Optimized Ecommerce EP 012 – Everything You Need to Know About Shopify Themes

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Business Tech Ninjas | Jun 24, 2020

Welcome to Episode 012 of Optimized Ecommerce – Everything You Need to Know About Shopify Themes. We are your hosts, Tanner Larsson CEO of BGS and Matthew Stafford CMO of BGS.

BGS means Build Grow Scale! It is a community that we founded where eCommerce entrepreneurs and physical product sellers come to learn how to take their businesses to the next level.

In this episode, we tackle the questions we get asked the most from Shopify store owners, “What theme should I use on my online store? Which theme converts best?”

Is there really a specific type of theme or template that converts best? We are going to specifically talk about Shopify today but the information that we are sharing is applicable across all ecom platforms.

Here’s just a taste of what we talked about today:

How Can A Shopify Theme Impact Your Site?

You have to remember that the majority of themes are built by developers who are not familiar with conversion rates. What these developers are familiar with is people asking for features who do not have their own developers on their team.

The developer does not realize how their themes impact each site on the front end. So, these themes get very big and robust. And the developers sell their themes based on the features, yet 90% of these features have never been tested for conversion.

The fact is, you do not know if the theme you bought is going to help or hurt your store. You do not know if it is good for your audience or not.

If you have a theme that is already working, go ahead and improve that. Making tweaks on an existing theme or template is way better than buying another theme.

How Can You Tell Good Themes from the Bad?

To be fair, there are good themes out there. However, determining the good from the bad themes is not done from a feature set standpoint.

The biggest issue with themes that we have in BGS is the code. Regardless of who made it or what kind of neat features it has, if the code is bad then the theme is no good. There are a lot of really bad codes used to create themes that look pretty but function badly.

Sometimes, these themes even function perfectly until you install your first app. Remember that apps are known for breaking themes. The interface between the two does not always work very well.

That is the most important thing for any theme you get. The code has to be clean and consistent. Because if the code is good, you can make the theme do anything.

Your Theme is Just a Wireframe

This is what we always tell people when we are asked about the importance of ecom site themes or templates. It is just a wireframe.

Your theme is basically what you use to hang all your elements on. It is the structure that you make everything work from.

So, it is not necessarily good or bad for conversion unless it starts making a whole bunch of unnecessary calls. That is why we built our own theme because all the other themes had tons of stuff that we never even use.

We know that speed matters a lot, and conversion. Getting rid of all these other things that your code has to go in and look through speeds up your site. But we are not saying this to sell a theme. We are just saying that by removing everything that you are not using, it makes the theme more efficient.

In the end, themes are not actually what creates the conversion. What creates a conversion is how you dial it in on your store’s front end.

We also discussed a few other fun topics, including:

  • BGS Shopify theme is not for sale to the public. Only partner stores have access to it.
  • A terribly coded theme will conflict with other features.
  • Less is always more when it comes to themes and templates.
  • Maintain prototypicality to keep the shopping habit of your customers inside their subconscious.

All that, and more! But you’ll have to watch or listen to the full episode to hear about those!

How To Stay Connected With Tanner Larsson

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