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If you are new to the eCommerce industry, you might have seen people actively using the Shopify platform and wondered to yourself, what exactly is Shopify? And how does Shopify work for them?
In today’s time, Shopify is a handy tool that has helped numerous companies set up their business’s websites successfully and increase awareness among their target audience.
But that is not all. Shopify does not work alone, and different elements are combined and that make a website successful. One such element is the Shopify theme.
Choosing a significant and valuable Shopify theme is very important because it helps to create a fantastic website. Still, confused?
Let’s discuss in detail how these Shopify themes create a difference in creating a better website and help in increasing the traffic.
What is a Shopify Theme?
A theme is a template that helps decide the look and feel of your online store. Countless themes are present and offer various styles and layouts that provide a different experience for the customers.
It entirely depends on the kind of business you are running and then choosing from the free Shopify themes and decide which one would suit you best. Not just this, but you can also customize Shopify themes from the Shopify admin using the theme editor. If your free Shopify themes do not have a setting for change, you can also edit your theme code.
When you make changes to the Shopify themes or even choose from another best Shopify themes, it does not affect the other parts of your account. As an admin, you have complete control over playing around with the styles and settings and not worrying about the content.
Things To Consider When Choosing a Shopify Theme
While numerous free Shopify themes are available, how do you shortlist the best free Shopify themes and choose from them? That is a very common question that business owners ask. The answer to this is very simple.
There are certain things that you consider when choosing a Shopify Theme.
a. Understanding Shopify’s Limitations
While Shopify might seem to have numerous tools and features and other notable benefits, it is essential to understand that it has its limitations that cannot be overlooked. Usually, people believe that HSopify might have the perfect theme that they want and no changes will be required to be made, but sadly this is not the case.
While you search for the perfect theme, you need to realize that while you might find the perfect theme, you will have to make some changes to it accordingly. Your best chance is to hire a developer to complete off these customizations.
Moreover, you cannot customize your theme and the pages in a way that you like. There are sections of a Shopify theme, and you can drag and drop elements in designing your store. However, these sections have limitations to the capabilities with which you can access them. It is better that you look at the videos, so you know what the templates look like.
The tutorial videos can help you understand the content that can be added and how the content can be organized. Another important thing that you need to understand is that you can use the sections on the homepage at times but not on the following pages of the website. So, make sure that you pay particular attention while designing your website’s dashboard, which will be the principal outlook of the website.
b. Try to stay within the Shopify Themes
After understanding the various limitations of the free Shopify themes, you can now start by looking at a specific theme for your store. First, begin by choosing a particular theme from the Shopify Theme Store. All of the themes present in the Shopify Theme Store are updated with the latest policies of Shopify and checked for quality and functionality.
This means that when you choose from the free Shopify themes, you would know that it fully complies with the rules and regulations of Shopify. Moreover, there is the presence of great support from Shopify. There is complete support for the particular theme if you have any problems or questions that you would like to ask. Free themes are great for testing and building your brand in the initial stages.
c. Avoid Picking a Theme because it matches the Brand
People are commonly not interested in looking at a lot of options. In addition to this, they prefer picking a through a list of free Shopify themes to match what they are selling. In some situations, this tactic might work, while this tactic might not work in many other situations. There might be some functionalities that might not be working. Therefore, it is best to focus more on the layout and how easy it is to navigate throughout the entire website. It should be easy for you to add various offers with the products and services to tempt customers into buying more.
The common concept is that people might stay more on your website and enjoy it if they have a better user experience than your competitor’s website. Otherwise, there is no need to be there.
d. Make Sure that the Shopify Theme has all the Necessary Features
The primary thing you need to do is make a list of all the features that you require and while checking for a free Shopify theme, check if they have all the features. You can also do complete research on all the different types of features present in the free Shopify themes. The design of the website should also match your requirements.
