Where to Buy & Customize Beautiful Shopify Themes

The statistics speak for themselves: You have as little as 50 milliseconds to capture your visitor’s attention when they land on your website, otherwise, they’re likely to click off and head to one of your competitor’s sites.

Not cool.

The aesthetics of your store heavily influence online shoppers so your site needs to exude attractiveness in addition to having straightforward navigation. That’s the winning formula when it comes to web design, however, hiring a professional web developer to achieve this outcome can be costly. If hiring a developer isn’t on the cards for you, have no fear — there are tons of companies offering pre-made Shopify themes and templates that you can modify to suit your tastes.

In this article, we’re going to explore the best places to source and create top-notch Shopify themes and templates.

Let’s dive in!

Section 1: Where to Buy Beautiful Shopify Themes

First things first, you need a beautiful theme for your store! Here’s where you can find, buy and customize the perfect theme.

The Shopify Theme Store

Over on the Shopify Theme Store, you’ll find both free and premium Shopify themes. Most of these designs (even the free ones!) are pretty high-quality. These templates are specially designed to create trust with your shoppers and build your credibility as a brand so rest assured that they’re an excellent starting point for your business and optimized to encourage visitors to hang around and explore what your store has to offer.

As you flick through the Shopify theme store’s library, it soon becomes clear that professional designers create these themes. In fact, many of the premium Shopify themes are crafted by world-renowned designers like Pixel Union and Out of the Sandbox (more on these later) so they’re designed and developed by some of the best in the business.

How Much Will a Tempalte from the Shopify Theme store set me back?

Like we mentioned above, some of the Shopify themes won’t cost you a dime, however, there are plenty of premium themes that come with a price tag, usually around the range of $140-$180. It’s worth noting, however, that most paid themes are one-off payments so you won’t have to shell out recurring monthly fees to install them onto your store.

The best part about the Shopify theme store’s pricing is that although there are many premium themes to choose from, Shopify’s free themes are just as good as their premium themes so you don’t have to spend your cash on a theme if you don’t want to. You generally won’t be missing out on any crucial aspects of a website theme if you use one of their free options — generally the premium themes are made specifically for certain types of stores or they boast some specialized features — so if you want, start off with a free theme and then, as you expand and generate a healthy profit, you could later upgrade to a premium theme.

What makes paid-for themes on Shopify’s theme store premium?

Premium themes on Shopify’s theme store cost a bit of money because an expert team crafts the design. Needless to say, these expert designers spend a great deal of time and energy studying which elements work on Shopify themes and, perhaps even more importantly, which don’t so with a premium theme, you’ll be reaping the benefits of advanced design, optimized elements, and possibly even specialized features, depending on the theme.

The Different Types of Shopify Themes

One of the best things about the Shopify theme store is that you can filter their themes by industry. This saves so much time; you can literally skip straight to the designs that are relevant to your niche.

Here are the many industries that the Shopify theme store caters their themes to:

• Art & Photography
• Clothing & Fashion
• Jewelry & Accessories
• Electronics
• Food & Drinks
• Home & Garden
• Furniture
• Health & Beauty
• Sports & Recreation
• Toys & Games
• Other

Out of the Sandbox

At the time of writing, Out of the Sandbox boasts over 800 positive reviews on the Shopify theme store. Concerned that these reviews might be fake? You can be confident they’re the real deal as only verified customers can give reviews. This is a promising indication that if you buy a theme created by Out of the Sandbox, you won’t be disappointed.

They’re most famous for the following four themes (all of which are sold and listed directly on the Shopify Theme Store):

• Parallax
• Retina
• Responsive
• Mobilia

Why is Out of the Sandbox so Popular?

Out of the Sandbox’s themes are some of the most popular Shopify themes on the market, and these are some reasons why:

• Their Shopify themes are visually stunning
• Each theme has intuitive settings deliberately designed so that you’re able to customize your Shopify theme easily
• Out of the Sandbox regularly update their themes
• Their customer support is excellent — they’re known for providing helpful responses, fast

Pixel Union

Pixel Union is a leading web design agency famous for their top-notch Shopify themes. They first launched back in 2009 and gradually developed a customer base of millions across the globe. Some of Pixel Union’s most notable clients include:

• The White House
• Tesla
• MoMA
• The LA Lakers
• The BBC

Just to name a few!

