is mobile optimised.  Finally, it’s time to click, drag, drop and save. It’s never been easier to build your online store.

In case you didn’t know, we are Shopify Partners. Contact us at hello@jetpackmarketing.com to discover how we can help you elevate your website and boost your online business!

References

Massengill, J., 2015. The Bottom Line: Why Good UX Design Means Better Business – Forbes. [online]. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/03/23/the-bottom-line-why-good-ux-design-means-better-business/?sh=1eca268b2396 [Accessed 04 May 2021].

Shopify, 2021. Theme customization – Shopifyexperts. [online]. Available at: https://experts.shopify.com/services/store-setup/customize-theme [Accessed 03 May 2021].

Shopify, 2021. Support for themes – Shopify. [online]. Available at: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-store/themes/theme-support [Accessed 04 May 2021].

Salecycle, 2019. 2019 Ecommerce Year in Review [Infographic]

– salescycle. [online]. Available at: https://www.salecycle.com/blog/stats/2019-ecommerce-year-in-review-infographic/ [Accessed 04 May 2021].

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