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Shopify Empire Theme: Ultimate Option For High-volume Stores

April 01, 2024
Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

In this article, we’ll be looking at everything the Empire Shopify theme has to offer.

Key Takeaways

  • The Shopify Empire theme is ideal for enterprise-level stores looking for a modern, Amazon-like design.
  • The theme provides excellent support, lifetime updates, and exceptional features to enhance the shopping experience.

What Is Shopify Empire Theme?

The Shopify Empire Theme is a premium Shopify theme designed to help Shopify retailers create a modern, professional, and Amazon-style look for their ecommerce stores.

The theme comes equipped with various features that simplify the process of setting up and managing a website, including a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, customizable page layouts, and the ability to translate to multiple languages.

Shopify Theme Empire Pricing

The Shopify Empire theme has a one-time payment of 340 USD. Once purchased, the theme grants lifetime access, all future updates, and support from the developers.

It also comes with an Unlimited free trial, allowing you to fully explore and evaluate the theme to see if it meets your requirements and expectations before making a financial commitment. You only need to pay for the theme when you decide to publish it.

Where To Buy The Empire Shopify Theme?

The Shopify Theme Store is a go-to destination when you want to buy a theme for your Shopify store. You can access the store directly from your Shopify admin dashboard or through the Shopify website. Once there, you’ll find a dedicated page for the Empire theme, showcasing its pricing, key features, design elements, and customization options, ensuring you have all the necessary details before making your purchase.

Otherwise, you can find the Empire theme on the developer - Pixel Union’s website. Click “Try theme for free” and it will redirect you to the theme’s page in the Shopify Theme Store.

Empire Shopify Theme Pros and Cons

Pros

  • It is a very versatile Shopify theme with many customization options to promote your products.
  • It is responsive and looks great on all devices.
  • The theme comes with an unlimited free trial
  • The theme offers great support and free theme upgrades with bug fixings and new features.
  • It is an excellent option for a clean and simple yet professional design.
  • The Empire Shopify theme is suitable for all sizes of businesses.
  • It has fantastic features and functionalities, such as animations, pre-orders, and product comparisons.

Cons

  • The theme can load slowly sometimes.
  • The theme is not refundable.
  • Lack of live chat support.

4 Presets Of Shopify Empire Theme

The Empire theme Shopify has four main styles: Supply, Graphic, Industrial, and Depot. Each emphasizes different energies, feelings, and vibes, making it suitable for various industries and stores.

Supply

The Supply preset is ideal for large eCommerce stores that want to create an Amazon-like vibe. It offers a comfortable color palette and easy navigation, allowing customers to browse a wide range of products easily.

Its straightforward and elegant design makes it a perfect choice for fashion and accessories brands seeking a sleek and modern aesthetic, stores specializing in minimalist home furnishings and decor, and merchants focusing on skincare and makeup products.

Graphic

The Graphic style is known for its interactive and creative approach to highlighting items. You can showcase multiple products using a single background picture, creating an eye-catching display that stands out to customers.

It captures a vintage and nostalgic yet clean and professional atmosphere, which is what clothing, jewelry accessories, and artisanal crafts stores are looking for.

Industrial

The Industrial preset is reminiscent of stores like Best Buy, featuring a robust and bold design. It has a bulky layout with numerous blocks to display various products, effectively highlighting the extensive range available.

This style is perfect for shops that specialize in heavy, big-tech products such as outdoor and adventure gear, automotive, car, or tools and equipment stores.

Depot

The Depot style offers an edgy look for your online store. It embraces a dark aesthetic that stands out and makes a strong visual impact.

This style is perfect for Shopify businesses that want to make a bold statement and leave a lasting impression on their audience. Stores or industries that can make the most of this style, namely art and illustration, music, gaming, and entertainment.

10 Reasons To Use Empire Theme Shopify

When considering using the Empire Theme for your Shopify store, there are several compelling factors that make it a desirable choice for high-volume merchants.

Clean and Professional Design

All four presets of the Shopify Empire theme boast a clean and professional design tailored to meet the demands of high-volume stores.

The polished aesthetic of the Shopify Empire theme radiates credibility and professionalism, creating the foundation for an exceptional shopping experience. This design prioritizes visually captivating product showcases that are both enticing and effortless to navigate, enabling high-volume store owners to present their extensive product catalogs with utmost clarity and precision.

The theme’s organized and well-structured layout establishes trust with customers and reinforces the brand’s commitment to excellence, reflecting the professionalism and attention to detail that high-volume stores strive to uphold.

