Many of the webshops powered by Magento and with a Magento theme have had great success thanks to the amazing features and functionalities this platform offers. After all, an eCommerce website needs to provide its potential customers with nothing less than an exceptional shopping experience.

Just think of a webstore which is slow, lacks search filters, makes it difficult for customers to find specific products and on top of all, its design is not friendly to the eye or functional to users. Even if the products offered are of good quality and the prices are great, a customer may just not go ahead with the purchase because of poor design which equals lack of investment and professionalism on the brand’s part.

If you’re just starting out and about to launch a webshop or if you’re thinking of a new website design, we strongly suggest you consider the following points before making a final choice.

Magento theme layout and template

There are so many beautiful themes out there and once you start browsing through all of them and you think you found the perfect one, the next one may be even better. So how do you know which one to choose?

The first thing you need to think about is what kind of products or services you offer. Depending on the marketplace you’re in, your theme should present the products and services in a functional yet appealing way.

For example, if you sell technology items, you may want to choose a layout which is basic and put all of the focus on single products, also enabling a lot of filters and easy searches. If you’re selling beauty products, you might want to choose a more sophisticated layout which focuses on large images, a lot of sliders, and a very simple, straight-forward search functionality.

Theme customization

Customization is an important option in order to be able to adapt your website as your business grows. Also, customization allows you to introduce new website functionalities as you adapt to new trends and introduce new way of searching or looking at products.

When choosing a theme, check out all the available options that the theme includes. The more options and the more flexibility you will have in adding features to the website.

Website user-friendliness

Now this is very important. Users like websites which are super easy to navigate, everything loads fast, search menus and shopping icons are clearly visible and product categories are organised in hierarchies.

Make sure your customers don’t have to click too much to find important information on the website and also, pay attention to follow some traditional rules of website menu and icon placement; if you place the search bar under the fold just because you don't like the way it looks on top of the page, customers will have a harder time spotting it and this means loosing customers.

Responsiveness

These days so many customers shop using their mobile phones and tablets. In some industries, product searches made through mobile phones are higher than those made using a desktop.

To make sure your website displays properly on mobile phones and tablets you need to choose a theme that is highly responsive and adapts to smaller screens.

Theme speed

Loading time is more important than you think for 2 reasons: firstly, websites that take a lot of time to load are simply not user-friendly, full stop. Secondly, search engines penalize websites which load slowly and you will loose ranks in search engine results if you don't optimize loading time.

Social media

The importance of enabling social media sharing and links to your social media accounts is known to all of you. However, not all themes display social media icons where users will spot it right away.

Also, not all themes enable product image shares on social media. If you sell products and services that pertain to a particularly small niche you may not see the advantages of highlighting social media sharing.

However, for popular products, this is an important option to think about.

Banners and product promotions

Banners and promotional blocks are essential to highlight popular products, products on sale, special services, monthly offers and so on. When choosing a theme you need to pay attention if there are banners and promotional blocks and if these are placed strategically on the website - where the customer will see it!

Finally, a special mention goes to enabling reviews or product rating for your website. This is an option that you may not want to have at the beginning, but in time, encouraging customers and your social media followers to rate your product may be more advantageous than you can imagine.

Reviews and ratings are tools that have proven to make a difference in gaining customers - they will likely buy a product from a website which displays customer reviews rather than from a brand that doesn’t have this feature.

If you have any additional questions regarding Magento themes, shoot us an email and our team of certified developers will answer you ASAP!