After thoroughly going through all the features and making sure that they exist in the chosen theme, it makes it easier for you to cut down on the development costs. Remember that it is not possible that the selected theme has all the features and requirements that you need, but it should at least have the maximum number of features. Then you can hire a developer and ask him to make the small and necessary changes for your website. This will cost you comparatively less than asking him to make significant changes and additions to the website.
You can also create your own Shopify partners account and a development store. Both of these will allow you to test the theme for free before you decide on them for your brand.
e. The Website should be Mobile Friendly and Optimized for Conversion
In today’s digital age, the importance of a website is not just limited to the website being optimum for laptops. It should also be optimized for mobile phones as well. So ensure that you pay a lot of attention that your website is excellent for opening up on the mobile phone.
This is a very common mistake that you may come across while creating a website. The view of a website on the laptop is essential, but the mobile view is equally vital. There is a lot of traffic coming to the website from mobile phones, so ensure to look into the mobile experience. It should be easy to navigate and make a purchase on. Not this just, but you check the performance of your website to check which device is the source of maximum traffic towards the website.
Moreover, it should be optimized for conversions to do a better job than other mobile websites. Some websites are optimized for conversions more than others, so try choosing those free Shopify themes.
Conclusively, these are some of the following things that should be kept in mind while choosing from the best free Shopify themes that are available. To add more features, you can ask the developer to add the required features. Now, let’s have a look at the best Shopify themes available.
Top 15 Free Shopify Themes
Shopify has a complete range of free themes available to help you choose from any of them of your choice. To further assist you, we have shortlisted the top 15 free best Shopify themes.
So, without any further delay, let’s start.
1. Brooklyn
One of the top free Shopify themes, it has two styles; classic and playful. Brooklyn is designed for modern apparel stores that want to start with a focus on brand imagery. It contains a header slideshow, where you can showcase multiple products and brand images at the top of your home page. With the dynamic product grid, the layout of the grid automatically changes based on how many are displayed.
The slide-out cart allows the customers to add to the cart without leaving their current page and easy access. Also, the home page video can help you narrate your story by featuring a brand-related video and helping your potential customers.
2. Boundless
An officially supported theme by Shopify, this theme also has two styles that you can try including Black & white or Vibrant. Additionally, this theme has many brand-related features. The field is optimized for large images to showcase high-resolution pictures of your products present on your entire eCommerce site. Not just this, but the slideshow has a fading effect where you can feature multiple product and brand images on your home page which has a fading effect for your audience.
With the sticky navigation of your website, your customers can scroll the entire webpage, but the menus stay sick to the top. So instead, there is a single product gallery where you can feature all the high-resolution pictures of your products. The full-width collection images are great for showcasing all the products, and with the home page video, you feature a video on the homepage.
3. Narrative
The narrative is a free Shopify theme with four styles; earthy, warm, light, and cold. This theme also has multiple features like a hero video where you can feature the main video, and the video has an auto-play option. This theme is ideal for visual storytelling and allows you to showcase the finest details of your products, services, quotations, and others. It is built for small catalogs where a single product or multiple products can be shown. The fixed navigation has provided a better browsing experience by showing the menu, logo, and cart while people move and down the website. The wide layout and the vertical slideshow are also notable features. These features allow displaying the product and its aligned details vertically. Along with the images, you can also showcase all the blogs on the vertical slideshow as well. Moreover, you can show the pictures on a large slide show with ease with the wide layout.
4. Express
The express theme is also free and has a lot of features. It is optimized for one-page stores, so this feature is undoubtedly the best for quick ordering. The mobile-first design is best for mobile devices and eCommerce, which requires less content and images.
The quick buy feature allows the customers to add products to their cart without leaving the page quickly. The added slide-out cart also provides convenience to the customers. In addition, you can have the featured collections on the home page. This way, you can create multiple collections on the home page, and it is also ideal for websites with a small number of products. Moreover, the theme has two styles; bistro and pantry.
