When you want to create a Shopify store, you can choose a pre-designed theme or make a new theme from scratch. You can also have your own custom theme created by one of the Shopify Developers Many store owners will select free or paid Shopify themes available in the Shopify marketplace because it is the easier route. When you choose to create a theme from the ground up, you will have complete control over the appearance and functionality of your store, and the Shopify Experts at BlackbeltCommerce can help you.
So, How to make Shopify themes from scratch that match your business goals, creative goals, and need for functionality. This guide will you take through the steps before equipping you with the right knowledge.
Creating Your Brand Image
Nowadays, creating a popular online brand store will be a staggering task. With so much competition in almost all industries, the only thing you can do to stand out from the crowd is to be unique and customize your online store regularly. When you come up with a unique and extraordinary product it is a good way to gain an edge for the time being, but selling products that are already on the market can be a big challenge.
Shopify provides you with all the resources required to sell successfully, you should know how to leverage its features to make a difference. You can either choose the best shopify themes from its marketplace or develop shopify themes yourself. The USP of creating your own theme is that you may have thousands of competitors, but most of them are not paying attention to the importance of custom design. Many business owners don’t even bother to check the templates they are using.
While most of your competition is busy picking up the simplest themes they can come across, it pays to spend some time and effort in building your custom shopify themes. Such a theme will match the key features of your business, including your existing brand image. This will help you in driving more loyal customers to your online store.
What is a Shopify Theme?
A Shopify theme is a template that affects the appearance and functionality of your online store. Different themes have different layouts and styles. It is possible to customize Shopify themes settings from within the admin section. A theme editor is a useful tool for this purpose. You can change a theme or move over to a new theme. This is not going to affect other sections of your account. From the admin area, you can set different theme styles without impact on the rest of the content. The Shopify marketplace is a place for you to find paid or free themes of your choice.
While pre-built themes are more affordable and allow faster creation of your store, they are limited in many ways. There is limited customization and scalability if you are not a tech-savvy user. They are more focused on elegance and less on conversions. There are many more reasons to create a new theme from scratch.
Benefits of Custom Shopify Themes?
Creating shopify themes can do for you what you will have a hard time achieving with pre-designed themes.
1. Design an Online Store for Your Target Audience
Pre-made themes mostly cater to different types of businesses and from different industries. They may not be perfect for your business or your target audience. When you select such a theme, you will be trying to fit your content into sections that you didn’t design in the first place. When building Shopify themes from scratch, you will be able to tell your story in a way that attracts your audiences’ attention and keeps them engaged. It is not just about showcasing your products and then hoping that they will like them.
We have written an article on the best website design — Please check this article here.
2. Optimize Conversions
Another reason for shopify themes development is that it allows you to create a sales funnel that optimizes conversions. Your online store can be designed to lead your visitors from Google and social media pages to your home page, product pages, or to the cart. Some of the unique advantages of creating shopify themes in this area include:
Here is a great article we researched and wrote on how to optimize your site
- Eliminating distractions
- Moving visitors to a sale
- Attracting eyes to the most important features or elements
3. Avoid Non-Professional Elements
If you want your target audiences to see how cool your products and website are, it requires a lot of work to polish up different aspects of a pre-built theme. Once done, you will have to tell your story in a strategic way. If you want to customize Shopify themes from the marketplace, it is going to be a time-consuming and resource-intensive task. Besides, no matter how hard you try, you can never chip away the edges to give it a custom and professional look that matches your business goals and design elements.
You should know that your target audience will always have a quick first impression of your business based on what they see when they visit your online store. If it is unprofessional, not well-designed, and polished, they will leave. The fact is that the consumer is more design-oriented than ever before and they have higher expectations. This applies even to customers who are not internet savvy or design experts.
When you know How to make shopify themes from scratch, you will be avoiding all the elements on your site that could:
- Feel awkward
- Seem half-done
- Put together without any cohesion
4. Create & Add Custom Functionalities
When you create shopify themes, you will be creating a website that works in the ways you need it to. You can develop features your business needs to sell to your target audience. This can include anything, such as:
- Create a seamless product customization process
- Cater to wholesale shoppers
- Tell your story in a more interesting and custom way
- Remove tons of tasks from your internal processes
Personalized products are great ways to increase conversions and attract clients. Here is a terrific example of how we help customize/personalize its products.
Original themes can be the best shopify themes for you, saving you and your visitors lots of time and hassle. There are many more ways in which you can benefit from creating your own themes.
Plan Your Theme
Before you get started with the steps to building shopify themes from scratch, it is important to gain some insights. The first step is to plan your theme. It is important to have the knowhow of both the technical and non-technical aspects.
- Review the various Shopify theme design options
- These design options can help you when you come up with your own ideas
- The new theme must be unique and must be considerably different
- If you don’t develop shopify themes that stand out, there is no point in wasting your time
- Analyze the currently available options and determine what is lacking
- In identifying lacking elements, you can find the needs of the niche market you want to target
You may want to find designs that inspire you. The new themes that you create must be different from them.
Some of the elements that most customers expect nowadays include:
- Brevity in descriptions
- Contrasting colors that don’t tire the eyes
- Properly-organized content
- Easy-to-view price information
- Intuitive control
- Simple navigation
Whether you want to create shopify themes with color swatches for yourself or for a client, it is important to have a clear vision of the final outcome. So make sure to plan the theme.
