Grow Your Online Store: Top Tips for a Beautiful Custom Shopify Website

Grow Your Online Store: Top Tips for a Beautiful Custom Shopify Website
Published

24 Jan 2022

Content

Tiffany Palmer

Did you know that Shopify is the third-largest retailer in the United States? There are millions of active websites and hundreds of thousands of shoppers. 

If you have an e-commerce business, you need to take advantage of this exposure.

The best way to stand out from the crowd is by creating your very own custom Shopify website. With the right layout, your shop will be one that customers keep coming back to.

To learn more about how to customize your website on Shopify, keep reading. We have all the tips and tricks that you need to know to get started.

Beginner Shopify Website Design

Your Shopify website starts with a Shopify page template, which is a pre-designed page that will help you create the layout for your store. It’s much easier to start with a template rather than a blank page.

Each Shopify template comes with a pre-formed layout that has elements and formats that you can manipulate. You can change each component as you see fit for your website.

As you’re designing your Shopify website, you need to keep your overall brand in mind. Your entire website should reflect the personality of your brand so that your potential customers can form a relationship as they’re looking around your website.

The template that you choose is the basis for your entire website, so you should take your time to choose the right template.

Why You Should Use Shopify Templates

The primary benefit of using Shopify templates is that they make it easier to create a great website. Without these pre-made websites, you would have to code every single page on the website that you’re creating. 

Even if you do have experience with website coding, it can be time-consuming and difficult to replicate website code from one page to the next. Then, when you’re ready to update or make changes to any pages, you’d have to individually code each webpage.

With a pre-made template, you never have to see or touch any code. There are just a few steps that you have to follow to create the perfect website for your brand.

Establish Your Shopify Theme/Template

If you’re looking to create a great website for your business, using a template is the only way to go. It simplifies the process, making it easier to build your online store.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Anytime you add a new page to your store’s website, Shopify automatically uses your store’s default template to create a cohesive experience for potential customers
  2. You’ll have access to several different kinds of page templates within specific themes so that you have plenty of options to choose from
  3. You can always change your store’s theme in Shopify’s theme store
  4. You can edit and change any page without having to mess with any code

With this in mind, you can choose the right Shopify theme for your business, knowing that you have all of the flexibility that you need to make changes in the future.

Choosing the Right Theme for Your Website

When you create a new website on Shopify, you’ll have the ability to choose from a variety of interesting themes that each have different page templates. As you shuffle through these options, you’ll see content on the page shift and move as elements go around the page to match the template that you’ve chosen.

When you’re looking through these options, you should take note of a few choices that you believe would best fit your store. You should keep functionality and design in mind as you’re making this decision.

Remember, you can change small details about any of the templates and pages that you choose. However, the closer that you stick to the original template, the easier your website building experience will be. 

Create Your Webpages

Within your shop’s website, you need to have several different pages. These will help your customers navigate through company information, product pages, and more. For most websites, there are ten kinds of pages that you should establish:

  1. The homepage, which serves as the base for your entire website
  2. Shop pages that may or may not be split depending on the kind of products you’re selling
  3. Product pages for each item that you’re going to sell
  4. A general blog page that serves as the home base for all of your articles
  5. A page for each blog that you post on your website
  6. An ‘about us‘ page that gives information about your company
  7. A contact page with a variety of communication techniques
  8. A frequently-asked questions page to help customers with potential problems
  9. A page that houses the return policy for your store
  10. A page that houses the privacy policy for your store

As your website grows and evolves, you’ll include much more than ten pages. You’re bound to create hundreds of product pages and blogs throughout your company’s lifetime. Therefore, having a home base page for each of these kinds of pages can be helpful for your customers.

These pages serve as the table of contents for all of your products and all of your blog pages, respectively.

You may add or remove different page types depending on what your customers want. As time goes on, you’ll form your website to fit your shop specifically. In the end, you’ll create a collection of web pages that showcase your hard work and dedication to your store.

Getting More Page Templates on Shopify

Just like there are plenty of themes to choose from, there are also plenty of page templates to choose from. However, if you feel that the options on Shopify aren’t giving you the layouts that you’re looking for, there are a couple of things that you can do:

  1. Create your own pages from scratch
  2. Purchase a theme package, which would include more page templates
  3. Use a page builder application that connects to Shopify

The first option is the most difficult, especially if you’re not familiar with Shopify’s Liquid code. You could spend some time running through code tutorials, but it’s likely that you’re going to run into plenty of errors and problems that will frustrate you as you’re trying to set up your website.

Alternatively, you could pay a third party to create the webpage that you’re looking for, but we highly recommend checking out buyable themes before spending money for a coder. Themes are cheaper and make it easier for you to give your input on your website. 