As you explore Pixel Union’s website, you’ll see hundreds of professional-looking Shopify themes so you’re bound to find a layout and design that suits the vibe of your ecommerce store. Just click on a theme you like the look of and it’ll populate the following information:

• It’s features
• The price
• Reviews from other users
• It’s updates
• Release dates

With these details at your disposal, you’re more likely to find the right theme for your store and make a purchase you won’t regret. Not to mention, you can also see a live demo of the theme which is integral for getting a feel of the overall design. All in all, there’s next to no risk because you know exactly what you’re getting for your money and you know you’re getting it from a reliable and well-established design team.

Best of all, it’s super easy to edit Pixel Union’s themes. Within no time at all, you can modify these templates to complement the feel of your brand. If you’re keen on modifying your Shopify theme, you’ll be pleased to hear that you can customize the following elements:

• The size of your posts
• Your headers
• Infinite scrolling

These are just a couple of the many display options you can edit to create a better user experience. On the subject of user experience, Pixel Union’s templates are all also mobile-friendly so it doesn’t matter what size screen your shoppers are using, they’ll all enjoy a top-notch user experience.

However, one of Pixel Union’s major setbacks is that you can only browse their themes by platform (Shopify, Tumblr, WordPress, etc.) — not by industry — so finding the perfect theme for your store could be a painstaking process as you have to search through everything available for your platform. Another setback is that although they have hundreds of themes to choose from, some users complain that in comparison to Pixel Union’s competitors, the choice is a little sparse. After all, similar companies list thousands of Shopify themes for merchants to choose from.

When it comes to customer support, Pixel Union’s leading resource is their knowledge base. Here, you’ll find plenty of articles and guides that should provide the answers to all your burning questions. Alternatively, you can send a question via their online contact form, and you’ll receive an email in response.

Creating Customized Shopify Themes with Pixel Union

In addition to purchasing pre-made Shopify themes, you also have the option of building a custom theme of your own with Pixel Union. Just use their contact form to send a request and they’ll happily create a personalized Shopify theme for your brand.

You’ll need to give them as much information as you can about the products and/or services you sell on your Shopify site. The more details you give them, the easier it is for them to bring your vision to life. You’ll also have to tell Pixel Union what your budget is (less or more than $20,000), as well as your:

• Name
• Company Name
• Email Address
• Website URL

A custom Pixel Union theme can run you anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars depending on your needs and desires but, for a pre-made Shopify theme that you can purchase straight from Pixel Union, expect to spend anywhere between $40 to $200.

Underground

Underground is famous for their premium Shopify themes. They’re known for modular, high-converting, and incredibly easy to customize themes but, most importantly, each and every one of them looks gorgeous.

Here’s a breakdown of the themes Underground has to offer:

The Icon Shopify Theme

This is best for brands with many beautiful product photos. The theme comes with:

• Sticky Navigation: The menu remains fixed at the top of your web page as the user scrolls down, making navigation easier for shoppers
• Multi-Column Menu: Here, you can showcase your product images in an extensive drop-down menu featuring numerous columns
• The Parallax Effect: This adds greater depth as visitors scroll down the web page

The Mr. Parker Shopify Theme

If you’re selling fashion and apparel, there’s a good chance this will be your preferred choice. Below are some of the Mr. Parker theme’s most notable features:

• The Blog: The blog settings for this theme are created explicitly for active bloggers so if that’s your thing then you’ll be in your element
• Marketing Pop-Ups: This tool is fantastic for drawing attention to your on-site promotions
• Collection Page Filters: Creating product filters for shoppers is easy, just assign each piece of merchandise a product tag. You can even include color swatches for customers to filter by color

The Vantage Shopify Theme

If you take content marketing seriously, check out the Vantage them. With this theme you’ll enjoy:

• Advanced Layout Formatting Options: Use custom page templates to bring your web pages to life and to make product pages show more valuable content
• Collection Pages: Display extensive product collections with sub-collections to help organize your merchandise

The Fashionopolism Shopify Theme

If you’re after a Shopify theme that exudes elegance and sophistication, Fashionopolism is the one for you. With a few clicks, you can easily upload beautiful images and showcase numerous product collections.

