8 Factors to Consider to Choose The Best Shopify Theme For Your Store

“Which is the best shopify theme?” Or “Which Shopify theme should I choose?” These two are most commonly asked questions we come across regularly. A lot goes into deciding the right theme for your Shopify store. 

Shopify is the world’s top eCommerce platform, with over one million active stores. The platform includes thousands of premium and free apps, with integrated marketing functionalities.

 When compared to Shopify alternatives such as WooCommerce, Wix, or BigCommerce, Shopify has one advantage that others don’t have i.e scalability. The other important features Shopify offers are payment and inventory management, plus site hosting.

Choosing the right theme is directly proportional to the success of your business. Having the right theme makes it easier for your customers to find your products and improve the overall user experience. 

A Shopify theme dictates how your store looks and functions. It’s good for adding sections to pages and making navigation menus.

Choosing the ideal Shopify theme can seem like little more than cosmetic, but the choices you make here will influence how your customers interact with your store. Functionality and user experience are both affected by technical aspects, thus the theme you pick might impact your store’s conversion rate.

To help you out,in the first section of this article we’ll be discussing technical factors you need to take into consideration while choosing your theme for your Shopify store and in the second section we’ll mention some of the great Shopify themes to choose from.

So without any further ado, let’s get started.

Technical Factors You Should Consider When Choosing a Shopify Theme for Your Store

Theme Builder Support

While working on your theme, you will need to change certain settings, add more tools, or integrate other components. 

Quick and effective assistance from the Shopify developers who developed your theme is quite important because creating a store is complex.

Using one of the Shopify themes will allow you to obtain support from the Shopify support team. The assistance you’ll get for third-party developers depends on their service. So, you should first read testimonials and reviews for the service to see whether you should choose their offerings.

If you want to see real testimonial and customer reviews, visit platforms like TrustPilot. These are the rating platforms that give out real information instead of fake reviews.

Mobile Responsiveness

Shopify stores earned a total $2.9 billion in sales between Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2019. This is far more unexpected than the huge volume of these campaigns, though: mobile devices contributed 69% of purchases.

However, desktop-based eCommerce is still far more popular, but the rise of mobile-based online shopping has made it vital for all businesses. You need to choose a Shopify theme that is ideal for small businesses.

Thankfully, the Shopify Theme Store offers you the ability to sample both mobile and desktop designs before purchasing. Consider leaving time to examine the mobile preview, because the following things must be considered while making a final decision:

• How much does your visitor have to scroll to access the first interactive screen/option?
• To what degree does the picture or its dimensions extend across the screen?
• When drop-down menus are positioned vertically, are they simple to use?
• Are your call-to-action (CTA) buttons readily visible, and can be easily accessed by thumb?
• Is the minimum spacing between clickable objects large enough to prevent inadvertent clicks?

For a Shopify store to be optimised for mobile devices, it is most crucial that it loads quickly. While it is impossible to predict the speed of your theme before choosing it, it is possible to estimate the speed. Video blocks and carousels generally cause longer loading times, so to be safe, just bear that in mind.

Size of Product Catalogue

The official Shopify Theme store offers you the option to choose which number of goods it supports when you use it. These stores (such as electronics and fashion) need extensive catalogues since they sell a wide range of products. 

A collection should be displayed with a theme that provides easy access for browsers. Inventory-heavy businesses like eCommerce and brick-and-mortar stores have multiple-level menus, search bars, and filters in place.

If you’re selling less than 10 goods, your homepage could be best served by sticking to a more focused theme that provides a greater number of possibilities for customising your homepage.

Promotional banners and testimonials are provided by Debut (which is completely free), as are product suggestions and recommendations from other products.

Conversion and Checkout Process Optimization

It is possible for your checkout pages and baskets to determine whether or not a transaction will be made, and some themes provide you tools that help improve your Shopify sales funnel.

For example, clients will find it simpler to finish a transaction if they are given visual cues such as back buttons, progress bars, order summaries, and helpful icons. If you can decrease the cart abandonment rates, you will rapidly recoup the cost of your premium theme.

Search Engine Optimization Compatibility and Tools

A good Google ranking might assist increase the traffic for your Shopify business. Less money is spent on paid search advertisements, which results in more sales. 

Search engine optimization is easier when Shopify themes include SEO options built in. When you use organic traffic as a major component of your marketing plan, the following qualities should be on your radar:

• Custom metadata
• Sharing buttons for social media
• Google snippets support
• Automated sitemap generation

Image Formatting

Using Shopify with an eCommerce business has several advantages, including how its servers deal with the material you provide. 

Because of the Shopify platform’s worldwide content delivery network (CDN), when you upload a new  image to your shop, it is immediately disseminated over the CDN, increasing your page load speed and enabling dynamic scaling across multiple devices.

If you don’t want to offer distinct mobile and desktop copies of each image, that means you don’t have to.

The sophisticated server architecture along with the software automatically converting your JPG and PNG photos into WebP files, ensures Shopify customers have the best-possible graphics for their websites. by decreasing image file size by 30% while maintaining high-quality results.

