Prepare your business for success in 2024: Top 5 Free Shopify Themes to Boost Your Sales

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First impressions matter and your website is often the first point of contact between your brand and potential customers. The theme you choose shapes the visual and aesthetic experience visitors have as well as the complete purchasing experience. A positive user experience along with an immediate positive impression, can lead to higher conversion rates and increased sales.

As competition increases, and customers has many more options to choose from, it is increasingly crucial to create an unforgettable, simple, and hassle-free shopping experience, to encourage visitors to become buyers, and in the long term, faithful customers.

That’s where your Shopify theme has a very crucial role, since your theme determines how the store looks and how smooth the buying experience can be. 

If you’re serious about taking your store to a big success in 2024, you should focus on creating an incredible shopping experience. This doesn’t mean that you have to invest thousands of dollars, though. In fact, you can pick a free Shopify theme and make wonders with it, if you follow these recommendations. 

So let’s start by knowing our top 5 free themes and what are they best for:

Dawn: A minimalist theme that lets product images take center stage. This theme is great if you need a quick setup, with minimal steps for a quick launch. It is also a great way to make your brand visible, for it is designed to showcase images to support visual brand storytelling.

Spotlight: A streamlined theme designed to quickly start selling. This theme is great if you need a quick setup, with minimal steps for a quick launch.

Refresh: A bold theme that elevates product quality and brand storytelling. This theme is great if you need a quick setup, with minimal steps for a quick launch. It is also a great way to make your brand visible, for it is designed to showcase images to support visual brand storytelling and optimized for longer-form text sections to support brand storytelling.

Sense: An energizing theme featuring extensive product detail layouts. This theme is great if you need a quick setup, with minimal steps for a quick launch. It is also a great way to make your brand visible, for it is designed to showcase images to support visual brand storytelling.

Craft: A refined theme that celebrates craftsmanship. This theme is great if you need a quick setup, with minimal steps for a quick launch. It is also a great way to make your brand visible, for it is designed to showcase images to support visual brand storytelling.

 

While most free themes come with basic features that are good for running an online store, some themes have extra features that others don't. If you know how your business operates, it's important to pick a theme that has all the features you need. If a theme doesn't have a feature you want, you'll have to add it later by using an app or writing some code.

We have prepared a comparative table with the features included in each of the themes according to the category to which they correspond, so that you can make a better decision for your business:

 

	Dawn	Spotlight	Refresh	Sense	Craft
Cart and checkout
Cart notes	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
In-store pickups	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Quick buy	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Slide-out cart	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌
Marketing and conversion
Blogs	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Cross-selling	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
FAQ page	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Press coverage	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
Product reviews	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅
Promo banners	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅
Recommended products	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Stock counter	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌
Merchandising
High-resolution images	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Image galleries	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Image rollover	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Image zoom	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Ingredients or nutritional information	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Lookbooks	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Product options	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
Product videos	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Shipping/delivery information	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Size chart	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Slideshow	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Usage information	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Product discovery
Enhanced search	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Mega menu	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Product filtering and sorting	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Recommended products	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Sticky header	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅

 

Features are not the only important criteria while choosing a theme, so here you’ll find a few Key Considerations for Choosing a Free Shopify Theme:

• Mobile Responsiveness: a mobile-friendly design will help you capture a wider audience. Most of your audience will probably find you while navigating through social media. Provide a user-friendly experience by ensuring every aspect of the page works correctly on mobile.
• Loading Speed: a fast-loading theme reduces bounce rates and improves SEO by showing in just a few seconds all the content of your store. Consider that you’ll only have around 2 seconds to capture your visitor’s attention and nothing repels more to customers than to wait for the information to load.
• Customization Options: How can you communicate your brand values? Do you need to add images, change colors, add your logo? How much flexibility does the theme allow you to implement your brand assets? Make sure to choose a theme that allows easy customization to match your brand identity.
• Conversion-Focused Design: Just like being in a messy store will not invite you to buy, or having things displayed beautifully might convince you easier to buy, a theme's layout and design can influence visitor conversions by either providing an email address for future email marketing campaigns or directly purchasing in the store. Make sure that whatever theme you choose is inviting and easy to navigate.
• Scalability: In the long run, the idea is for your business to grow, correct? While your business grows, your store might be required to display more products, variants, collections, etc. Make sure to consider the importance of a theme that can grow as your business does.
• Customer Support: Brand experience is crucial if you want customers who return to you over and over. A reliable customer support and active communities enhance branding experience, cultivating a long-term relationship without increasing customer acquisition.
• Security Features: An online shopping experience is not complete if you can’t guarantee your customers that their money is safe. Make sure to have built-in security to protect customer data and avoid getting refund requests that will damage your credibility.
• User Reviews and Ratings: And last but not least, if you want even more customers, ask for reviews from your previous buyers. By encouraging visitors to check reviews and ratings, you’ll appear more trustworthy and valuable to your visitors and future buyers.

Although choosing a free theme can certainly help you maintain low costs at the beginning, you must consider this: a theme that’s not responsive, easy to navigate, attractive, and provides a great user experience, will not convert into customers.

This is why, we highly recommend contacting a Shopify Expert who will help you configure that free theme in a way that looks amazing and works flawlessly. Ready to start? In that case…

 

We’ll be happy to help you

Hiring a Shopify Expert can help you streamline your store's development. Having the experience of working with hundreds of stores online, we have developed a systemized process to set up any new Shopify store by following e-commerce best practices that will work for your business and actually give you a competitive advantage.

Here are a few things we can do for you:

• Want to check out if Shopify is for you? Get a 14 days trial! 
• New at Shopify and not sure where to start? We can configure a solid, beautifully designed store for you and you won’t pay the monthly plan during the whole development even if it takes longer than the 14-day trial available directly through Shopify. Learn more about our Full store setup service. 
• Ready to beautify your store and attract your customer's attention? Learn more about our Expert Theme Makeover service.
• Need some coding, custom development, or bug fixes?  Our dev team is ready to help you!  Take advantage of our Custom Development Hour Packs  and get our help quicker, at a better price.

Ready to work with us? Contact us today by clicking here  and tell us more about your business!