70 percent of people are shopping online more than ever. This shows that eCommerce is booming. It is an excellent time to launch your Shopify eCommerce store. One of the best platforms is Shopify.
Businesses prefer Shopify because of its affordability, ease of use, scalability, and security. However, the primary reason people love Shopify is its flexible Shopify themes. It provides thousands of paid and free themes to give users a unique store experience.
It also lets you create custom themes for your Shopify development store.
That could be why millions of businesses choose Shopify custom app development.
Is a Custom Shopify Theme Worth It?
94 percent of users negatively perceive a website due to bad web design. Additionally, first-time visitors acquire an opinion in just 0.05 seconds.
A free theme is a common starting point for small business entrepreneurs testing their product ideas. Once their idea has been validated, some reinvest their money in a more expensive—though still premade—theme with improved functionality and design.
Once the business has reached a particular size, a unique Shopify theme is considered the next step. For certain brands, the expense is worthwhile. Although other people discover similar outcomes—and relief from the same problems—using alternatives. However, the long-term benefits are unclear.
A custom theme is probably your best choice if developing a distinctive brand and being able to grow steadily are your priorities. You can partner with a Shopify eCommerce development company. Even though they cost a little more upfront, you’ll get considerably more for your investment.
How Custom Themes Help you Get the Most Out of Your Shopify Store?
Here are some arguments to convince you to invest in a custom theme for your Shopify development store.
-
Control Over Your Store’s Appearance
The freedom to design your website any way you see fit is what your brand ultimately desires. Modern consumers desire extraordinary experiences, from dynamic, rich commerce to premium brand imagery.
Want to upgrade your store with fresh, cutting-edge shopping features?
Shopify has apps for this, albeit many of them have few options for web design. With a custom theme, you have more creative control over the appearance of your store.
You have the chance to scope rich merchandising into your business throughout the bespoke development process. You can include gifs, background videos, parallax scrolls, and more. All of them are additive and work to promote conversions.
-
Stand Out from Competitors
You’ll find many other eCommerce sites utilizing the same theme because pre-made Shopify themes are the first option for startups. This makes it difficult to stand apart, especially if your immediate competitors are doing the same.
In contrast, a custom theme is created specifically for your Shopify store. Differentiation is a byproduct of unique development that is ensured because no one has the same design as you.
-
Improve Customer Experience
Modern consumers have a long list of requirements when making an online purchase. The most basic? A satisfying encounter.
After having a terrible encounter with a website, 88% of consumers say they are unlikely to use it again. If visitors abandon the website without giving it any further attention, you run the danger of missing the chance to wow them with your offerings.
A unique theme enables you to give a focused user experience to your customers.
Custom theme and store development allow you to add specific features that you require, such as a custom checkout, product page, advanced search, etc.
Customers who are satisfied with your store experience are more likely to purchase from you, driving more revenue. Hence, the custom theme development!
How to Build Custom Themes that Drive Revenue
-
Define, Plan and Design your Theme
It’s imperative to know what you’re building and who you’re building it for before you write the first line of theme code.
So, define your theme, goals, and potent design components. Ensure your theme offers various carefully chosen options and settings to aid the target audience in achieving their objectives.
After defining the theme and its purpose, plan for whom you wish to design the theme.
Recognize the characteristics of the merchant category or industry you want to target. Conduct ongoing research about the target market. Work closely with retailers to determine their needs.
Lastly, design your theme by addressing art direction, consistency, typography, layout, and user experience (UX).
-
Development, Resources, and Team
Development can start once you have a clear concept for a topic, have completed your research, evaluated your data, and produced the designs.
However, there are several key considerations that you should consider. The main thing is to ensure the quality of your theme.
You can achieve that by optimizing your store performance, designing and developing a mobile-first theme, and offering easy accessibility and compatibility with the online store 2.0 framework.
After considering all these design elements, you need an experienced partner to make all these possible in real-time. Hence, look for a Shopify eCommerce development company with multiple skill sets and roles. They have higher chances of success in oppose to a single developer.
-
Submit to Shopify Theme Store
The next step is to submit your Shopify theme. To do that successfully, here are some considerations:
-
Adhere to store guidelines
Check through all the available resources to ensure you fully comprehend the conditions, characteristics, and standards. Know that store will not accept an item if the theme fails. Your chances of submitting anything that is accepted increase if you are meticulous about the guidelines, standards, and checklists.
-
Quality assurance
Don’t blow your chance by failing to thoroughly test and quality-assess your theme before submitting it for review. Make sure your theme fully complies with all rules for the best possible success in the review process, then test it once more before submitting it! If a theme fails on a needed item, it will not be accepted, and any re-submission is viewed as a new submission.
-
Market your Theme
The Partner Program Agreement stipulates that all themes published on the Shopify Theme Store must be unique to the store, but you can still sell your theme outside the store as long as the purchase flow is directed back to the Shopify Theme Store. You should create your own marketing plan to help entice merchants to your listing if you want to see rapid growth.
A website, social media, online/offline networking, blogging, and offline activities could all be a part of your marketing effort.
Whatever strategy you decide to implement for your marketing initiatives, ensure the Shopify Theme store has approved your theme.
-
Get Ready for Theme Success
Once your theme is live, it’s time to think about continuous success.
The best way to achieve success is to provide excellent customer support.
You can create user guides that are easy to understand and use and a FAQs page to handle your support. Additionally, a public-facing changelog aids merchants in comprehending the theme’s versioning and modifications. You should update these wonderful methods for assisting retailers with self-service frequently.
A positive customer experience is one of the critical factors in a theme’s success with retailers. Any theme must have dependable, effective, and committed support to succeed.
By planning for the support workload with dedicated support, the other team resources devoted to development and design will have the room to react quickly to new trends and new Shopify features, utilize new tooling, iterate on performance, accessibility, and any other areas that are a progressive enhancement for your theme.
Support can also help you obtain relevant research. You can iterate and improve your theme offering or even plan for a different theme by paying attention to merchant comments, feature and setting requests, pertinent use cases, live shop samples, and feature adoption information.
Ready to Deliver High-Quality Themes?
Partner with a Shopify custom app development company.
To list a theme in the Shopify Theme Store, you have to do a lot of work.
However, you can achieve the highest opportunity by comprehending and implementing the aforementioned vital concepts. I anticipate your custom theme submissions for the Shopify Theme Store as this is an exciting new age for themes.
Author Bio: Maulik Shah is the CEO of BiztechCS, a development company. He often takes the front seat in the company’s development projects, because he enjoys solving problems through technology. When it comes to writing for any blog, his contribution is priceless. Maulik ensures that his interaction with development is frequent enough, and his industry knowledge ever-evolving, that he can share it. Despite his packed days, Maulik’s door is always open and he is generous with sharing this knowledge and experience.
