Ecommerce is growing faster than ever before! Shopify is one of the best ways for small businesses to take advantage of the online shopping wave. However, picking the right theme is an essential part of making sure your Shopify store is ready for primetime!
With that in mind, we’ve scoured the internet, looking for the best Shopify themes for you to use. If you look long enough, the same handful of names start popping up again and again – so those are the ones we’ve included in this list! Choosing a quality theme goes a long way toward maximizing sales.
General Tips to Increase Sales, Regardless of Theme
First, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about a few basic principles first. If you want to increase sales, there are a number of things that you can – and should – do regardless of which theme you choose.
The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure that your store is properly set up. It helps to follow a guide when doing this to make sure you don’t miss any steps. We wrote one which you can use a little while ago.
The next thing that you absolutely cannot miss if you want to make a lot of sales is market research! You want to make sure you’re selling the right products. You need to clearly identify your audience, their needs, and find ways to meet them. Otherwise, no amount of promotions, advertising, or pretty Shopify store setup can help.
Regardless of theme, you will also want to take time to make sure your product descriptions are well written. Good product descriptions are typically long (think around 1,000 words), detailed, and specific. Product descriptions should answer customers’ questions before they can ask them. Not only will this increase sales, but it will also reduce returns as well!
You’ll also want to be proactive about soliciting feedback. Ask customers what they think about your products and encourage them to leave reviews. That way, other customers can see real evidence that your products are worth buying!
Lastly, don’t forget about SEO or social media. Both SEO and social media marketing are effective ways of driving sales, and they don’t cost much either.
1. Minimal
If you want to set up a simple, clean, professional looking store without shelling out extra money on a theme, Minimal is about as good as it gets. True to its name, Minimal is ideal for straightforward, no-frills websites. This also has the benefit of making some high-end stores look really luxurious, because of the confidence exuded by the minimalist design.
Many users spoke positively of Minimal because of its fast loading time. Others stated that it was among the best of the free theme options.
On its Shopify page, listed features include:
- Slideshow
- Product image zoom
- Home page video
- Product filtering
- Product recommendations
While the majority of the feedback on this theme is positive, there was one common refrain in the complaints. Users periodically complained of issues with mobile compatibility. As the theme is free, we recommend that if you decide to use it, that you set it up before making it live to make sure there are no mobile usability issues, particularly with images.
Click here to check out the Minimal theme.
2. Empire
Sometimes a minimalist theme just won’t cut it, and you need something more becoming of a large store. That’s where Empire comes in – this theme is optimized for big stores with large and diverse catalogs. This is reflected not only in its features but also in its different style options as well.
On its Shopify, major features include:
- Predictive search
- Product filtering
- Custom promotion tiles
- Home page menu lists
- Pickup availability
Empire is not perfect. While the price of $180 is reasonable, many people still will not want to spend extra for a Shopify theme. In addition to the cost, many customers have complained about the slow response time of the support team. If you decide to use this theme, you will most likely be on your own if something goes wrong.
Click here to check out the Empire theme.
3. Boost
The Boost theme has been getting some attention lately for its versatility. That’s a bit of a vague compliment, though, and one thing that I noticed was its ability to make images look really good. The Boost theme excels at beautifully framing large images, allowing customers to feel a bit more like they’re shopping offline in a physical store.
On their Shopify page, Boost mentions that their features include:
- Image hotspot linking
- Custom promotion tiles
- Menu promotions
- Predictive search
- Color swatches
- Related products and blog posts
Aside from the price tag of $180, Boost has seen almost unilaterally positive reviews. There are few known drawbacks to speak of.
Click here to check out the Boost theme.
4. Story
The Story theme looks like a minimalist theme at first glance, but there’s a bit more to it. Story emphasizes copy as well as imagery, allowing you to tell a cohesive story about your products and your brand. For some businesses, this is a really attractive prospect.
