Things are changing in the business world every day, and a lot of businesses are going digital. Consumers do not have to be physically present to buy your goods or services. Similar to your physical business address, your eCommerce store is your business identity on the web.
Just like your regular business, you have competitors fighting for the attention of your customer – your eCommerce store is no different. While building your web page, you need to put a lot of factors into consideration for a successful online business.
One of such factors to consider is your eCommerce store theme. The design of your page plays an essential role in determining if a visitor to your page will become a customer. It’s not out of place for a prospective buyer to be put off from patronizing your online store because of the way your online store looks.
Your eCommerce theme is also a way for you to sell your brand to prospective customers and retain their attention.
What is an eCommerce Store Theme?
An eCommerce store theme is a pre-built design that you can install on your eCommerce site to help you deliver the best services and user experience to your customers. If you are a growing business owner, using an eCommerce store theme is a more affordable option as it allows you to create a basis for your online store within a few minutes.
The eCommerce store theme is different from the traditional method of building web pages, where you needed to do everything from the beginning. There are ready-to-use themes like Shopify themes, ThemeForest, and TemplateMonster available for your eCommerce store.
The features of the theme exist in a way that allows you to customize the template to one that best suits you, ensuring that you do not have a similar design or pattern with competitors.
Essential Features of an eCommerce Store Theme
Irrespective of what you want for your eCommerce store, there are certain features that the theme should possess; it is considered the basic features. Such features include:
Technical Support
You go all out in making your theme selection, ensure you have a good idea about the customer support of the theme’s website. You might possess technical skills, but sometimes you may need some assistance with a particular feature or help with fixing a bug.
Regular Update
Better and safer for you to work with a theme that has upgrades within the last six months. Developers are always looking for ways to upgrade their software and protect it from security threats. Regular update is essential as it prevents bugs and malicious software from getting to your web page.
Modern and User-Friendly
Discourages a prospective buyer from becoming a customer like a difficult and an unfriendly eCommerce store theme. Select a theme that has advanced features and one that users will find easy to understand and navigate.
Cheap and Affordable
A business person, nothing beats purchasing an eCommerce store theme that works even if purchased at a reduced rate. You get to enjoy the same service you would have paid developers to create but at a cheaper cost.
Advantages of eCommerce Store Theme
As a business owner, the use of themes for your online store helps you to manage your business efficiently and at a reduced rate when compared to the traditional method. Below are some of the advantages you will benefit from using an eCommerce store theme.
Simple and Easy Website Building
It’s easy and simpler to use for building your website. Even if you are not a developer, the pre-designed theme makes building your website exciting and easy. It’s pre-designed, allowing you access to color themes, responsive designs, fonts, visual composer, multipurpose themes, and social media integration. Using an eCommerce store team makes your website building a lot faster.
Cost-efficient
People pay a lot of money to developers to create themes for their websites; aside from the money paid for development, you need to continually update and maintain the eCommerce store, which will incur an additional cost.
The use of eCommerce themes Is an affordable option, especially for new businesses; you pay little or no money to use eCommerce store themes. It comes with various features at your disposal and also saves you the time, money, and stress needed when you have to run an upgrade.
More Choices
There are various options available for you when choosing the best eCommerce store theme. You might prefer a theme with a design that offers UX functionality to your customers. You might also want one that provides a specific feature that matches your brand or speaks better of your business. You can promptly get all of these features at your disposal.
Automatic Updates
When you build your website design using an eCommerce store theme, you say goodbye to worrying about website updates; everything is in a template without you thinking or worrying about anything. Automatic updates keep you informed about the newest technology, conversion, SEO, or modern design style.
Disadvantages of eCommerce Store Theme.
Like everything that has an advantage also has a disadvantage, the eCommerce store theme is no different. The benefits of using the theme outweigh the problems, but here are some of the cons.
Similarities with Competitor Website
Because most of the themes are generic, you might have the issue of a similar design with your competitor. A prospective client might find it challenging to differentiate your business from that of a competitor with an identical model.
There are different theme designs, ensure you pay attention to your ability to customize when making your choice.
Limits in Customization
When it comes to purchasing your eCommerce store theme, you can’t get everything you want 100%. There are certain limitations associated with using a pre-designed theme, and you might find yourself limited to specific UX functionality.
Before beginning the process of building your online store, ensure you understand the capability of your theme.