However, large video files and images might slow down your Shopify store’s page load time regardless of how much effort is invested in optimising Shopify store performance. This is a critical issue since every second you are losing sales.

 Overall, for every 2 seconds added to the page loading time, your bounce rate will be about 27% higher.

At the same time, a business that offers items like jewellery or apparel must feature several different pieces in great detail. When running these sorts of businesses, the products should have product pages that include pictures of the products in HD, especially with the opportunity to zoom in.

Menu Architecture, Navigation and UX

Specific industries require certain qualities. The biggest challenge for someone selling several non-categorizable items is having a multi-level menu to assist clients in rapidly finding the relevant pages. 

Identifying and researching new products or features your users may be interested in is an essential aspect of your user experience.

Thanks to search filters and breadcrumbs, it’s simpler to find the parts of your collection you’re looking for. Additionally, multi-level menus give a quick picture of your complete collection.

Using a multi-level menu helps to minimise bounce rates for sponsored campaigns with product or category pages as landing pages. When someone visits your advertisement, it will help to learn more about your other items before leaving.

Translation Support

eCommerce platforms need to provide different-language content for international clients. Adding other languages can boost your search engine presence even if the bulk of your consumers speak the same language. 

It is possible to use language-support plugins within Shopify Themes, but there are some themes that make it very difficult to implement translated content. To choose a theme that enables shoppers to look for products in various languages.

To aid your worldwide expansion, you can use a currency converter. Customers are sometimes hesitant to complete a transaction if the entire amount is not explicitly given in their native currency. If they don’t want to make the conversion for themselves, they’ll need to provide more information about their location (like tax).

Currency converters are easier to add to your online store than translated content, and may be done in-app or by inputting the code. In order to begin accepting payments in more than one currency, you must first change your payment options.

5 Examples of Best Shopify Themes

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is one of the best Shopify themes available for free. The theme is particularly designed for apparel stores. As a result, it focuses on building a brand image by allowing you to showcase your products through visually attractive inventory.

Some other notable features of Brooklyn are:

• Slide-out cart
• Homepage-video
• Product grid
• Header slideshow

Brooklyn is one of the best Shopify themes that will assist you in your quest for eCommerce success in this particular niche.

Expression

Are you looking for a Shopify theme to showcase your extensive inventory of products?

Then Expression is the best option for you.

You will find that expression is one of the top Shopify themes to help you achieve various goals. Drop-down menu bars, sophisticated search capabilities, and a dynamic slideshow are all characteristics of the theme’s major features.

Some other notable features of Expressions are:

• Grid-style layout
• Multi-level menu
• Product image rollover
• Slideshow

You will be charged $180 to make use of this creative asset, but it is well worth it as it will help you build an eCommerce business with eye-catching images. It is created to increase the effectiveness of your promotional efforts and hence increase the number of conversions.

Unero

If you want to keep your eCommerce minimal and clean, Unero is one of the best Shopify themes you should go for. 

The theme is available on Themeforest. Unero features a minimal and clean design that can be used to attract your customers. It offers some unique features like advanced swatches and dynamic checkout button.

Some other notable features of Unero are:

• Age verification
• Footer style 7
• Header notice
• Revolution slider

Zeexo

Zeexo is a professionally-tailored eCommerce template that is beautiful and uncluttered.It features more than 60 product,shop, and home pages. If you may choose an endless number of colours, you can create a storefront that is perfect for your business.

Your Shopify site will operate seamlessly across all contemporary devices due to its responsive design and mobile-optimization. While they are shopping on your Shopify store, your consumers should have an outstanding browsing experience.

Some other notable features of Zeexo are:

• Dynamic mega menu
• Multi-currencies
• Countdown timer
• Lookbook pins

Icon

Searching for a Shopify theme that is lightweight and easy to use?

For you, the $180 Shopify theme may be the perfect match.

A huge advantage of the platform is that it’s designed to scale marketing efforts across several channels. That is a great benefit of having smooth social media integration and a blog.

Some other notable features of Icon are :

• Parallax effect
• Quick product view
• Sticky navigation
• Slideshow

As the name of the theme suggests, Icon is a Shopify theme that can be used to create an iconic eCommerce store and generate plenty of revenue.

Choosing the Right Shopify Theme for Your Shopify Store

Undoubtedly, among other eCommerce solutions, Shopify is one of the best to develop your eCommerce website. When deciding on a Shopify theme, you should look at three aspects. The first is offering impeccable user experience.

 Visitors should be able to find the items on your site without being overwhelmed. It involves picking a theme with features and menu architecture that suits your collection. Avoiding themes with superfluous elements might help optimize your page loading speed.

The second important aspect is search engine visibility and marketing. Features like comment boards, social media integration, and blog posts can help your rankings by generating important user-generated content. Also, features like lead capture pop-ups improve email marketing.

The last aspect is CRO. For increased Shopify conversion rate, create an easy, secure, and simple user experience. This involves keeping your CTAs where they may be seen and used. Social Proof also includes using recently-sold alerts and testimonials.