Shopify Theme Architecture
It is recommended to understand the architecture of a Shopify theme before you start creating one. The different folders that make up a theme are as follows:
Config Folder
This folder contains:
- settings_data.json: This is a registry file that records whatever you do in the Shopify theme editor
- settings_schema.json: It stores global settings for the theme. This includes primary color, font-family, and other settings
Layout Folder
This folder contains:
- password.liquid: This is a template for password-protected store
- theme.liquid: This is where all the templates get rendered. It has a static area including header and footer
- gift.liquid: This is a template that presents a gift card when a shopper makes a purchase
Templates Folder
This folder contains the following files. Each file has a template that renders specific types of pages:
- page.liquid: It will render a Shopify page
- product.liquid: It will render the product page
- customers/account.liquid: It will render the account page
- cart.liquid: It will render the cart page
- customers/order.liquid: It will render a specific order content
- customers/login.liquid: It will render the login page
- customers/register.liquid: It will render the account creation page
- customers/reset_password.liquid: It will render the password-reset page
The Assets folder has JS, CSS, SVG files, and images. The Sections folder has files to create a dynamic section in templates with data from the theme editor. Then there is the Snippets folder with reusable code.
Learn Liquid
Liquid is an open-source template language that is required to create shopify themes. You will also need it if you want to learn How to edit shopify themes. The good thing is that it is easy to learn in a short time. It will help make the process of building shopify themes from scratch much less complicated. Still, you will have to do all the groundwork.
Liquid works as a bridge between the merchant data and user-end browser code. Some of the key features of this language are as follows:
- Ruby-based expressive language
- Powers all shopify themes
- Will access store data and sends it to a relevant directory within the template
- Enables easy and quick access to all the variables
Liquid simplifies the task of shopify themes development for you by taking care of the data aspect. You can just focus on creating a template.
Liquid files are HTML files with .liquid extension. They are embedded with code. The code gets generated with curly braces such as {{}} and {% %} to make it easier to identify. Allows you to manage the output and add logic to the template without any knowledge of back-end code. Permits the use data from your store, including prices and product titles. It also allows page flow management. So, if an item is sold out, you can easily set up messages to be delivered to customers. Since the logic is readable, it is easy for anyone to follow.
Learn Timber
We hihgly recommended that you to learn Timber if you want to create Shopify themes. This is an open-source platform. It makes it even easier to create new themes. It can also put you on the path to become a good web designer. You can also use tools such as pieces of code and templates to simplify the task. You may also use snippets. Adjust them as per your needs. Timber is Shopify’s own open-source theme platform. It can be used by anyone who is getting started with Liquid. It comes with everything you will need to build your theme, including:
- Templates
- Code
- Snippets
These elements can be copied and modified.
When using Timber, there is no need to handle backend integration. It will help save time, as it prevents the need from repeating steps from the start. More time can be spent on elements that draw users and get them to engage with your website.
Steps to Building Shopify Themes from Scratch
So, How to make shopify themes? The main steps involved in the process are as follows. This workflow applies to a single feature branch:
- Log into your account as an Admin
- Duplicate the published theme
- Rename the theme that has been duplicated
- Tap on the option ‘Customize Theme’
- Note down the ID of the theme from the URL (/admin/themes/5423133/settings)
- Edit the file config.yml (the theme_id is edited to point to the branched theme)
- Preview the task (Browse to the theme from within your admin section and tap on Preview)
- Make pull request
- Rebase on master and push to master repo
- Delete the branch
- Delete the branched theme from within the admin section
Theme Review
You may have developed shopify themes 2021 for your own online store or for others. The review process is an important part of the process. It is required even when you will be using the theme for your own website. The process involves checking the theme and ensuring it meets all the Shopify rules and regulations.
If your theme is accepted by Shopify, it means that it is free from any faults. It is recommended to check it for issues during the development phase. The following points are important when you submit your theme for review:
- Mockup Designs for the desktop product page, homepage, and collection
- Descriptions of design options
- Mockup Designs for the mobile homepage and product page
- Links to your online store with portfolio
Once the designs of your shopify themes are approved, you can start developing them to launch them later.
Matching CSS & Template Structures
When it comes to building shopify themes from scratch, it is important to pay close attention to the CSS and template markup. This is important to make your theme efficient. It is recommended to take a modular approach. The CSS structure must match with the template markup structure.
As a general rule, you must refine your theme before using it or adding it to the Shopify marketplace. Keep in mind that this is a highly reliable platform. There is no room for bugs or errors and make sure all the files are named correctly. This will make it easier to make changes if required in the future.
Using a Drag & Drop Builder
You can also create shopify themes from scratch without having to learn Liquid and this will require finding the right drag-and-drop builder. You can design a theme and customize and maintain your online store using such a builder. Such a tool allows you to make pages and shift elements as you build the theme and it will allow you to design each page visually and without coding.
Some of the advantages of using this approach to develop shopify themes are as follows:
- Launch individual landing pages faster than the competition
- Lower your cost of editing
- Launch promotional page fast
- Drag and drop snippets for reusable elements
The tool allows you to customize your theme to any level.
Conclusion
So, if you follow the steps and tips mentioned above, you can develop the best shopify themes for your online stores. This guide is for everyone. You may want to design an online store for yourself and sell your products or services. On the other hand, you may want to create original themes for your clients. Whatever your goals, these tips should help you.
You must also know that when you build anything custom, it will be a big investment. You will have to invest a lot of time and effort in it. Shopify themes development is an interesting process. If you were to search the marketplace for themes matching your unique needs, it can be a tough job. There can be thousands of themes, but finding something that is made for your online store can be a time-consuming task in itself. Even when you find the right one, it will be required to customize shopify themes. It is better to design a theme from the ground up, with features and aesthetics that match your needs and business goals. If you find it hard to go through all the steps given above, it is best to get help from the experts. This can further help save your valuable time and get even better results.
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