How to choose a Shopify theme that works for your business

You're looking to launch your Shopify store and are trying to find the perfect theme. One that showcases your brand well, has enough functionality to save you from over-installing apps and is easy to use. You head to the Shopify theme store and see 200+ theme options. You're overwhelmed and have no idea which one to pick. Sound familiar?

Themes can be expensive, but if you pick the right one, it's an investment that will (hopefully!) serve your store for years to come. You'll get lifetime updates for the one-off theme purchase price, so it makes sense to spend some time picking the right one.

This guide takes you through how to identify what you need in a theme, the best place to purchase a theme, and how you can test a theme for free before you commit to buying.

What is a Shopify theme?

A Shopify theme is the look and feel of your website. It's where you'll add your colours, branding, and images, to really make the website yours and a reflection of your brand.

Beyond this, different themes also have different functionality. For example, themes tailored to large product catalogs will have different functionality than small ones.

How to identify what you need in a Shopify theme

If you're not familiar with the Shopify platform it can be challenging to know what functionality you should be looking for depending on your store type. Here are some things to watch out for:

If you have a lot of products

Consider a theme with a mega menu - this is a way to display lots of links in a visual way that's easy for your customers to navigate.

Make sure the theme has lots of filter options - some themes display filters in a more obvious way than others which becomes more important if you have a lot of products as filtering can help customers find them.

If you plan on having a blog

Main blog page - you want to make sure there are options for how you display your blog so that people can easily find the post that they're looking for.

Blog post page - some themes have options like a sidebar or the ability to display an author bio so making sure that your blog post page has options can be beneficial to you.

If you don't have a lot of good images yet

Images can be critical for how your store looks and some themes rely on these quite heavily. If you're yet to invest in good imagery especially lifestyle imagery over just straight-up product shots, having a theme that offers design elements outside of images can be beneficial. For example, a theme that focuses on fonts such as Baseline or colours such as Divide.

If you need specific functionality but it's quite basic

• Linked product swatches - if you have different colour products in different product listings as opposed to them being variants and you want to be able to connect them this is a feature that some themes have.
• Custom product badges - if you want to be able to display, for example, staff pics or best seller badges on your product grid/on your collection pages this could be a good feature to have

• Bundles - if you just looking for simple bundle functionality you can find a theme that includes this, meaning you won't need to install an extra app. However if you're looking for more complex bundle functionality such as being able to adjust pricing we would recommend looking for an app.
• Product personalisation - if you have customisation options for your products such as the ability to add custom text or gift wrapping per product or any other information you need to collect some things off of this functionality. Some examples include Divide, Prestige, or Honey.

Brand vibe

Some themes have a fun vibe whilst some are more sophisticated and geared towards luxury products, so make sure the theme that you're choosing fits the feel of your brand.

Where to purchase a Shopify theme

You've got two options here either the official Shopify theme store or a third-party site such as Theme Forest. space? We’d 100% recommend the theme store because all the themes are vetted by Shopify and we can attest to their strict requirements for theme approval so you know that you're getting a certain level of quality.

Part of being on the Shopify theme store means that developers are required to keep up with Shopify’s ever-evolving functionality. Themes on the theme store are a one-off cost and then you have it for life and you get access to lifetime updates and support.

How to navigate the Shopify theme store

But how do you actually use the theme store given there are over 200 themes? We've heard it can be a little bit overwhelming, so these are our best tips to find your new theme:

1. Use the filters on the “All themes” category
   Try to put in as many filter options as possible that are relevant to your brand to limit the number of themes that you have to evaluate. Go through the themes considering the following:
   • Demo stores - most themes will have multiple demo store options you want to look at each of them and see if any would fit your brand. Some tips:
     • If something is in one demo store 99% of the time you'll be able to customize your store to have that functionality.
     • You can mix and match features if you like multiple demo stores of the same theme.
   • Regardless of the theme you pick you will be able to change the colors and the fonts so you can match your brand in that regard.
2. Release History - not the most exciting one but it's important to see how active the theme Developers are. Shopify has a limit of only allowing you to update a theme once per month but if you look at the release history you'll see that some themes get updated way less often than that.
   
   We recommend choosing a theme that gets regular updates so you get new functionality and more value for the theme cost that you will be paying. eCommerce is an ever-evolving industry so you want a theme that will stay up to date with best practices as well as update quickly when new Shopify functionality is released so that it's all supported.
   
   To check the release history scroll to the bottom And click the tab that says support and documentation and you'll be able to see the dates of all the past releases.
3. Free vs paid themes - if you're wondering whether or not it's worth paying for a theme over the free options like Dawn, head to our blog post - Are paid Shopify themes better than free ones? TLDR - you get what you pay for.

Choose three to five themes based on the above criteria

Any more than this is a recipe for overwhelm and if you're short on time would recommend keeping it to three :)

Test out the themes

Next is the fun part - you get to try putting your branding and images into the theme to see which one suits your brand best. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• All themes have an unlimited free trial so you can test out the themes for as long as you like and you only need to pay when you want to make your site live.
• You'll need to have signed up for a Shopify account for this. You can do this here.
• Make sure you upload a few products so that you're able to judge the theme with some of your content in place - we’d recommend at least having a couple.
• Head to the theme store and click “Try theme”. This will add the theme to your store and allow you to start playing around with it.
• Choose the demo store that is closest to your brand / the one that you like the most. To do this head to Customise > Theme settings > Theme styles and click the name of the demo store you were looking for.
• Have a look around the theme settings - this will allow you to see how customisable the theme is. Try to remember that there is a balance - you don't necessarily just want the most customisable theme but you want certain things to be customisable such as colour options image styling etc. Things such as being able to customise spacing might not be important to you because it creates extra work for you, and lots of themes will take care of this automatically if they don't have built-in spacing settings.
• Next, you want to see how many sections there are in the theme and if there are ones that you might like. For example, if you want to display columns such as the ones in the screenshot below where it's an image with some text you should make sure that the theme has a section that will allow you to do that.

• Build out the site so it's 90% of the way complete remember you shouldn't have to purchase the theme to get it to this point.
• Repeat for your other shortlisted options - we know it might be getting a little bit repetitive at this point but this is the best way for you to DIY your site while it's making sure you choose the right thing for you. It's also a good opportunity for you to get familiar with the Shopify editor and how all of that works.

Pick a Shopify theme

By this point, you should have a favourite, the winner should be clear and you should have an almost built-out site. You're welcome :)

If you're still struggling to pick a theme we’d recommend getting a second opinion - ask a friend or colleague to look. Since you've already built out the themes it should be easy for someone to give you feedback as they'll be able to visualise everything and make a good comparison.

If that fails we're here to tell you that it's okay to flip a coin (or roll a dice depending on how many options you've ended up with 😅). A lot of themes on the theme store are very similar and truth be told, it likely won't make that much difference which theme you pick if you're tossing up between two that you can't tell the difference between. If you followed the tips here you really can't go wrong so in this case it's okay to not overthink it.

Happy theme hunting!