February 22, 2023
•
In absolutely no particular order, and totally from our point of view, here are the 7 best Shopify themes in 2016.
The Shopify Theme Store has a wide range of themes that come in varying styles. There is so much choice that you'd be hard-pressed to not find anything that you like. Themes are available to either install for free or buy for a reasonable fee – either way, installing a new theme is instant and you can begin selling on your new theme straight away.
Generally speaking, the difference between free and premium themes is that the free ones tend to have far fewer customisation options. That could work for you if you see a free theme that you fall in love with and can't see why you'd need to change it, though often this is not the case. If you are looking to customise themes yourself, it may be worth considering buying a premium theme.
We have also written an article on the 5 best free themes, which you can read here.
If you are considering a premium theme, here are 7 of the best.
Lorenza is a clean, responsive theme designed by Fluorescent. Its extensive list of features includes a homepage slideshow, Instagram and Twitter feeds, newsletter integration, colour customisation and font customisation.
Lorenza is a great theme for fashion brands because you are able to create minimal and asymmetrical layouts, magazine style lookbooks and mood-board style collection pages. Nice typographic touches are an added bonus. Designed with boutique retailers in mind, Lorenza is complete with three different presets, Urban, Heritage, and Handmade.
Perhaps the most important advantage of using Lorenza as your theme is that it is designed with e-commerce best practices in mind. With the world of e-commerce constantly changing, it is more important than ever to be adhering to best practice, and this theme will give you a head start over your competitors.
Price: $160.
Launch is a highly flexible theme designed by Pixel Union. It is one of the more stylish Shopify Themes and is designed to scale startups into successes. It has a long-format homepage with customisable full-width modules. The crowdfunding and goal-tracking option is also a standout feature. Launch is ideal for single product websites and is excellent at highlighting product features. Great for technical products!
Tailor your theme with three sleek presets, Bold, Fresh and Cool that offer plenty of customization options. Tell your brand’s story further with a modular, uniquely-designed About page. Launch is as innovative as the products it sells.
The theme is responsive for all devices, optimised for the major search engines, and retina display-ready, so it is another theme clearly designed with current best practices in mind.
Price: $180.
Packed with essential features such as responsive design, built-in search engine optimisation, and retina display compatibility, Mosaic is great theme designed by Barrel.
The theme incorporates sophisticated elements such as a large homepage slideshow, a customisable mosaic/grid-based display, a featured video section, nice loading animations and an interesting product page layout for portrait photography.
Barrel offers its theme users a fantastic support service, answering any questions related to their themes. Whether you need help customising the theme, adjusting the settings, or just want to report any bugs you find, Barrel constantly makes itself available.
Mosaic is a great theme for artists, homeware, and fashion businesses. It comes in 3 different presets, Mulberry, Gesso, and Oak.
Price: $180.
Perhaps the boldest theme in this list, Canopy is a fresh, eye-catching and highly versatile theme. With a focus on large images, this kind of setup would work well for fashion brands looking to make a statement.
It is retina display ready and fully responsive, with a great appearance on mobile and tablet. Designed by Clean Themes, they built the homepage using rows of individual content, which you can turn on and off as you please and dictate the order in which they appear in. Canopy includes a cool setup for mega menus & collection headings, catering for a store with a large inventory.
Canopy's design layout allows users to easily navigate and there is a choice of 3 styles Elda, Thread and Kiln.
Price: $180.
Having images that are bold and use the full-width of the page is a design trend that is very popular, so Giraffe Themes incorporated this aesthetic when designing Label. In addition to this, the theme follows e-commerce best practice.
Label is a Shopify theme that is ideal for startups and built for shops that sell small amounts of products. However, it can adapt to those stores with larger inventories. Designed in mind for musicians, creators, and publishers, its features include a highly customizable homepage with over 8 modules including Featured Products, Full Screen images, Instagram feed and Tour/Events.
Label comes with 3 unique presets that you can choose from, Record, Create, Publish.
Price: $160.
Palo Alto is a simple theme with a minimal design by Page Mill Design. It has an expansive homepage that allows you to show off your products and tell your story.
The simple theme setup makes it quick and easy to build a beautiful and robust site. Although Palo Alto already looks highly professional, it is very intuitive, with a large amount of customisation available and everything within your control. Palo Alto's striking full banner and overlapping images makes it highly modern and ensures your website it guaranteed to stand out.
Tailor your theme with three unique presets, Palo Alto, SoMa and Sandford. As always, the theme is responsive on all devices, search engine optimised and designed with current best practices in mind.
Price: $180.
Created by Mile High, ShowTime is a feature-rich responsive theme. The homepage layout is fully customizable and contains features like sophisticated sidebar filtering, mega menus, quick view, video support and plenty of content blocks to choose from.
It arguably isn't as clean looking as some of the themes mentioned, but it is one of the best out-of-the-box themes for websites with large inventories. The slightly off-putting animations can be easily switched off too.
It comes in three great styles, CookTime, FashTime, and FurnishTime that will be sure to make your product range stand out.
Price: $180.
We hope you find that useful when searching for a solid theme to use for your Shopify store.
Do you agree with our list? Tweet at us and let us know!
You may also be interested in our article 90 best Shopify stores for ecommerce inspiration and we have a comparison of free Shopify themes here.
