8 Factors to Consider When Choosing The Perfect Shopify Theme
Prebuilt themes for Shopify have come a long way, and they’re extremely helpful if you don’t want to build your theme from scratch. When it comes to choosing a prebuilt theme, what you’re looking for isn’t a flashy design or trendy visuals. These are actually just distractions.
The most important things to look at are structure and function. Does it have the layouts you need and the function you want your store to have? Visual elements are typically simple to adjust, but those basic components are not.
Your theme is essentially the blueprint for the architecture of your site, so it’s important to get right. In this post, we will outline 8 factors to consider that will help you select the perfect Shopify theme for your site.
8 Factors That Should Influence Your Shopify Theme Selection
1. Reliability
Reliability is key, so you want a theme from a great developer. Who built the base theme is way more important than how it looks out of the box. Remember, if we’re comparing this to buying a house, you’re not looking at paint colors; you’re looking for a good layout and solid foundation, built by a reputable builder. We always recommend themes from PixelUnion. We’ve worked with them for years and they are the best Shopify theme developer.
2. Layouts
The next factor to look at is layouts. Does the theme have the page layouts you want for both desktop and mobile? Similar to a house blueprint where it’s hard to move rooms around once they’re built, theme layouts are hard to change. And if you do try to change them, they can break things.
3. Speed
Speed is a critical factor with websites. You don’t want unneeded weight on your site, and unfortunately, sometimes the flashiest themes are the slowest. Typically picking a theme with a good developer will mean good efficiency, so it pays to be wise with who you pick!
4. Support
This is another factor that comes back to the developer. You definitely want a reputable developer who has been around awhile. That way, you can ask questions as you’re building things or if you happen to run into roadblocks.
5. Product Line Size
Do you have 1, 10, 100, or 1,000 products? This will determine things like page layouts, and requirements for filtering and navigation. Those elements of functionality are hard to change, so it’s important to pick a theme that you know will support them upfront.
6. Management
After the store is built, your marketing team will need to be able to easily change hero images, create new pages, update copy, and more. To accomplish this easily, the theme will need to have a decent admin panel so they can make these changes without needing to adjust the code. Plus, anytime code changes are needed for these simple updates, you’re at risk for your store breaking when non-developers are editing code.
7. Mobile Functionality
Most brands today see a major portion of their traffic coming through mobile. So pick a theme that responds the way you want it to on mobile devices. Like layouts, this is something that is hard to change later on.
8. Integration Capabilities
Integrations are critical to your store’s functionality and experience, both for the customer and for you. Choose a theme that has solid integrations with common apps and that makes it easy to install them.
Don’t Forget to Save This Checklist!
We almost always recommend Shopify users start with a prebuilt theme, but you can’t just pick any theme. Do your research to select one that’s both reliable and functional. Contrary to what many brands do today, look under the hood rather than at the aesthetics to make your decisions. These 8 factors we’ve discussed today will serve as a great checklist to make sure you select the perfect theme.
