Shopify theme determines the visual appearance of your store

The visual appearance of your online store is determined in Shopify by the so-called themes. Themes are basically an empty build of your store’s layout. That means you have placeholders for text, photos and videos where the exact location is defined, but not what to see. Accordingly, you can design your own store with individual media, but you don’t have to program anything and the best – all themes we will show you are completely free.

Here you can find the Shopify themes for free

You can find the themes in your Shopify store backend. Click on Onlineshop and as the first result this theme will be displayed. Here you have three columns. In the upper one you can see which theme is active, in the second one you can measure the speed, the so-called pagespeed of your site. This is among other things SEO relevant, but we’ll get to that in a moment. For now, we are only interested in column 3, i.e. the theme library, where you can view paid, but also free themes. Since we are interested in the free ones in this video, click on them once and have a choice of 9 different bases.

The focus of the themes may differ from each other

If you click on it you will get more information. I would recommend you to go through each of the 9 themes once and in the end either choose the one that you like the most by gut feeling or simply by the given information fits better to your sales domain. Some themes are more video-based, some are more product-based, some are more panorama-based and some are just very text-heavy.

How to activate the free Shopify theme

In addition, the internal style can be customized, which gives you a relatively large selection. For this episode, we’re going to go with the Narrative theme in warm. After that, it will be added to your theme library, but it is not active yet, so you need to click Publish under Actions. Now this theme is active and the other theme has been moved back to the theme library.

All free Shopify themes are responsive

The duplicate function can become very important for you, because then you always have a copy ready and can go back if you make the wrong decisions. You should keep your hands off code editing if you are not a straight programmer. We customize our theme and already see that there are three different view modes. All free Shopify themes are repsonsive. That means they are optimized for mobile devices. So you can always check how it will look on the desktop or smartphone. In the left column you can see the individual compartments that make up your basic structure. This template is slideshow based, that means the first thing the visitor sees are rotating images.

Image compression for better Shopify SEO

You can display the setting options with one click. Here you can then view the individual images incl. Customize text. You have a selection of images in the free gallery, but you can also upload your own images. It should be said that the image files should be as small as possible, so that the pagespeed is as high as possible. You can check the whole thing e.g. with Google PageSpeed Insights. The images can be compressed with Photoshop or TinyPNG.
In the lower field, the text can be changed and a link can be integrated, which is called when the page visitor clicks on the text. All other 3 slideshow contents can be customized in exactly the same way.

Poor PageSpeed can be penalized by Google

The next compartment also consists of image and text, but this time it is arranged differently. There are no major distinctions in the customization menu, and if there are, they are self-explanatory. In the lower field you will only see that for example. the mobile and desktop views can be edited separately. Third, a video is integrated. To do so, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and enter the link here. This is advantageous from several points of view, since videos can become very large in terms of file size and thus worsen the pagespeed, which in turn is penalized on Google. Otherwise, a thumbnail can be integrated here separately from the video, which is displayed before the visitor clicks on the video.

Customization of your footer

By the way, opacity occurs in almost every compartment and means nothing else than opacity. If you want an element to have less opacity, which is the case, for example, with the could be the case with the hero image, so that you can read the text above it better, then you can regulate them down with it. The remaining sections are structured very similarly, so in the Testemonial slider, for example. Also text can be accommodated, but additionally the time how long this text should be displayed. However, I assume that these things are self-explanatory.

The last thing that stands out is the footer.
This can also be completely customized. So existing payment methods can be visualized with logos, the social medias can be linked and the possibility to sign up for the newsletter or not can be given. The next higher level of settings are the theme settings, which then apply to each compartment section, so to speak. This means that you can integrate your CI colors, which can then be found again in the store. Exactly the same applies to the font. The social media channels can be stored here and are then also displayed in the footer, especially if you have set the check mark there. Otherwise, the checkout area can be customized here and also the favicon, i.e. the small image that is displayed in the tab of your browser, can be changed. When you are done editing, don’t forget to save in the upper right corner.

Integration and optimization of your free Shopify theme by eBakery

Now you know where to get free Shopify themes, how to install and customize them and what to look out for in SEO terms. But of course there are several other factors that are necessary for a good ranking on Google. So if you’re looking for an all-round search engine optimized overhaul of your store and are looking for a professional solution, we as a Shopify agency will be happy to help you. Make an appointment directly with our Shopify experts.