5. Simple
Light, beauty, and toy are the three styles that this theme particularly offers. Some of the added features of this theme include the sidebar menu, making it easy to display the products and collections. Furthermore, product image zoom allows customers to have a zoomed-in product’s look while hovering over the product image. In addition, the product and brand images are animating into the page, promoting a sleek transition and product recommendations to show the recommended products to the customers.
6. Minimal
One of the most stylish and free Shopify themes, it provides three styles consisting of Vintage, fashion, and modern. The theme has some fantastic features that make it perfect for your first choice. These features include a slideshow to showcase multiple products and services, product images zoom, allowing the customers to know the details better and have a clear look at the image while hovering over it. To add the best video regarding the brand, product filtering allows the customers to filter products in terms of bestsellers, price, and collection. Through product recommendations, you can show the most wanted products to increase discoverability.
7. Debut
With default and light styles, you can beautifully showcase your brand and the products. This is one of the best free Shopify themes with numerous features—starting from the pickup availability. YouIn addition furthermore, they can show the customers about the nearest pickup facility, a slideshow to showcase products and brand, predictive search featuring the live search results, and quick links for products and store pages. Customer testimonial section, promotional banner, built-in ease for small catalogs, home page video, product filtering, and product recommendations for providing ease to the customers.
8. Supply
This free theme can be used to showcase and filter extensive inventories with ease. Blue and light are its included styles. The supply theme has features like stores that have a large number of products, the collection filtering in the sidebar can help the customers to filter the entire collection by using different filters, slideshow for showcasing multiple products and brand images on the homepage, and with the featured collections on the home page to display collections on the home page.
9. Venture
If you have a large number of products, then venture is the best free theme for you. There are three styles, snowboards, outdoors, and boxing. This free theme is built if you have an extensive catalog; you can then use the slideshow to showcase the different products, the multi-column menu can feature the products and their details. In addition, promotional banners can allow you to add your favorite deals, promotions, and product filtering can enable the customers to sort the products by applying filters and through single featured to promote a single product.
10. Fashe
This free theme is created by Colorlib and has many great features that can quickly provide competition to all the premium Shopify themes.
11. Snowdevil
Snowdevil is a tremendous free Shopify theme that contains some great options. You can easily see that it is perfect for sports shops and somewhat like the venture theme through the demo. The large slideshow on the front page of the homepage, multi-colored menu navigations, and promotional widgets provide many variations. You can also adjust the colors and typography according to your requirements.
12. Beauty
Beauty is a free theme that can be used for eCommerce stores. This is mainly for beauty products. The theme can be used for various Furthermore products but is best suited for makeup products or similar brands.
The design is also optimized for mobile phones, and the design is extremely attractive and is designed with detail. You can easily add social media icons to the website. Moreover, it allows you to edit the theme without changing the actual design
13. Annabelle
Annabelle is a multi-purpose theme for all kinds of eCommerce stores. The front-page slider is great for showing an excellent first impression to showcase the significant products you offer. In addition, the features of this theme have increased, like the product page design, pages for product collections, and the filtering feature that can integrate multiple things. You can also add your blogs with ease.
14. Fleur de Lis
Particularly for the florist’s companies, this is a particular theme for them. It has some cool features and dynamic settings to make sure that the users are satisfied with it. For example, you can align all your products on the rows on the front page. With this, you can create a unique experience for the customers, and with custom elements, customers can check the recently added products—one of the best free Shopify themes.
15. Sports Store
The theme Sports Store is made to provide the customers with what they need. Starting with the easy navigation system helps the customers filter out the products they require. Furthermore, the design is made to sell numerous products, items while providing ample space on the footer and header of the website to put up promotions and business information.
Key Takeaway
While numerous premium themes are available, the list of free Shopify themes is significantly less in number. You can always look at the free Shopify themes to start with your brand and if, later on, you feel like it is not completing your requirements. You can buy numerous premium themes.