At the core of every online store’s branding is theme. Whether you prefer free, premium, or custom Shopify themes, the theme you choose will have a significant impact on how customers view and engage with your store. When it comes to e-commerce, first impressions are important in converting leads into sales.

According to a digital trend study by Adobe, 73% of companies heavily invest in web design capabilities to differentiate their brand and company. However, since most Shopify merchants may not have the budget for a developer, it might seem impossible to create a unique store. Fortunately, the Shopify theme store is jam-packed with highly customizable themes you can use to design a store that stands out.

What is a Shopify Theme?

Shopify themes are a collection of pre-designed website looks and features that allow Shopify merchants to quickly and easily create and customize the look and feel of their online stores. All Shopify themes on the platform’s theme store are tested and vetted to ensure they meet Shopify’s performance standards. You can expect the theme you choose to stay up-to-date with the platform’s ever-growing features and functionalities.

In the theme store, templates are divided into two main groups: free and paid themes. Shopify creates free Shopify themes with excellent features and reliability that rival certain pricey Shopify templates. On the other hand, since paid themes are built by Shopify’s trusted app partners, you can expect a greater degree of customization freedom.

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing a Shopify Theme

When it comes to choosing a theme, layout, and functionality should be at the top of your list. And rightly so, since these two factors form the skeleton of your store’s branding and usability. Still, layout and functionality do not cover everything important about a theme.

Here are five key features you should consider so you can end up with the best converting Shopify themes for your store:

Brand Alignment

The theme you choose should be compatible with your business model, branding, and industry. Often, you’ll find that industries have different best practices when it comes to store design and layout.  For example, Shopify fashion themes may not work well with an online store selling foods and drinks. The former employs large images with sharp, contrasting colors, while the latter uses small images with a blend of bright and vibrant colors.

Fortunately, you can filter Shopify themes by industry. This makes the work much easier, as now you only need to select one that matches your desired color palette and layout.

Design

A theme that is both user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing will go a long way in attracting visitors to your store. To find the right theme with your desired design, you need to check that the page layouts match your ideal store. Additionally, the theme layout should be responsive on both desktop and mobile to ensure you effectively capture both traffic sources.

You will also find that the most popular themes feature a clean, responsive, and intuitive design. These features are becoming increasingly important to modern consumers, who expect nothing less than a smooth online shopping experience. Therefore, the right design will improve store performance and usability.

Performance

A well-designed theme will only take you so far. Your customers may not have enough time to appreciate your captivating store design if pages load slowly. For this reason, you should select from a pool of the fastest Shopify themes. Trusted developers to improve efficiency and provide good themes with fast loading speeds. Additionally, all themes in the Shopify theme store are speed-tested to ensure customers get fast shopping experiences.

Since loading speed also affects SEO and conversion rates, a fast theme allows you to take full advantage of all its features to retain customers.

Features and Functionalities

Different themes offer different features and functionalities that will affect how users engage with your store. The best themes incorporate marketing elements like social media integrations and effective CTAs like urgency alerts for stock or gifts. If your theme doesn’t offer these marketing elements, you can use marketing apps like loyalty and rewards to keep your customers engaged.

Other essential theme features include:

• Sticky add-to-cart
• Cart note
• Collapsible tabs
• Multiple payment gateway integrations
• User-friendly checkout

Customization Options

Ensure you choose a theme that gives you enough customization options to create the desired store. You can leverage Shopify’s theme editor to customize your chosen template by adding, removing, editing, and rearranging content. However, some themes don’t come with built-in customization settings. These themes usually require knowledge in HTML, CSS, or Liquid to customize them by editing the theme code. You can find out how to customize a Shopify template by looking at its documentation in the Support and Documentation section.

Also, remember to consider the theme’s price, future scalability, and reviews and ratings before making your final decision.

Top 10 Free Shopify Themes for 2024

Now that you know what factors to consider when choosing a Shopify theme, let’s look at the 10 best free Shopify themes. We’ve tested and reviewed these themes to ensure they meet the highest standards considering affordability, customization, design, and performance.

1. Studio

With its simple and minimalist yet charming design, Studio theme focuses on both visual appeal and functionality. Studio allows you to display art and craft products on elegant and well-spaced columns to give your shop that clean art gallery vibe.