How to Choose eCommerce Store Theme
Choose a theme that works well with mobile and other devices
A lot of customers will use their phones, mobile devices, or tablets when visiting your eCommerce store. You must use a theme that will display well on mobile devices like it would on a desktop or laptop.
Over the years, mobile e-commerce has grown steadily, and it will continue to grow. Ensure your theme allows for easy navigation of your store on a small screen. A mobile-friendly and responsive theme should be a priority when making your choice of themes.
Use a theme that relates well with your customers
Your eCommerce store is a place where you want your customers to feel safe and relaxed when they navigate through. Using a theme that resonates well with them will help you to cover a lot of ground. When making your choice of themes, select one that is visually appealing and easy on the eyes.
Color is an essential part of your theme, and it can sell your eCommerce store positively or negatively at a single glance. Depending on what you sell, specific colors are a better option.
Blue is an excellent choice if you are trying to portray safety and professionalism.
The color black conveys elegance and class, while the color red speaks action.
Green works best if you are in the growth or healthy lifestyle industry.
Choose the same theme your competitor uses:
One way lots of online professionals use when they want to choose the best theme for their needs, is to check what their competitors use and just purchase the same one and design it a bit differently. In order to figure out what theme your competitors are using, just use a shop theme detector and get all the info possible.
Select themes that support SEO
The use of SEO to boost sales for online businesses is essential. The use of search engine optimization to create brand awareness is a function of great content, but these contents need to be identified by web-crawlers responding to search queries.
JavaScript and Flash technology hide contents from web-crawling bots; it means themes created on such platforms will reduce your level of exposure to people who need to use your services.
Pick a theme that allows customization
Using a theme that will enable you to customize your eCommerce store makes it easy for you to own your brand and differentiate yourself from your competitors. If you are using a theme that allows you to customize, you can upload your logo, customize your header, background image, or content of your footer.
Having a customizable theme allows you to design your online store to the way it best suits the services you are rendering. You can announce sales or new products with the use of banners or slides. Ensure you customize your theme with only relevant information, as too much load can reduce the speed of your web page.
Use a theme that works with your budget
In as much as an excellent visual is an essential tool in getting customer’s attention, you must decide on how much you are willing to invest. If you are working on a tight budget, work with themes that are efficient and will do the job you want them to, but within the range of your budget.
There are several free themes you can use that will meet your requirements, even if they are not your best choice. Over time, when your business begins to grow, you can invest in themes that will sell your store better.
Look for responsive, lightweight themes
When choosing an eCommerce store theme, avoid the ones that have a lot of clumsy elements. Things like unnecessary animation or busy loaders will not add value to your store, but will instead slow down the speed of your site.
Use themes that are lightweight and will make it easy for new and existing customers to navigate your page easily without obstacles or obstruction. Customers will have a better experience if they can seamlessly come to your site, search for what they need, and make payments without too much stress.
Choose a theme with essential UX features
Using a beautiful theme doesn’t translate into conversion; consumers of today expect the best and newest UX features when they come to shop on your eCommerce store. Essential UX features for your business include:
Simple checkout
Fast loading time on any device
Ability to cross-sell and upsell
Designs built with clean cod
Compatibility with eCommerce plug-ins
Guided navigation and search
Think about your content strategy
The theme you decide to use will be a result of the content you intend to sell to your customers. The approach you intend to use in getting to your target market will determine how well people begin to patronize your eCommerce store.
When choosing a theme for your store, pick one that supports either of these content materials
Blog post
Social media
User-generated contents
Featured images
Product images and video
Research your competitors
If you intend to get the attention of your target market and stand out from your competition, you need to carry out comprehensive research on what your competitors are already doing. When you research competitors, you get to understand how the market works, what to expect, and also what to avoid.
Viewing competitor site will help you pick a theme that sells your brand in a positive light, while still ensuring customers see your store as being familiar with your competitors. Use widely accepted layouts, principles, and methods that will make customers feel comfortable and safe transacting with you.
Use a theme that keeps up with UX designs trends
When you are picking your eCommerce store theme, you want a theme that allows your brand to stay on top of UX design and trends. Customers or visitors will instead buy from stores they perceive as being current and up-to-date on UX design trends.
Building an online store requires a lot of work and many things for you to put into consideration. The theme of your web design is one of the factors that can either increase online sales or leave you to consider another line of business.
All the steps stated above will help you in determining a theme that works best for your eCommerce store.
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