One of the first effects merchants might notice is on the homepage section, where the theme has fade-in effects on elements that appear as visitors scroll through it, giving your web store an extra level of professionalism and creativity.

Furthermore, it has also improved the search bar experience. When users search, the theme highlights the relevant search results while subtly dimming the homepage background, helping to draw attention to the search results and making it easier for customers to locate the desired products or information.

Extensive Product Catalogs Showcase Enhancement

The Shopify Empire theme offers Mega Menu and Slider that greatly assist high-volume stores in effectively showcasing their large product catalogs.

With the Mega Menu, store owners can create a comprehensive navigation system that allows customers to effortlessly explore various product categories and subcategories. Additionally, the Mega Menu provides promotional Custom Image Blocks, enabling store owners to highlight specific sales or featured products, grabbing customers’ attention and boosting conversions.

On the other hand, the Slider feature occupies the prime real estate of the store’s home page, providing an impactful platform to showcase the latest deals and top-selling products. Store owners can incorporate not only images but also videos, capturing customers’ interest and engaging them in a visually dynamic manner.

The Quick Buy feature in the Shopify Empire theme revolutionizes the way customers shop on your online store. With just a few clicks, customers can easily and swiftly add products to their cart without navigating away from the current page.

This feature is particularly beneficial as customers often want to make quick purchase decisions. This expedited checkout experience enables high-volume stores to cater to the fast-paced demands of their customers and maximize conversion rates.

With high-volume stores dealing with a large influx of customers, the engaging animations provided by the Shopify Empire theme can help keep visitors on the site, reduce bounce rates, and increase overall customer engagement.

Effortless Navigation Through All Collections

High-volume stores often has large catalogs that can be overwhelming for users to navigate, especially on mobile. The Empire Shopify theme features a “live” search, meaning that when a user enters a word, it automatically begins to suggest products in your catalog that match, eliminating the need for manual browsing. This saves time and enables users to locate specific items with ease.

The theme’s collection pages also offer advanced filtering options that assist customers in refining their search to match their exact needs. Merchants can include product tags for various filter options, such as price, size, brand, color, and category-specific attributes.

For instance, a store selling photography equipment may incorporate filters like megapixels, zoom levels, and lens mounts. In contrast, a store selling sleeping bags might focus on weight, material, and temperature ratings.

The Shopify Empire theme also offers an ideal solution with Product Comparison feature, allowing customers to compare multiple products side by side to gain valuable insights into choosing the right products for their needs.

For high-volume stores that offer a wide range of products, this feature simplifies the decision-making process by providing a clear overview of the key features, specifications, and pricing of each product. It not only enhances the customer experience but also saves time by eliminating the need for customers to navigate back and forth between product pages, reduced returns and eliminating the need for additional apps.

Impactive Product Hype Generation

Building hype and creating a buzz around new product launches can be a significant challenge for high-volume stores.

The Shopify Empire theme provides merchants with 3 options to effectively showcase their sales and promotions through customizable promotion tiles: a percentage, a dollar amount, or a classic “sale” sticker. These tiles allow you to display eye-catching sale badges on discounted products.

With the Shopify Empire theme, high-volume stores can ignite excitement by offering customers the opportunity to secure their orders in advance, even before they are manufactured or restocked.

The blogs countdown timer can add an exciting and engaging element to Shopify online stores, whether running a sale, offering exclusive discounts, or promoting upcoming product launches. This limited-time offer approach instills a fear of missing out among customers, motivating them to take immediate action before time runs out.

Seamless Stock Levels Management

One significant risk that high-volume store railers often face is the possibility of running out of stock. Fortunately, the Shopify Empire theme offers a powerful solution through its Inventory Status feature.

By seamlessly integrating with Shopify’s inventory tracking system, the Empire theme fetches real-time stock information from the Products admin and prominently displays it on the storefront. This ensures that customers are well-informed about the availability of products.

The Empire theme further empowers Shopify store owners by allowing them to adjust the low stock threshold and assign special labels, such as “Only 3 left!”, to products that are running low in stock.

This transparency not only helps manage customer expectations but also strategically introduces a sense of urgency to orders, motivating customers to make quicker purchase decisions.

Efficient Order Fulfillment

High-volume stores owners often face the challenge of managing order fulfillment efficiently. The shopify Empire theme addresses that challenge by offering a powerful tool called In-Store Pickup.

Shopify store owners can seamlessly integrate their online and physical operations, allowing customers to select the option of picking up their orders in-store, enabling store owners to efficiently handle a large volume of orders while reducing shipping costs and delivery time.

