How to pick a Shopify theme - 4 important first steps

Choosing a theme for your Shopify store can be overwhelming, how do you know which one will be the right fit? Is it necessary to pay for a theme? Will a free theme be appropriate? Take a few minutes to consider the following about your business before you take the plunge. 

1. Function over Fashion

It can be easy to be swept off your feet by a demo page of a Shopify Theme. You see a beautiful page that seems to reflect your business' brand or values - and you think you've found the one. But don't be fooled by a pretty frontpage, make sure that you are feature-focused when you are searching for your theme. 

Make a short list of the features that are important to your store, and keep those features at the focus of your search. The navigation and menu functions of a theme aren't easily changed later, and so ensure that you like how the navigation has been designed. If you plan on using blog posts to increase y our SEO and improve your content marketing, make sure that you like the blog design and functions.

2. Budget

Shopify offers free themes, paid themes and third-party themes. The functionality and design of the free Shopify stores are enough for most small businesses to get started. More advanced/paid themes offer specific features that your business may require but can cost up to $200 for a license to use that theme. 

3. Inventory design

Many themes are designed based off of the size of your inventory. If you are only ever going to sell one product, don't choose a theme that is designed to showcase many items. Most likely you will do more work to make it function as you want it to than if you had selected a low-inventory theme, to begin with. 

4. Support & documentation from Developer

Shopify themes have documentation and support options that I recommend every store owner take a look at. They can be found on the theme's main page, just below and to the right of the large header photo.