Here are some of Fashionopolism’s special features that we can’t get enough of:

• The Slideshow: Engage your audience from the get-go by displaying several products and brand images on your homepage
• Sticky Navigation: Again, the menu remains fixed at the top of your web page as the user scrolls down, making navigation easier for shoppers
• Product Quick View: Shoppers can view product details in popup form so they don’t have to leave the page their currently on

The Testament Shopify Theme

If you have large images and a variety of collections to feature on your Shopify store, have a look at what the Testament theme has to offer.

The Testament theme’s main features include:

• Product Quick View: Shoppers can view product details in popup form so they don’t have to leave the page their currently on
• Collection Page Sidebar: This website element sits on your collection page and displays collection-specific details from the convenience of a dedicated sidebar. Use this to highlight some of the best aspects of your merchandise
• Multi-Column Menu: Here, you can showcase your product images in an extensive drop-down menu featuring numerous columns

Troop Themes

Last but not least, this brings us to the final Shopify theme provider discussed in this guide. Troop Themes is best known for their contemporary designs geared towards creative brands. All of their premium Shopify themes are modular, easy to customize, and proven to convert — what more could you want?!

Below, we’ve listed some of Troop Themes’ designs to give you a better feel for the kind of work they do.

However, before we delve into the nitty-gritty, you should be aware: Once you’ve purchased one of these themes, you’re automatically entitled to any updates! You won’t have to keep shelling out cash to access the latest version of your theme.

The Blockshop Shopify Theme

This is best described as a minimalistic, grid-style theme, enhanced by striking hero imagery. It’s also incredibly quick — if the load time of your site is essential to you, consider Blockshop. Plus, this theme is dripping with cool features you can modify to reflect your tastes. Overall, it’s simple, it’s stylish, and it’s effective.

The Local Shopify Theme

This theme is best suited to entrepreneurs selling products and services across a variety of channels (including offline sales). With a few clicks, your gorgeous merchandise will be on display for the whole web to see. It’s sleek, sophisticated, and incredibly versatile. If you’re an owner of a brick and mortar store and you’re trying to break into the online market, you should seriously consider this theme.

The Maker Shopify Theme

If you’re proud of your brand image, the Maker theme will be a great fit for your store. It’s easy to showcase numerous products and publish your favorite collections in these collage-inspired layouts. The overall design works wonders for capturing the eyes of your shoppers and engaging them with your content. All in all, it’s ideal for creative brands wanting to display their very best content, products, and projects.

Not only does Troop Themes offer top-notch Shopify templates, but they also provide users with a plethora of how-to video guides. If you’ve never used one of their themes before, these guides provide effective information to help you get up and running! If they don’t hit the spot, however, you can always contact their dedicated technical support. They’re open 24/7 and can guide you through any issues you’re encountering.

htmlBurger

htmlBurger works slightly differently to the companies featured above. Instead of scrolling through pre-made Shopify theme options, you send htmlBurger the specifications of what you want and they’ll get back to you with a fabulous-looking mobile-friendly design. This makes htmlBurger an amazing option for entrepreneurs seeking modern, minimalistic, and user-friendly Shopify themes.

Not only do you have the option of creating a completely fresh design but alternatively, you can also choose to update one of your existing Shopify themes. To hit the ground running, you’ll need to provide htmlBurger with the following info:

• Wireframes
• A sitemap
• Any other guidelines you think the team at htmlBurger needs to know

These instructions will guide the web designers as they create the Shopify theme of your dreams.

Best of all, htmlBurger fully respects your privacy; they’ll happily sign a non-disclosure agreement so you can rest easy knowing that your theme is utterly unique to you and your brand. Plus, you can be confident that the end result will meet or exceed your expectations because if the initial designs don’t match the instructions you sent, you’re entitled to a full refund!

In addition to Shopify themes, you can also request a template for a landing page boasting high-converting, user-experience optimized design. This option is well worth considering if email marketing and list building is something you’re taking seriously.