By offering the convenience of in-store pickup, high-volume stores can enhance customer satisfaction, promote faster order processing, and provide a seamless omnichannel experience. The In-Store Pickup solution of the Shopify Empire theme is an invaluable tool for high-volume stores seeking to optimize their order fulfillment operations and meet the demands of their growing customer base.

Flexible Customize Ability

High-volume stores need to establish a strong and unique brand identity. The Empire Shopify theme allows merchants to create a truly personalized and visually stunning storefront by offering extensive customization options to modify layouts, colors, fonts, and other design elements.

This flexibility enables high-volume stores to create a visually cohesive and branded experience, strengthening customer recognition and loyalty.

Seamless Apps Integration

To meet specific business needs, high-volume stores often need to enhance their store’s functionality by integrating with various apps. The Empire theme offers seamless integration with thousands of apps from the Shopify App Store, delivering a diverse array of solutions that empower store owners to expand and optimize their online stores.

This integration empowers store owners to create feature-rich stores that align perfectly with their business objectives, expand their reach to wider audiences, and deliver an exceptional shopping experience for their customers.

Optimized Mobile Responsiveness

The Empire Shopify theme stands out for its exceptional responsiveness, making it a standout choice for high-volume stores. Built with this theme, Shopify stores seamlessly adapt their layout and design design to different screen sizes, ensuring optimal functionality and visual appeal regardless of the device used for browsing.

Whether customers are shopping on mobile devices, tablets or desktops from, the theme guarantees a consistent and user-friendly experience, enhancing customer satisfaction and driving conversions.

Multiple Languages Translation

In an increasingly globalized marketplace, catering to customers from diverse linguistic backgrounds is essential for expanding reach and driving sales for high-volume stores.

With the Shopify Empire theme, business owners can easily create a multilingual shopping experience by translating their storefront content into different languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Japanese, French, German, Hindi, Dutch, Turkish, Chinese (simplified), and Italian.

This flexibility in language support allows high-volume stores to tap into new markets and seize opportunities for growth.

Who Is Shopify Empire Theme For?

The Shopify Empire theme is a perfect choice for:

  • High volume Shopify merchants with large catalog sizes and a large number of transactions in both online and physical stores.
  • Shopify store owners who want a clean, modern yet professional design theme that can easily adapt to their brand and product offerings.

What Do Users Say About The Shopify Empire Theme?

So far, the Empire Theme Shopify has received 343 reviews on the Shopify marketplace, with a favorable rating of 79%. Here’s what they think about the theme:

On the positive side:

  • Many customers have praised Pixel Union’s great support and top-notch documentation.
  • Users absolutely love the Empire theme for its professional look and feel, which they find easy to customize and modify to suit their brands.
  • The theme’s robust features have also been well-received.
  • Customers appreciate the built-in marketing tools, which have helped to drive sales and improve the overall customer experience.

On the negative side:

  • Some customers experienced slow loading speeds while using the theme, which impacted their overall experience.
  • While the support team was generally helpful, some customers did experience longer response times and delays in resolving tech issues than expected.

To improve slow loading speeds with the Shopify Empire theme, try to avoid overusing high-resolution images and videos, use them strategically when necessary. Additionally, consider implementing lazy loading techniques, which load content as users scroll rather than all at once, to help prioritize the loading of visible content, enhancing the overall page load experience.

To address slow response time, you should compile a comprehensive list of tech issues and questions before reaching out to the support team. This will ensure that all concerns are addressed efficiently and minimize delays. Additionally, exploring community forums and documentation might provide alternative solutions and insights to resolve tech issues independently.

How To Customize Empire Shopify Theme

With a few simple steps, you can create a unique and visually stunning online store that captures the essence of your business. Below is the quick guide for you to start customizing your Shopify Empire theme.

Step 1: Visit the Shopify Theme Store and choose the Empire theme.

Step 2: Click Try Theme to add the theme to your online store.

Step 3: In your Shopify admin, click Online Store > Themes..

Step 4: In the Theme library section, click the “…” button to open the actions menu next to the theme you want to preview.

Step 5: Click Preview.