This theme also comes with tons of image features to ensure your shop is as captivating as possible. You can leverage high-resolution images and image rollover effects without compromising your site’s loading speed too much. When it comes to customization, Studio allows you to control the look and feel of your store by adding and customizing sections and blocks.

Who it’s for

As the name suggests, this theme is best for art shops selling wall art, framed prints, posters, and canvas paintings online.

Features

• Visually tell your brand story with slideshows, image zoom, lookbooks, and image galleries
• Supports long-form text sections
• Improve the shopping experience using a navigation bar, product filters, and featured collections
• Promotional banners and product reviews – use social proof to market your products

Pros

Few other free themes let you incorporate blog post sections into your store. The studio is optimized for longer-form text sections, which, coupled with its visual storytelling elements, make it one of the best Shopify blog templates.

Cons

A couple of bugs in the customization interface make copying sections, creating new pages, and removing some pages a hassle.

2. Craft

This theme has a subtle yet refined design that makes the most of its masonry-style grid layout. This design’s generous spacing and stylish topography make products pop and captivate customers. Showcasing products using this Shopify impact theme gives you tons of image effects to elevate your brand’s visuals.

Craft also comes with a blog section to ensure merchants can tell a comprehensive brand story by incorporating both text and images. Additionally, this theme allows you to effectively showcase exactly what you’re selling by adding product videos and size charts.  

Who it’s for 

Merchants selling handmade items, jewelry, artisan goods, designer cookware, and creative supplies can greatly benefit from Craft.

Features

• Fast checkout with Quick Buy allows customers to buy in one click
• Improved brand storytelling with image galleries, blog sections, and slideshows
• Cross-selling with recommended products, promotion banners, and featured product blocks
• Powerful merchandising features such as shipping, delivery, ingredients, and usage information.
• Flexible design with highly customizable settings that require no coding knowledge 

Pros

Craft’s customization tools work great for creating a clean and elegant online store. Many merchants praise it for its numerous customization features and tools. Additionally, its regular updates keep adding to some of its best website theme ideas.

Cons

The theme’s customization features can glitch on some systems, especially the color scheme. Image sizes may also glitch in the collection blocks.

3. Dawn

If you’re looking for a theme to showcase beautiful products using large images, then Dawn is the theme for you. This template has a clean design that allows your products to take the spotlight using large and sharp imagery. As a result, your customers will get a real sense of how your products look and feel. The large images, crisp lines, and amazing image effects go a long way in helping keep the customers’ focus on your products.

Dawn is one of the best themes for merchants looking to create a Shopify store design that is both minimalist and striking. For example, you’ll notice that the main homepage image has a freeze-scrolling effect to make the design more dynamic. 

Who it’s for 

Dawn is ideal for beauty, fashion, and home décor stores that like using images to infer magnitude and style.

Features

• Collapsible tabs make it easy to organize information on a page
• Hover animation helps create a more engaging and interactive store
• A masonry-style grid creates a chic layout for sections and blocks
• SEO-friendly code to help your store rank higher in search engine results
• Built-in product recommendation feature

Pros

Dawn’s user-friendly interface and its focus on speed make it the fastest Shopify theme in the free theme section. Dawn also supports Shopify online store 2.0

Cons

Its minimalist design may not make it the best fit for large businesses with an extensive product catalog. Also, some coding knowledge is required to perform more advanced customization on the theme.

4. Taste

This theme provides that sweet middle ground between modern elegance and vibrant fun, thus making it a great choice for stores from different industries. Taste can work well with both the apparel and food and drink industries. Therefore, if you want your store to stand out from your competitors, this is the best Shopify template for you.

Taste comes in strong with a spacious yet full design that easily catches the customer’s eye with highly contrasting colors and bold headlines. It is easy to showcase your products with Taste because of its quick setup and user-friendly interface. A few good themes can blend aesthetics with functionality and end up with an intuitive and convenient design.

Who it’s for 

This theme will work great with stores selling contemporary art, food and drinks, accessories, or fashion.

Features

• Editorial feature allows merchants to add blog posts, guides, and reviews to improve engagement rates.
• The use of large, attractive images and the lack of borders on product images improve visual brand storytelling.
• Color and font customization lets you personalize your store for a better connection with your customers
•  Additional marketing and conversion elements like press coverage, product reviews, and FAQ pages
• Cross-selling with promo banners and recommended products to increase sales

Pros

Many merchants praise this theme for its artistic design, responsive interface, and ability to add videos to showcase products.

