It is without a doubt that technology has made our lives easier, and in the process has brought us closer to one another. Things have become increasingly easy for those that run business since they can sell their product-goods and services-online to a global audience. While technology has expanded the scale and scope of businesses, it has also given birth to a serious challenge: capturing the attention of a demographically and culturally diverse audience.
Many online businesses underestimate the power of themes and web design on their business, but have they ever thought about why physical retailers spend large sums of money on decorating their stores and their ambiance? It’s precisely that they wish to capture their buyers’ attention. E-Commerce website design best practices also work that way. Therefore, in this digital age, how should you design your website? And what themes should you focus upon?
An e-Commerce theme is a custom pre-design e-Commerce store design that stores install on their e-Commerce site to give their customers the best possible customer experience.
Factors to Consider
As a word of caution, you should consider the following factors when designing your website’s theme:
- It should resonate with your business
- The initial set-up and maintenance costs
- Always use a combination of colors
- The text should always be in appealing bold colors.
- The background color should be light
- Your business idea/theme/plan should be reflected in the theme of your website.
- It should be different than the theme of your competitor.
Now, let us talk about the best themes for designing an e-Commerce website.
Best Themes for Designing An e-Commerce Website
Cornerstone
The Cornerstone theme is one of the most popular e-Commerce themes and rightly so. It comes in three colors: bold, light, and warm; each color is suited for a different e-Commerce store, thus, making it a popular choice among e-Commerce retailers.
The theme box, or the frame, can be customized for any business, but has a few standard things: a cart, catalogues, banner, sales bar, and a menu. Also, it is well-suited for the web as well as the mobile use.
In addition, Cornerstone provides 24/7 customer support to all its clients and is extremely easy to use and, it allows customizability, such as, fonts, font size and much more, to all its clients. Its well-suited for businesses that have a large catalogue. However, it does come with a hefty price of $69.
Fortune
Fortune is well-suited for those e-Commerce retailers that own a small or medium-sized store with a medium-ranged catalogue. The Fortune theme has four styles: minimal, bright, contrast and highlight, which can be utilized for different types of businesses.
The theme is popular because it installs with a single click and does NOT require intense coding, nor does it require graphic designing. A lot of coding and graphic designing features are built-in and are integrated into the theme. It also comes in with a WordPress plug-in, which means that it can be used alongside the content management system. Apart from that, it offers a standard set of things, which include: a sign-out cart, menu bar, sales banner, and a wide range of fonts. In addition, it is SEO friendly. While the paid version allows more custom options, the open-source version has reasonable feature that work well for small businesses.
A few of its features are:
- Well-suited for any device, mobile or the web
- Offers layout customizability
- Allows unlimited sidebars to be integrated
- Allows social media accounts to be linked and imported.
- Includes a comprehensive font library
- On average cost $59.
Vault
Vault is another low-cost popular e-Commerce website theme that is most suited for small and medium businesses. For its cost and the price range that it comes in, it offers great theme flexibility and customizability, for instance, it allows you to add images, change their color, font, font size, including or excluding the chat window, adding and dropping banners, without the hassle of changing the code.
Therefore, just like Fortune, the theme can be used with a single click installation process. The theme has an urban and modern feel to it, which makes it best for techno-related businesses. This Vault open-source theme comes in three distinct styles: cool, bright, and natural.
Scales
Scales is best-suited for ever-growing and fast paced businesses that are expanding horizontally and vertically, since it is equipped with an innovative design, which will allow you to incorporate your growing business into your online space. A large percentage of the theme’s users call it the perfect balance between classic and chic, which they feel gives them enough room to experiment and include a diverse range of products. In addition, the design strikes the perfect balance between aesthetics and functionality, which is the dream of every e-Commerce theme user. However, the theme is only available as a paid version, but its best for growing creative and experimental brands. Scales is well-suited for web and mobile versions and allows a great degree of personalization. It comes in four styles: Chic, Pop, Modern, and Minimal. The theme costs a whopping $175!
Some of its most popular features are:
- It offers round the clock customer support
- The updates are free
- The layout can be personalized
- Contains a large library of built-in styles and color palettes
- Has filtering options
- Allows social media accounts to be linked.
- Is compatible with every web browser
- Is SEO friendly
- Includes a drop-down menu design option.
Parts Warehouse
Owing to its design flexibility and custom plans, Parts Warehouse is an aesthetically pleasing and functional theme for all e-Commerce businesses that are at different levels of the business cycle. The theme allows custom options such as, altering side bars, changing theme design and color, adding pictures etc. However, most of its features are available for paid users only, and thus, the paid theme is available in four styles: classic, light, dark and champion. Some of its features are:
- Offers free of cost customer support
- Does not require intensive coding
- Single button installation process
- SEO friendly
- Main menu and side bar customization
Lookbook
As the name suggests, Lookbook is an online photographic theme. Owing to its features and attention to detail, it is best suited for fashion and retail businesses since it includes features that magnify and emphasize on the nitty-gritty details of the picture. The Lookbook theme comes with a dual-column product grid, which allows the browser to analyze the products side-by-side and two dimensionally. However, the theme comes as a paid version only, but offers free trail to a limited number of users. The Lookbook theme includes a header and a navigation bar that can be personalized to a great extent. The theme is available in four color styles: standard, organic, dark, and colorful. Owing to its theme styles and magnifying capabilities, it is well-suited for fashion and lifestyle e-Commerce businesses. Its most popular features are:
- Greater customization in blog and portfolio layout
- Contains a content composer
- Allows you to include animations and pictures from the library as well as your own choice.
- Is SEO friendly
- Cost $49
Conclusion
Today’s e-Commerce market is more competitive than ever before, which can be equated to a street fight for customers as well as suppliers. Thus, the defining point of every e-Commerce website is that it should be able to grasp the customers’ attention instantly and be user-friendly and functional at the same time. Therefore, when designing or purchasing an off-the-shelf theme, you need to be mindful of the objectives of your business as well as the requirements of the clients, that is, be innovative, attention-grabbing, and easy to use.
