Choosing the Right Ecommerce Template
to Boost Sales

Creating a high-converting website is not always smooth sailing and if the website you create is an e-store, it can be even more complicated and time consuming.

That’s why so many people choose to use eCommerce templates as this cuts down the time and cost associated with e-store creation.

But are templates really good to get you on the right track?

We’ll look into this in our article by examining the ways you benefit from using a website template.

What’s more, we’ll see what features make a good modern e-commerce theme that really takes your business up a notch.

Are you ready for the journey? Then, let’s get started!

How E-Commerce Templates Help Boost Sales?


If you want to run an e-store, the first and foremost thing you care about is conversions, i.e. sales.

So you’re probably wondering, can a template help in this regard?

The answer is ‘Yes’!

Adopting a high-quality template for your e-commerce site is one of the fireproof ways to boost sales for a number of reasons. We list the most prominent of them below:

Impressive UI


With a modern e-commerce template, your store will nudge the competition aside and impress your client pool with its inimitable present-day UI. Nobody likes shopping within the crammed, obsolete or impersonal interfaces that you end up with without a good theme. On the contrary, with a top-notch e-commerce template, you create a memorable interface that goes in line with your brand identity and distinguishes your website among the others.

UX boost


Provided strong competition on the market, where do people choose to shop? Of course, where it is convenient to shop! A well-thought template comes with a pre-built extension pack that takes shopping experience up a notch. A theme can deliver you extended catalog filtering, sorting and categorization options out of the box. What’s more, such features as 360 degree product presentation, smart product image zoom and lookbook functionality create an unparalleled experience that would be hard to foster without a template.

Conversion boosting


Conversion optimization is a tricky matter that takes a lot of time and effort. With a conversion-optimized template you get half of the job done. CTAs and CTA buttons are smartly placed and shaped within such themes, driving more sales and getting more income for your business.

SEO optimization


If you go without a template, you’ll have to master SEO optimization from ground zero. On the contrary, with a SEO-optimized e-commerce theme, you start out with a sound basis that helps your website thrive on SERPs and get discovered by more online shoppers.

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Shopper-on-the-go friendly


The audience of mobile shoppers grows exponentially. You’ve got to either take care of mobile optimization yourself, or, again, simply go for a modern, mobile-ready theme. Such a template would deliver a lightning-fast, comfortable shopping experience on handheld devices, getting you more loyal shoppers and sales.

These are just the core ways, in which adopting an e-commerce theme boosts sales on your website and saves you tons of effort. However, to tap into the largest sales boost with your theme, you’ve got to make a well-informed template choice. Let us share some tips and best practices of choosing a template with you to ensure that you get the most out of using it for your e-store.

Best Practices for Choosing a Trendy Template


Web design does not stand still. The features that were the greatest novelties a couple of years ago are currently deemed the must-haves that your store just can’t leave without. At the same time, the new advances take your online store and the experience it delivers even further, ensuring that you wade through the competition delivering more than others.

First of all, let’s see the features that have become the must-haves of a modern and successful e-store. These features are as follows:

  • Responsiveness and a well-thought mobile experience.
  • Clean, valid and well-commented template coding that minimizes vulnerabilities and positively affects SEO.
  • High-quality SEO optimization of the template.
  • Multiple currencies; configurable taxing, payment and delivery methods.

On top of these must-haves, there are modern features that can make trendy and flagship templates superior in many ways to other themes. A list of the cutting-edge features that you may want to see in your e-commerce template comes below:

1# AMP-Ready Mobile Pages


AMP-ready mobile pages get your site pages loading in a snap on mobile. They consist of Google-devised lightweight coding that decreases page loading speed to a couple of milliseconds.