Cons

Sellers cannot leave delivery instructions. Some customization elements may glitch.

5. Refresh

Refresh Shopify theme brings a fresh design focusing on product details and functionality instead of product images. This isn’t to say that the theme doesn’t feature good images; on the contrary, Refresh provides high-resolution images with amazing effects. The theme emphasizes product details with adaptive section layouts that let you share relevant product information. You can display testimonials, ingredients, special certifications, quality information, and more in a bold and elegant font against the backdrop of chic blocks.

Refresh is one of the best Shopify themes for merchants, with lots of product details. The theme’s assertive headings, minimalistic color palette, and sticky header feature will allow you to make a bold brand statement.

Who it’s for 

This theme works best for stores selling electronics, office equipment, furniture, or cosmetics where clarity is needed to provide the best shopping experience.

Features

Wide variety of dynamic sections and blocks for blog posts, recommended products, and collections.

• Highly customizable with flexible designs enable the creation of a unique store
• Slide-out carts and quick buys make checkout easy and fast, thus reducing the chances of cart abandonment.

Pros

Refresh allows merchants to create an aesthetically pleasing store that’s easy to navigate using dynamic sections.

Cons

The minimalist design of the theme makes it hard to function for complex businesses seeking multi-layered product displays.

6. Origin

The Origin theme is a surprisingly captivating template with a rugged and free-spirit design. This theme is designed to spark curiosity in customers and encourage them to share products with family and friends. After all, it’s hard to resist a store with a whimsy, fun, and quirky design.

Origin allows merchants to realize their best website theme ideas with its advanced customization options. You are free to customize the design, settings, and layouts to create a unique store that encourages customers to explore. Origin is also one of the best free Shopify themes when it comes to functionality. Its checkout features, like slide-out carts, in-store pickups, and cart notes, coupled with its lightning-fast loading speed, ensure your customers have the best shopping experiences.

Who it’s for

This theme is best for online stores selling artisan items, designer products, or novelty gifts. Origin is a great choice for businesses that want to build deeper connections with their customers.

Features

• Leverage blogs and press coverage to create content and engage with your customers.
• Create a sense of urgency with a stock counter.
• Provide a convenient checkout experience with sticky add-to-cart, quick buy, and cart notes

Pros

It provides a unique storytelling approach that even some popular themes can’t replicate.

Cons

Coding knowledge is needed to leverage some advanced customization features.

7. Sense

Sense Shopify theme lets you energize your brand with a graceful and dreamy color palette. This theme’s soft color gradient makes it stand out from other themes, including custom Shopify themes. The gentle and vibrant gradient allows other visual elements like images, blocks, and texts to pop and captivate customers. If you’re looking for a theme that’ll bring out your brand’s visual storytelling style, then Sense is the right theme for you.

Who it’s for

This theme is best for beauty and personal care online stores or shops selling designer clothes and accessories. Sense is the best fit for merchants who want to create a store with a strong brand identity.

Features

• Create well-organized pages and sections with collapsible tabs that enhance shopping experience and visual appeal
• Complement the visual aspect with long-form text on the FAQs page, blogs, reviews, testimonials, and press coverage sections.
• Add videos to further engage with customers
• Cross-sell using featured items, promo banners, and recommended products

Pros

Many merchants praise Sense for its user-friendly interface and ease of setup. It is one of the few free Shopify themes that comes with advanced customization options.

Cons

This theme doesn’t allow slide-out carts.

8. Publisher

A contemporary-styled theme with plenty of space to tell a story. The Publisher is inspired by independent studios that understand how artworks affect buyers. Its subtle gradients, along with contemporary font, work well with album covers to evoke record shop feelings.

This Shopify template also comes with advanced customization options so you can create a unique store that attracts and retains visitors. You can leverage the stock counter to create urgency and demand for limited stock. This feature, coupled with the quick-buy and slide-out cart functionality, will help keep your products moving. Additionally, you can install Trustoo.io to display reviews on product pages and improve conversion rates.

Who it’s for 

Publisher is the best Shopify theme for art and music brands or small publishers.

