Top 5 Considerations in selecting your Shopify Theme

When considering Shopify as your eCommerce platform, the online store will require a Shopify Theme for navigation, displaying your products and services to support the brand and drive differentiation from your competitors. Common questions such as “What Shopify Theme is best for my business?” or “How do I go about choosing a Shopify Theme?” are frequently asked. We hope to cover the top 5 considerations you should take when selecting a Shopify Theme.

Most eCommerce websites focus on the shopping cart aspect where their web design is focused on their brands, and enticement to purchase. However, a competitive theme needs to incorporate search engines and social media marketing.

Selecting your Top picks of Shopify Themes from the Shopify Store

For quality and change control, the Shopify Store has Shopify staff reviewing the Shopify Themes to their standards/policies, ensuring compatibility and quality being delivered to its community. Additionally, the available support from the agencies that created the Shopify Themes will be easily within reach for questions on any issues or how their Shopify Theme works. To see how quickly the Shopify Agency responds, you will find them under the "tile" “This theme is designed and supported by Shopify Agency” as a linked object – you can enquire on its general functionality, and key features, and operation.

Watch for visual Shopify Theme influence and marketing

Shopify Agencies use examples within their Shopify Themes to illustrate what the store selling a particular category of products would look like. If your categories are similar, don’t be taken by the similarity as a better shoe-in for your business. Similarly, when evaluating Free Shopify Themes – the displays will try to exemplify a rich Shopify Theme feature-set; where a lot of these can be upgraded for a price. Shopify Agencies have a very competitive environment since there are thousands of Shopify Themes in the Shopify Store. Choose based on your business structure, product/service complexity (Assemblies, Long Descriptions, and technical information), navigation, and content (imagery/gallery, reviews, social media, video).

Mobile responsiveness and conversion-optimized for your Shopify Theme

Believe it or not, there are some Shopify Themes that are still optimized for desktop and may not work well on mobile devices. With the world relying on their mobile phones for about everything that runs their lives, making sure that your Shopify Theme is mobile responsive is important. For your top picks, testing the themes on mobile devices on IOS/Android-based Operating Systems of various size screens ranging from small pocket phones to large-sized tablets.

Conversion optimized might mean different things for the Shopify Agency that delivered the Shopify Theme – this step requires a study and definition of your marketing funnel when a select set of clients (New, Returning, Warranty, Support) which gives the parameters on the experience your business would like to project to then compare it to the facility/flow of the Shopify Theme being considered. While industry best practices are incorporated in a lot of Shopify Themes, ensuring that the facility and experience would be easily achieved in your top picks. Rating your top picks based on the conversion optimization will help you prioritize which Shopify Theme you would like to pursue.

Testing your main hot-button Shopify Theme Features sets

A key reason you have a 14-day free trial for a Shopify Store is to be able to test out the platform, but more importantly your ability to size up the Shopify Theme choices. From your top picks, you can download and install a Shopify Theme to evaluate its features, navigation, and be able to ensure that your hot-buttoned features work to your expectations. You can also explore the limits of the Shopify Theme in the next section.

Knowing your Shopify Theme’s limits

Without having to explore every technical capability of the Shopify Platform, the approach is really comparing your requirements for a Shopify Theme to top contenders from browsing the thousands of themes available. While Shopify Themes contain a significantly wide variety of Shopify Platform supported features, there will inevitably be some items that may not be included in your top picks. While you might see them as limitations initially, it does not mean that your requirements cannot be achieved within the confines of the platform – it just means that your requirements might not fit 100% of what is “commonly” seen as a popular theme.

Listing the limits (features not available) for each Shopify Theme you have selected on what may be the best fit will get you started. Once a comparison matrix is put together, an assessment on which one would be the most complete to your requirements vs. others that will require additional work to complete. Your goal is to achieve an 80/20 approach where the Shopify Theme meets 80% or better of your requirements, leaving 20% or less to address at a later stage.

Conclusion

Incorporating social networks, graphic design, and search queries within your eCommerce store will make it easier for your audience to reach you. In today's world, there are all types of social media, not just Facebook/Instagram, your online business has to consider them in the website design. Your eCommerce site is your central marketing tool that radiates into social media platforms and its organic content gets picked up by google searches with keyword search terms also compatible with alternative search engines.

No matter what your business type, size, or model might be – if it requires an online presence, Shopify will most likely have a solution for you via their diverse Shopify Themes. If you are new to the platform, having a consultation with a Shopify Expert such as TheGenieLab, where setting up stores being the core of the business might help you navigate the technical areas of the gaps that your top picks might require to look into. At times it is best to make the final decision based on several phases of development without having to invest just yet. If you require a consultation, feel free to reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com.