Last but not least, if illustrations and infographics are essential to your site’s design, you’re in luck. It doesn’t matter what you’re after, htmlBurger has a team of highly skilled illustrators ready and raring to bring your vision to life.

How Does the htmlBurger Process Work?

• To kick things off you’ll need to submit a specification. The more detailed the spec, the higher the chance of htmlBurger creating something you’ll love
• Once htmlBurger has reviewed your request, they’ll send a quote
• From there, you and an expert from htmlBurger will discuss your project in greater depth to clarify the finer details of your vision. After this conversation, they’ll send an updated price for you to approve. If you’re happy to continue, htmlBurger will start creating your Shopify theme
• htmlBurger will then send a few previews of the mockups they’ve produced to ensure that you’re happy with the basis of the design
• htmlBurger continues to revise your Shopify theme until you’re happy
• Once you’ve approved the final product, htmlBurger will send you all their relevant project files. Alternatively, if you’ve requested them to, htmlBurger will start coding and creating a fully functioning Shopify store theme for you

Interestingly, htmlBurger also offers a rush delivery option. If this is something you’re interested in, you’ll need to contact them directly to find out how much it’ll cost you as the fees vary depending on the extent of the project and the turnaround time you require.

Section 2: How to Customize Your Theme

Now that you’ve got a great theme, here’s how you can customize it without hiring a developer.

Storetasker

In short, Storetasker is a marketplace where Shopify merchants can hire vetted experts to help them with all manner of ecommerce related projects — including the creation and installation of top-notch Shopify themes. But, don’t make the mistake of lumping Storetasker with the likes of other task sites like Fiverr or Upwork. Before Storetasker experts join their marketplace, they’re rigorously vetted — both in terms of their ability to communicate and their overall skill.

How Does the Storetasker Process Work?

There are tons of ready-made services for you to utilize from as low as $65 but best of all, they guarantee satisfaction — it really doesn’t get much better than that!

• Take your time perusing Storetasker’s marketplace. Once you’ve found the service you want and an expert you’re comfortable with, go ahead and select it and then pay for the task
• Storetasker will notify the expert
• The expert completes your service

Simple right? Rest assured that it’s easy to keep in contact with the expert while they’re handling your project, just download the Storetasker app and send them a message at any point while your project’s in progress. Alternatively, if you’re after a fully customized experience rather than a ready-made service then send a project request and you’ll receive an approximate quote within minutes.

Shogun

Next on our list of Shopify theme providers is Shogun. Shogun is the ideal solution for merchants wanting to customize and edit the design of their Shopify store, especially if you don’t have the technical knowledge to modify every single element of your site.

Shogun empowers merchants to build and design the Shopify store they’re envisioning. If you’ve used one of Shopify’s themes before you’ll understand how challenging it can be to edit simple elements like:

• Social media buttons
• Logos
• Colors

Just to name a few! Shogun simplifies the process by giving you greater control over the look and feel of your online store. Here are just a few of the many page elements you can edit:

• Videos
• Images
• Blogs
• Social buttons
• Call-to-action buttons
• Tables
• Columns

And much, much more.

The hassle and expense of hiring web developers quickly becomes an issue of the past as generally, an app like Shogun is much cheaper than paying a web developer to edit a site for you.

How Does the Shogun Process Work?

Shogun is an app that you can download from the Shopify App Store. From there, you can modify your web pages via their drag and drop page builder and editor. If you’re using any of Shopify’s free or premium themes, you’re good to go and if you’re not, you should still be able to use Shogun, you’ll just have to utilize their page importer.

The Advantages of Using Shogun

Some of the benefits of using Shogun is that they give you access to a preview button so you can take a look at your web page before you make it live, they provide handy step-by-step guides on how to configure your site’s design and they also ensure that your web pages are kitted out with a responsive, mobile-friendly design. Not only does this provide a better user experience but it’s also great for SEO — win-win!

Another advantage is that it’s not just technophobes that warm to Shogun, web developers do too. Their Custom Templating feature is pretty powerful, enabling coders to create website elements entirely unique to your brand by writing your own Liquid, HTML, or CSS.

How Much Will Shogun Set Me Back?