Features

• Designed to elevate visual appeal with high-resolution images and captivating image effects
• Offers contextual links to products and categories
• Enhanced search and product filtering capabilities
• Product videos and Lookbooks to captivate customers

Pros

The Publisher offers editorial sections where merchants can post more information about their products. The theme comes with a blog and FAQ pages.

Cons

The Publisher’s minimalist design may not be the best fit for larger brands with an extensive catalog.

9. Spotlight

Spotlight is clean, efficient, and designed to cut all the clutter to create a simple yet captivating store for you. This cutting-edge and visually stunning theme lets your customers jump into the shopping experience as soon as they open the store. Spotlight’s simple block layout prioritizes functionality to provide buyers with a streamlined shopping experience.

With this theme, your customers can enjoy a quick and convenient checkout experience thanks to the quick buy and slide-out cart features. Merchants can also use recommended products and stock counters to cross-sell products and improve their product sales.

Who it’s for

Spotlight is one of the best Shopify themes for clothing brands. Stores that sell art galleries and home décor will also find Spotlight quite effective.

Features

• A fully responsive layout that functions well on all devices
• Large spaces encourage the use of high-quality images with cool effects like image zoom and rollover
• Maximize visual appeal with image galleries, lookbooks, slideshows, and size charts

Pros

Spotlight has tons of features that allow the creation of a dynamic and interactive shop. It’s one of the most popular themes for those who need advanced customization features.

Cons

There is a fairly steep learning curve before one can leverage the theme’s advanced customization features.

10. Ride

The ride is a distinct and dynamic theme with a sharp, sports-centric design that pulls no punches in style and functionality. Ride’s adventurous design combines a dark background, bold typography, and intense colors to make your store pop and captivate customers.

This theme’s asymmetrical layouts and unique page templates make it easy to showcase your products. Ride’s unique style, coupled with its fast-loading speed and quick-buy feature, make it the perfect Shopify impact theme for merchants looking to attract and quickly convert leads.

Who it’s for 

The ride is best suited for sports stores selling sporting and fitness equipment.

Features

• Leverage the theme’s advanced customization options and flexible design to create a unique store
• Create powerful visuals with high-resolution images, Lookbooks, slideshows, and product videos
• Sell both online and offline with omnichannel selling and in-store pickups

Pros

Merchants praise Ride for its responsive design and visual brand storytelling capabilities. The ability to add blog posts also boosts SEO and engagement rates.

Cons

Ride’s advanced customization options may glitch on some systems.

Customizing Your Shopify Themes

Now that you know which free themes are the best, the only thing left is to learn how to customize your chosen theme so you can get started with your new online shop.

Here are the skills and knowledge you need to turn free Shopify themes into unique stores.

1. Basic Customization

To start customizing your Shopify theme, you will need to head over to the theme editor to change the theme settings. In the setting sections, you can change the color of the entire theme to match your desired color palette. The best free Shopify themes also let you edit the topography and general layout to create the look and feel you want.

You can continue personalizing your store by editing specific sections like the header, footer, navigation, and pages, among other elements.

2. Advanced Customization

To achieve greater customization freedom when editing a Shopify theme, you may need to use Liquid Markup Language. Liquid is an open-source programming language created by Shopify to allow users to change store elements and output.

Knowledge of this programming language will give you an edge in creating highly personalized store designs. Liquid lets you manipulate almost any element and create custom Shopify themes.

3. Utilizing Apps and Plugins

Shopify’s app store is full of third-party apps and plugins designed to improve store functionality, user experiences, and performance. Find out which feature you need to add to your store, and you’ll find the solution in the app on the store. You can integrate these apps seamlessly into your store without any code knowledge.

Grow Your Shopify Store with Channelwill

Choosing the right Shopify template for your store is essential to success. Hopefully, our free Shopify theme guide has helped you learn how to make the right decision. Browse through the themes on our list and carefully consider the ones that fit your brand identity and needs. Once you have your theme, you can boost its performance and usability by integrating Channelwill apps to create a smart store with well-rounded features and functionalities.

As a Shopify expert, Channelwill gives you all the tools you need to grow your business. From order tracking, marketing, SEO, and loyalty programs to referrals, and customer acquisition to post-purchase services like order tracking, you can achieve the best apps and features to ensure a highly functioning online store.

Find out which Channelwill apps can help you create your ideal Shopify store.