Story highlights the following features on their Shopify page:
- Custom forms
- Collection filtering in the sidebar
- Lookbook features (that mimic an editorial-style spread)
- Story-focused product pages
- Tell your story
- Team showcase
The Story theme is thoughtfully crafted and has nothing but positive reviews on Shopify. Aside from the price tag, the only drawback which we can think of is that it may be a bit too verbose for some brands. Effective product storytelling requires a strong command of copywriting, and a lot of businesses cannot effectively pull that off.
Click here to check out the Story theme.
5. Flow
The Flow theme is also another good choice, very similar to Minimal in design. Whereas Minimal goes heavy on whitespace, Flow emphasizes images. This is ideal for products which are especially photogenic.
Features include:
- Home page video
- Slide-out cart
- Unique product grid
- Promotional banner
- Collection page sidebar
- Long-form home page
There isn’t a strong disadvantage to using the Flow theme, but we encourage you to check out their Shopify page and read the negative reviews. There’s a motley crew of unrelated complaints, some of which may be relevant to your business.
Click here to check out the Flow theme.
6. Retina
Retina has been around for several years and is one of the most well-established Shopify themes. Like many other themes, it focuses heavily on images first, but it’s unique because of its longevity and the relative abundance of genuinely unique styles that can be used with this theme.
According to its Shopify page, features include:
- Related products
- Multiple home page videos
- Custom promotion tiles
- Product image zoom
- FAQ page
- Slide-out cart
Surprisingly, Retina doesn’t have many clear downsides, aside from the price. It’s been around for 7 years and has a 98% positive rating on Shopify’s website right now. However, its popularity does seem to be waning, so it’s possible that this theme might go out of date at some point.
Click here to check out the Retina theme.
7. Fashionopolism
Many Shopify stores are focused primarily on apparel. Fashionopolism was built from the ground-up for clothing sales. Home pages on all style variants are reminiscent of clothing catalogs, and you could imagine this theme being used by Macy’s, JCPenney, or Dillard’s.
Features include:
- Sticky navigation
- Product quick view
- Two menu options
- Product image zoom
- Slideshow
- Home page video
The only real drawback of this theme is that it is so heavily focused on apparel sales. It’s not ideal for other kinds of products, although you could certainly make it work with some effort.
Click here to check out the Fashionopolism theme.
8. Venture
Much like Empire, Venture is created for companies that sell a wide variety of products. Unlike Empire, however, this is free! That makes it ideal for shoestring-budget dropshipping stores that are experimenting with a wide variety of products to see what works.
According to their Shopify page, features include:
- Built for large catalogs
- Multi-column view
- Slideshow
- Promotional banner
- Product filtering
- Single featured product
Venture is free, but it’s definitely not perfect – many users complain about the limited ability to customize the theme. Others say that the product pages need to be handled with finesse, which can get old quickly. Regardless, at the low price of, well, free, it’s worth trying out anyway!
Click here to check out the Venture theme.
Articles We Found Helpful
If you do any amount of Shopify theme research online, you’ll quickly realise that there is no shortage of really good options! Shopify, after all, is very popular software and lots of talented people create themes for it.
Our list is meant to help you get started. If you read our article but want to see more options, then check out the articles that inspired this one, including:
- Themelsle: 20+ Best Shopify Themes in 2020: Conversion-Friendly and Beautiful
- Disruptive Advertising: 5 of the Best Shopify Themes for Maximizing Sales (and Why They Work So Well)
- Web Hosting Secrets Revealed: 10 Best Shopify Themes Design That Boost Your Conversion
- iPraxa: 8+ High Converting Shopify Themes for 2020 to Boost Sales
- Shopify Theme Detector: The 10 Best Converting Shopify Themes
- My Brand Journey: 8 Best Converting Shopify Themes (And Why They Work So Well)
Need help fulfilling your orders? Click here to request a quote from Fulfillrite.
Brandon Rollins is a Marketing Consultant at Fulfillrite. His main areas of expertise are online marketing and supply chain management. He also runs Pangea Marketing Agency and writes for Marketing is the Product.