When you download the Shogun app, you’re entitled to a seven-day free trial. After that, you’ll have to fork out for one of Shogun’s paid plans.

• Starter: $19/month
  • Landing Page Builder
  • Unlimited Pages
  • 30+ Page Templates
  • Full Library of Elements
  • SEO Controls
  • Design by Screen Size
  • Version Controls
  • Email Support
• Essential: $39/month
  • Everything in the Starter plan, plus:
  • Product Page Builder
  • Blog Page Builder
  • Collection Page Editor
  • Premium Email Support
• Pro: $79/month
  • Everything in the Starter & Essential plans, plus:
  • Content Scheduling
  • Developer Tools
  • Multisite Page Copying
  • Live Chat Support
  • Priority Email Support

Reboo

Reboo is a very similar service to Shogun, however, instead of being a Shopify app, Reboo is a desktop app that both Mac and Windows users can download and utilize. Interestingly, it’s also not just Shopify sites you can edit using this service; with Reboo you can modify practically ANY website, and without writing a single line of code, too!

The Advantages of Using Reboo

So, as you may have guessed, Reboo is ideal for any Shopify merchant who has a store up and running but doesn’t have the technical know-how to modify their current design or the budget to hire a developer or designer.

Best of all, just like Shogun, Reboo ensures that your edits are compatible with responsive design so it doesn’t matter what size of screen shoppers use to peruse your site, they’ll be sure to enjoy a top-notch user experience.

With Reboo it’s as simple as pasting a tiny snippet of HTML code in the header of your site. This enables Reboo to integrate with your Shopify store and ensures that any change you make via Reboo reflects on your website.

Just select the web page element you want to modify and take it from there. You can edit virtually any of your CSS including:

• The background
• Margin and padding sizes
• Borders
• Z-index
• Position
• Display
• Box-sizing

You get the idea!

Reboo users also love that they offer thousands of images for them to use. You can find the perfect image by filtering via category, keyword, and even color! Needless to say, you can upload and use your own snaps but, every now and again, this feature certainly comes in handy. Plus, you don’t have to host anything when using Reboo. All of the files generated via this software are saved directly onto Reboo’s secure cloud servers and delivered using their super fast CDN.

Fans of Reboo also like the fact it comes with plenty of ready-to-use apps. These are incredibly easy to use and extend the overall functionality of your Shopify site. Here are a few other Reboo features we can’t get enough of:

• Actions on Click: This enables elements on your web page (like images and videos) to open in either a popup box or in a fresh tab
• Hover Fx: This feature makes it incredibly easy to apply mouseover effects to any of the elements on your web page
• CSS Filters: You can apply all manner of filters to enhance the elements on your web pages such as sepia, grayscale, blur, etc.
• Social Sharing: This feature makes the insertion of professional-looking social media buttons straightforward
• Scroll to the Top: As you can probably guess, with this feature, you can insert a scroll-to-top button on your web pages
• Image Banners: These come in handy for drawing attention to any on-site promotions you’re running

Reboo is adding more apps and features each and every month, so keep an eye out for the updates if you plan to use their service.

How Much Will Reboo Set Me Back?

Reboo offers three different payment plans: Premium, Business, and Unlimited. For your convenience, we’ve listed the details of each. You should note, however, that you can upgrade or downgrade accounts at any time so there’s no need to feel locked into any plan.

• Premium: $7/month
  • Work on 3 projects
  • Access to all their apps
  • Upload images
  • Host all files on Reboo’s CDN
• Business: $27/month
  • Work on 20 projects
  • Access to all their apps
  • Upload images
  • Host all files on Reboo’s CDN
• Unlimited: $47/month
  • Work on an unlimited number of projects
  • Access to all their apps
  • Upload images
  • Host all files on Reboo’s CDN

Conclusion

When all is said and done, the key takeaway from this article is that you should never underestimate the power of a professional-looking Shopify theme. They make such a difference when it comes to engaging customers and, ultimately, boosting your bottom line. Most consumers are heavily swayed by first impressions so you need to wow them from the get-go. With the theme providers and customization services mentioned in this article, you’ll be well on your way to making a great first impression that your visitors will remember.