I can't tell you how many times clients come to us at the start of the project and simply want to know which is the "best" Shopify theme, and can we please use that one for their build. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) this is a question without an answer. Let's explore why.

What is a Shopify theme?

Let's first start out by explaining what a Shopify theme is. A theme is a pre-built and fully customizable template that serves as a framework for your e-commerce site. Think of it as a blueprint to your house. It provides layout structure and functionality in a neat little package that is ready to go out-of-the box, eliminating the need for a developer. Since Shopify recently released Shopify 2.0, we recommend sticking with native Shopify 2.0 themes rather than third-party ones. Things just...work when you keep it all in-house!

We are huge fans of themes here at Saturday Republic, as they let us bring you high-quality and hard-working websites at a fraction of the cost of what it would take to go the old school "design and development" route. With Shopify 2.0 themes, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. The best part is that these themes have a ton of design flexibility (it varies by theme) that allows you to affect fonts, colors, and treatments to match your brand and to make your site feel unique. Just because you're starting from a theme doesn't mean your site has to feel cookie-cutter.

One important thing to understand is that all themes—every single one—make use of Shopify's powerful e-commerce platform. Checkout, order handling and fulfillment, customer management, and more, all pull in seamlessly regardless of the theme you decide to go with.

How do I choose the best one?

The answer to "which is the best Shopify theme?" is actually "which theme is best for this particular project and client." Not all themes are created equally, and the themes in the Shopify theme store vary wildly in terms of design, functionality, and quality. Whenever you're about to start a new project, it's in the project's best interest for you to go through all of the themes in the store carefully, exploring multiple different options, until you eventually narrow in on the best theme for the job.

Some questions to ask yourself as you browse the theme store:

• How big is the product catalog you'll be dealing with? A catalog of 1-3 products is going to have different needs than a product catalog of 1000+ products. Certain themes handle those scenarios better than others, so make sure you're intentional with your pick here.
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• Are there any special content or functionality needs this job will have? For example, will you need a timeline for any of your brand storytelling? Or a countdown timer? Or scrolling banner? Not all themes have those things, and you'll want to make sure to choose accordingly.
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• What vibe am I trying to go for with this site? Since certain elements—like certain animations, for example—are baked into the theme and not adjustable, make sure to pay attention to the vibe that a theme is giving off. For example, I personally love Shopify's Focal theme for bolder clients, since it has more aggressive movement throughout the site. However, this sort of movement wouldn't be well-suited to more mellow or earthy clients.

How to properly vet a Shopify theme:

1. First, click around in the theme's various demo sites: These are a great way to get a feel for how a theme loads, what kind of content it can hold and how it displays it, and any general vibes that theme might have. Demo sites are a great way to see different ways that the same theme can be brought to life. Don't get too caught up in design elements like fonts or colors; those can all be adjusted to match any company's branding. What often can't be changed though (at least without custom code) are things like animations, navigation structures, and to a certain extent, content layouts. Also don't get caught up in the industry of the demo site. Shopify themes are (for the most part) not industry-specific and a theme that uses a skincare brand on a demo site can easily be repurposed to house a mountain bike brand, for example. Lastly, don't forget to preview the demo sites on both desktop and mobile! Most Shopify 2.0 themes are beautifully responsive, but it's always a good idea to check and make sure you like how things stack on mobile (or if you're designing mobile-first, how they expand on desktop).
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2. Next, take a peek at the theme's back-end: Once you've narrowed it down to a small handful of themes, it pays to take a look at the nuts and bolts of how the theme works, and what it's actually capable of. The last thing you want to do is purchase a theme thinking it has a certain functionality, only to learn that it doesn't, in fact, work the way you want it to. Some of things that I like to check in there include: how fonts are handled (how headline and body copy fonts pull into the theme; where they are adjustable and where they are not; what flexibility do I have over the color of things like buttons or section backgrounds; what types of content sections exist; and whether or not I can add mobile-specific images and settings. This list isn't exhaustive, but it gives you an idea of the due diligence you should be doing before selecting a theme.
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3. Check out the theme's documentation: All theme developers maintain what is called "documentation", which is really just a how-to guide for their themes. However, not all documentation and theme support is created equally! I like to take a look at the documentation ahead of time to see how robust it is. This usually gives me clues about the quality of the theme, the quality of the support, and the ease of which I'll be able to unlock the full potential of that theme.

Worth noting, while you can do some filtering by feature on Shopify's theme store, I find that there are still way more criteria I wish that I could narrow the field down by. We're hard at work building the most complete theme comparison tool in existence, which will save you hours of time in comparing themes and confirming features. Give us a follow on Instagram to be the first to know when you can get your hands on it.

In the meantime, happy theme store browsing—we hope this article has been helpful!