Step 6: Customize the theme to fit your brand identities

  • Logo and Branding: Upload your logo and customize its placement and size within the header. Ensure that it is well-positioned and prominently displayed to create brand recognition and establish a professional image.
  • Homepage Layout: Tailor your homepage layout to showcase key elements of your store. Use sections such as Featured Products, Testimonials, Mosaic or Blog Posts to highlight relevant content and engage visitors. Arrange these sections by drag-and-drop to create an intuitive and visually appealing flow that captures customer attention.
  • Navigation Menu: Organize your menu items logically and consider dropdown menus for subcategories, making it effortless for visitors to explore your product offerings. Take advantage of the theme’s Mega menu to showcase your highlighted collections or sale campaigns.
  • Product Presentation: Use high-quality product image or video that accurately represent your offerings. Ensure to provide detailed informations about your products in the description.
  • Promotion and Sale Banners: Put promotional banners strategically to highlight sales, discounts, or special offers. Customize these banners with compelling copy and visually appealing graphics to create a sense of urgency and entice customers to explore further.
  • Blogs, About us and FAQs pages: Organize the layout and design of your pages to match your brand aesthetic, grouping your contents into relevant categories for quick navigation if possible.

Step 7: If you’re happy with your store’s looks, you can click Publish theme to buy the theme and keep all the customizations you made while previewing it.

5 Tips To Make The Most Of Shopify Empire Theme To Build Your Shopify Store

Explore the Presets

The Empire theme offers four unique presets, take the time to explore and experiment with these presets to find the one that best suits your brand’s identity and product offerings. If you want to, you have the ability to create different looks for your store pages by applying different presets to each page.

Use Secondary Menu

The theme features two menu options for the header navigation: First menu and Second menu. By default, the theme will include your Main menu as the first, you can add a secondary menu to split the header navigation to the left and right sides to give your store front more space.

Double Check The Mobile Version

Regularly preview and test your store’s appearance on various devices to ensure seamless mobile responsiveness. Adjust any elements that may not display correctly to provide a consistent and user-friendly experience across all devices.

Leverage Visual Storytelling

Use high-quality images, videos, and compelling graphics to create visually captivating product displays and tell a story that resonates with your customers. Experiment with different layout options and image placements to create a visually striking browsing experience.

Personalize The Checkout Process

Don’t forget to optimize the Shopify Empire theme’s checkout page layout, remove unnecessary distractions, and simplify the form fields to minimize friction and encourage completion. Enable guest checkout and offer multiple payment options for added convenience.

Successful High Volume Stores Built With Shopify Empire Theme

The Shopify Empire theme has empowered numerous high-volume stores to create visually stunning and successful online shopping experiences. Let’s explore some of these remarkable stores below.

Muji

Muji is a renowned Japanese fashion brand known for its minimalist designs and focus on simplicity. Their online store, built with the Shopify Empire theme, exemplifies their aesthetic and brand values. The site’s design is clean and uncluttered, allowing the products to take center stage.

The use of whitespace and subtle animations adds a touch of elegance and enhances the overall browsing experience. The navigation is intuitive with an organized mega menu, making it easy for customers to explore the extensive product offerings.

Instyle Furniture

Instyle Furniture is a leading provider of contemporary and modern furniture. Their website using Shopify empire theme reflects their commitment to sleek and sophisticated design.

The site’s layout and style perfectly complement the furniture they offer, creating a cohesive and visually appealing experience for visitors, allowing customers to get a clear view of each item. The navigation is user-friendly, with drop-down effect on each menu button that make it easy to browse and find the perfect piece of furniture.

Shopify Empire Theme FAQs

Can I Apply My Own Company’s Font To The Theme?

Possible. If the company’s font is available in the Shopify font library or through Typekit, you can apply it to the theme. If the font is a Typekit font, you will need to edit your theme’s code to ensure it integrates properly.

Can I Use One Theme Preset On One Page And Another Preset On A Different Page?

Yes. You can use different presets of the Shopify Empire theme on other online store pages. The theme is a marketplace-inspired theme optimized for customization at the page level, giving you the flexibility to apply different styles, layouts, and design elements to specific pages as per your requirements.

Does This Theme Integrate With All Shopify Apps?

Not all, but many! All themes developed by Pixel Union integrate with Pixel Union apps and Shopify apps seamlessly. If you’re using apps from other developers, it’s recommended that you reach out to the app’s developer to confirm whether it will work with the Empire theme.

Can I Use My Shopify Themes For Another Shopify Store?

No. When you buy a theme from the Shopify Theme Store, it is licensed only to the store you originally bought it for. If you want to transfer a theme license to another store, then you need to contact Shopify Support.

Ending Words

Our review above has provided a comprehensive assessment of the Shopify Empire theme. It is a powerful and versatile solution for enterprise-level stores, offering modern design, customization options, and robust features.


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.