The last option that we recommend is using a page builder. There are plenty of Shopify page builders to choose from. So, you can choose the one that best suits what you want to do with your website.

Some of these page builders are free, while others have premium components. We recommend doing a little bit of research before sticking to one provider.

Customizing Your Shopify Pages

There are a few ways that you can further customize your Shopify website page-by-page. Each theme has pre-made pages, but you can make minor changes if you’d like to.

Just follow these steps while editing in Shopify:

  1. Navigate to “Online Store” and click on “Themes” in the admin dashboard
  2. Click on “Customize” which should be next to your current theme choice
  3. Select the page template that you want to alter via the dropdown menu

From there, you can make simple changes to the content on the page. 

Again, this method allows you to make simple changes. If you want to alter the layout of the page, you would have to change the code for that page. Alternatively, you could use a Shopify page builder.

Benefitting From Custom Page Templates

You don’t need to pick a different template for every single page on your website. However, you should customer your pages to fit the content of the page.

For example, it wouldn’t look right if your product pages looked the same as your privacy page. Each webpage serves a different purpose. Therefore, they should look somewhat different even if the website has an overall theme.

By differentiating each page, you’ll be able to do more with your templates:

  • You’ll make marketing campaigns more effective
  • You’ll present content in the best light according to the kinds of pages that you’re using
  • You’ll raise your conversion rate
  • You’ll increase the amount of time that customers spend on your website
  • You’ll improve your SEO tactics through page optimization
  • You’ll deliver a better user experience

Your custom pages have a greater impact on your store’s ability to convert visitors into customers. Therefore, it’s important that you take the time to edit your website to match your brand’s identity.

Share Your Brand

We’ve talked a lot about how to customize your website on Shopify, but the best Shopify websites go beyond that. They make sure that their Shopify website design matches the personality that they want to showcase for their brand.

In other words, they build a website that screams everything they want to share about their brand.

By focusing your website on your brand identity, you’re driving more sales. The colours, the fonts, and the language all matter.

If you’re going to share your brand through your Shopify website, you’ve got to take a few factors into consideration. Other than the right theme and the right page layout, you have to think of the colours and the organization.

The Right Colors

You probably spent weeks agonizing over your brand’s colours. Colour psychology is important, and the colours that we select say something about our brand. Even if we don’t realize it, people are making subconscious decisions about our company due to the colours that we’re selecting.

Therefore, you have to know the meaning behind different colours and understand how your brand’s colours affect the overall narrative of your business:

  • Yellow – optimism, youthfulness
  • Red – energetic, urgency
  • Blue – trustworthy, security
  • Orange – vibrant, urgency
  • Pink – feminine, girly
  • Black – powerful, sophisticated
  • Purple – soothing, calming

Your website doesn’t have to match your brand’s colours in every single piece of text. In fact, you should try not to base your entire website around two or three brand colours. Rather, you should make a colour palette that compliments your brand’s existing colours.

With this palette, you can create a website that gives your customers a wholesome experience with all of the right colours.

That being said, you should always go for the brightest colours. Putting too many bright colours can make the entire website clash. There is a sense of urgency in online shopping, but your customers shouldn’t feel like they’re being blinded while they’re looking at your products.

The Right Organization

Your website has to be easy to navigate. Potential customers shouldn’t have to spend more than a couple of minutes looking for the product they want.

They should be able to find what they need and checkout in a matter of minutes.

Here are a few organizational tips to keep in mind as you’re constructing your website:

  • The checking out process should be clear and concise
  • The shopping cart should be in the top right corner
  • Each webpage should be clean and easy to read
  • Your call-to-action buttons should be clear
  • Your loading time should be under three seconds
  • Each product page should include reviews from previous customers

Keep all of these tips and tricks in mind as you’re constructing your custom Shopify website. By putting them into action, you’ll guarantee that your customers will have a better user experience while visiting your website.

Contact the Shopify Experts

Whew! That was a lot of information to cover, but you made it through.

Making your own custom Shopify website isn’t an easy task, but it is important if you’re going to wow potential customers. If you’ve never created a store like this before, it’s going to take you some time to get used to the mechanics and settings.

But, if you don’t have the time for that, you could just contact that Shopify experts.

Our team here at EB Pearls is full of Shopify experts that can help you build the website of your dreams. Go ahead and book your free consultation today. 

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Tiffany

Tiffany comes with a unique creative ability. She is one of the quickest learners of new tools and methodology. She leads the atomic design principles within our UI & UX team that has helped us to deliver high-quality design faster.

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