EVA: AMP FASHION STORE MAGENTO TEMPLATE

Eva is one of the freshest Magento templates for clothing, accessories and cosmetics stores. It’s pre-packed with a zillion of extensions to align your e-tore with the latest web-design trends and deliver an incredible user experience thanks to latest technological advances. Thanks to AMP, your e-store will perform stellar on mobile. Learn how fast the template performs with the screenshot below:

#2: Wysiwyg Editing Experience


In the past, e-commerce store owners often had to edit code to change the designs of the template pages. To save you from this headache, the latest trendsetting e-commerce themes bring you visual editors that let you simply move page blocks around and resize them up to your liking.

EVEPREST: FLAGSHIP MULTIPURPOSE PRESTASHOP THEME

Want to edit your store pages with no hassle? With this purpose in mind, the flagship Eveprest theme brings you Mega Layout Builder that lets you refurbish your homepage or store pages as simple as ABC.

#3: Multiple Ready-Made Designs


In the past, one template equaled one ready-made design. Recently, this rule has been broken by the companies ready to deliver more for less. Currently, it’s a smart strategy to hunt for a template that brings you a number of homepage skins and different variations for other store pages. Why is it good? You don’t have to spend time rebuilding the theme to get it look the way you want. Instead, you keep calm and choose the variation that matches your vision.

STYLER 2 MULTI-SKIN PRESTASHOP TEMPLATE

Styler 2 roots for freedom of choice with its 6 classy homepage variations that skillfully play with the grid. Moreover, the theme brings you 4 ready-made product pages and 4 stunning listing pages that are all enhanced with unparalleled functionality.

#4: Megamenu Panels


If you run a store, you’re likely to have a lot to include in your top navigation. However, multi-tier navigations often get users lost on their way to the needed category or product. Alternatively, you can use MegaMenu panels that are large enough to fit all the pages and categories that you have in.

Each MagaMenu panel gives you full freedom to add literally any elements that you need there. Add pages, single products, promotional banners and whatever you need to the MegaMenu of your store. With minor tuning required, tons of options to choose from and the ability to showcase categories, subcategories and posts, MegaMenu is a must-have feature that can easily boost your sales and user engagement. An example of a MegaMenu-enhanced template comes below:

MULTIFLY: MULTIPURPOSE SHOPIFY E-STORE DESIGN

#5: Lookbook Functionality


With lookbook functionality you can serve your customers the most appealing ready-made looks with the items you sell marked on them. For example, you can show products on models or furniture in the interior. This is an effective present-day way to ignite customers’ desire to buy that drives even more sales! See how lookbook functionality is implemented in the StoreFlex OpenCart template below:

STOREFLEX – RESPONSIVE MULTIPURPOSE OPENCART TEMPLATE

Details | Demo

So, these are the features to look after when hunting for a present-day sales-boosting e-commerce template. The last thing that we haven’t covered yet is which e-commerce engine is optimal for running a website and has many feature-rich templates crafted for it. Let’s see!

What Types of E-Commerce Platforms Sell the Most?


Above you can see a pie chart that shows the most popular e-commerce platforms in 2018 and their market share. For a number of these platforms you can swiftly find high-quality themes over the web. The most popular e-commerce platforms for which you can find awesome templates are as follows:

  • WooCommerce
  • Magento
  • PrestaShop
  • OpenCart
  • Shopify

The Future of E-Commerce and Final Thoughts


In 2018, the high-quality e-commerce themes deliver your shoppers a stunning shopping experience. They constantly evolve and, in future, they’ll bring you even more. It’s predicted that developers will keep improving mobile shopping experience and the speed of shopping on mobile. Moreover, you’re likely to see a wider embracement of SaaS platforms, as well as the larger embracement of AI (especially, the smart chatbots) and augmented reality. Moreover, you’re likely to see voice search and photo-shopping making strides and becoming and intrinsic part of the future online shopping experience.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this post and now have a better idea what e-commerce template would be ideal for you.

If you have any questions or comments, drop a line in the Comments section below. We’ll be back with you!

Stay tuned!

Paige TyrrellHead of Marketing – Prefixbox

Paige is the Head of Marketing at Prefixbox, a leading eCommerce site search solution. She’s an American who’s been living in Budapest since 2017 and loves giving #alwayslearning sessions to help people optimize their online stores.