Shopify Themes 101: All you need to know

Last updated: May 01, 2023

What are Shopify Themes?

Shopify Themes are website templates you can choose for your Shopify Store, which are available on the Shopify Theme Store and other third-party web template marketplaces. They play an important role in determining how your website looks and feels for customers who visit it.

In technical terms, The Shopify Themes display what the users see on the screen through HTML, CSS, JS, Liquid, and picture files, which offers a different style, layout, and user experience.

Why Shopify Themes Matter?

Cost-effective

An average website costs $12,000 to $150,000 to develop from scratch (with an agency or freelancer), while Shopify themes help you design a beautiful store from 0$! Alternatively, premium themes are necessary if you want your website to have more features or to have a large product range. You will need to spend a few hundred dollars on them, but it’s still cheaper than building your own.

Helps Project Your Brand Personality

Convincing messages don’t usually come from just words, but a combination of brand imagery like:

Logos
Photography
Illustration
Iconography
Typography
Video
Animation
Colour palettes
Composition rules
Filters
Backgrounds
UI components

It is definitely overwhelming for anyone, including myself, to start a Shopify Store. You might have questions like what messages these colors are, what font type is saying about your products, and whether it should be that way, etc.

However, Shopify Themes helps you with a consistent set of brand imagery elements and pre-decide every design/aesthetic choice for you. All you have to do is choose the right one.

You might not know how to create ones, but you will know it when a Theme is on point for your store/products, just like any customers who visit your store!

Determines Your Website’s UX

You might not know how to do it, but the designer behind Shopify Themes knows how to make it a lot smoother for your customers. And it could directly improve your sales:

When smartphone users can’t find the information they need or the site is too slow, 29% will switch to another website or app immediately.
69% of site visitors are more likely to buy from an online store if the mobile site or app makes it easy for them to find answers to their questions (for example, appropriately displaying product information).

That’s where Shopify Themes come to rescue you!

Where can I get Shopify Theme?

Shopify Theme Store

What is Shopify Theme Store?

Shopify Theme Store is a marketplace where you can find Shopify Themes with different User Interfaces and integrated features for your Shopify Store.

You can always try applying both free and premium themes to your store. However, you will have to purchase these premium themes before publishing them.

How to use the Shopify Theme store

Search for themes

You can click in the search bar to start searching for:

Themes for your product
Themes for your store
Themes for your industry
Themes that have certain features you want
Free and premium themes

Theme Filters

On the other hand, you can also browse through the themes with Theme Filters. For choosing criteria, you will be able to preview the exact themes that match with it. You might want to look around the Premium themes in Home and Decor, for example.

Here are the filters you can choose from:

Price

Free
Premium

Industry

Arts and crafts
Baby and kids
Books, music and video
Business equipment and supplies
Clothing
Electronics
Food and drink
Hardware and automotive
Health and beauty
Home and decor
Jewelry and accessories
Outdoor and garden
Pet supplies
Restaurants
Services
Sports and recreation
Toy and games
Other

Catalog size

1-9 products
10-199 products
200+ products

Features

Age verifier
Back-to-top button
Before/after image slider
Breadcrumbs
Color swatches
Countdown timer
EU translations (EN, FR, IT, DE, ES)
Event Calendar
In-menu promos
Infinite scroll
Mega menu
Quick view
Stock counter
Store locator
Sticky Header

Third-party marketplaces for Shopify Theme

Besides Shopify Theme Store, these are the top 3 third-party marketplaces to get Shopify Theme:

EnvatoElements: EnvatoElements is a marketplace for professional digital assets, resources and services. Instead of one-time purchases, EnvatoElements offers you thousands of Shopify Themes for the start of 16.50$ subscription per month

Instructions for choosing and replacing themes in the admin

Themeforest: Themeforest is a marketplace for website themes and templates as a part of the Envato Market. Themeforest Shopify Themes price varies from as low as 16$ to 114$.
TemplateMonster: TemplateMonster is a Website Templates, Plugins, and Graphics Digital Marketplace. Especially it provides you with a very helpful search function and a filter to find the most suitable theme for your store.

However, you will have to download them from these marketplaces and manually upload them to your Shopify Store. It might also come with some compatibility problems if the theme has been outdated.

How to install and edit Shopify Themes?

Visit your Shopify Theme Store

Go to the Shopify Theme Store.
At the top of the page, click Collections or Industries, and then select a category.
To refine your search results, use the filters on the sidebar menu.

Or you can access the Shopify theme store inside the admin panel:

Choosing a theme for your website

In the Shopify Theme Store, you can click on a theme to see its info page Choose a theme for your website

Click on “Try theme” to apply it to your Shopify store. apply a theme for your website

Customize your Shopify theme

In the Admin Panel, click on “Online Store” in the left menu, then click on Themes.

The themes you have chosen from the Shopify Theme Store will be inside the Theme Library (as drafts). These themes are only visible to you, and you can switch between themes by publishing them to your store.

Let’s start to Customize your Current Theme or Customize your added themes there.

The theme editor might seem complicated at first but don’t worry; I will walk you through the fundamental of it.

Shopify theme editor: Left Menu

The Left Menu will help you:

Navigating between blocks
Organizing the order of blocks: up and down, and left to right
Adding new blocks and sections
Deleting blocks
Hiding blocks

Inside a section, there are different blocks that you can edit, such as Image, Heading, Text, Button, etc. right menu of Shopify theme editor

To choose a block/section to start with, click on their areas (as demonstrated above), and the right menu will change accordingly to their types of content.

Using the right menu in the theme editor, you can:

Editing content inside sections and their blocks
Changing blocks and section parameters: like padding, opacity, height, etc

What is the best Shopify theme?

What is the best Shopify theme really depends on your Industry, your Products, your business size, and the features you want to integrate into your store. Check out our best Shopify Themes ranking for each industry, including.