The first important choice regarding your store's theme is whether to use a premade theme or to have a theme custom-made for you. In the following table you will find the advantages and disadvantages of both. These are rules of thumb and greatly depend on the suppliers you pick:
|
Premade |
Custom-made | |
|---|---|---|
|
Price |
++ (possibly free) |
- |
|
Technical quality |
+ |
++ |
|
Graphical quality |
- |
++ |
|
Match with your vision |
+/- |
++ |
|
Uniqueness |
-- |
++ |
|
Time before you can go live |
++ |
-- |
As you can see, you can assume it will be cheaper with a premade theme but the quality and uniqueness of the theme will be less. Because you can start selling quicker and the price is lower, a downloadable premade theme can still be a very attractive option to start with. Also remember it's possible to start with a premade theme and to have a custom-made theme built at a later time, when you have the time and money for that. A common way to work is to start with a premade theme and to make minor customizations to it to suit your needs.
The important aspect of everything you buy, is determine who is supplying it to you. This holds true for your downloadable theme as well. If you buy a theme from a well-known theme builder, the risk of a failure is much smaller. Later on in this chapter we have provided a list of several good suppliers of premade Magento themes.
When choosing your downloadable theme, you should at least watch out for the following:
- Does the theme have enough room for your logo?
- Do the colors of the theme match the products you will be selling?
- Is the home page of the theme suitable for your store? Big pictures look nice for instance, but remember that you will have to arrange for your own big pictures then, and that you are spending a lot of important screen real estate that could have also been used to promote several individual products.
- Are the theme's product lists suitable for your products? If you are selling products that need to be experienced visually, for instance – jewelry, bigger images in your product list are very important. When you're selling things such as electronics, however, it is equally important to be able to show some extra product specifications such as hard drive space, and so on. Think of what your products need presentation-wise and look for a theme that matches this.
- Is the product detail page structured well? Information on this page should be presented clearly. Most important is the grouping of information related to a purchase near the Buy button. Make sure that the Buy button is very noticeable, and that pricing information is close to the button. The product page is one of the most important pages of your store together with the shopping cart and checkout process! Unfortunately, many store owners spend more time on their home page than on the product detail page. Remember that a large portion of your visitors will enter your store on a product page and generally many visitors gloss over a home page quickly.
Technical aspects to watch our for are as follows:
- The theme should be compatible with your version of Magento.
- Check if the theme comes with additional Magento extensions. Some themes do not work without custom extensions. These kinds of themes are not preferable.
- Ask how many changes to the standard layout (page structure) of Magento were made. If you want to use some presentational modules such as slideshows, it greatly helps if the theme builder stuck close to the standard layout of Magento. It is also easier to follow tutorials and tricks that can be found online when you have a theme that is close to a default theme.
- Check if the theme uses the standard Magento JavaScript library—Prototype. Some themes come with the JavaScript library jQuery. Those themes cause the loading time of a first visit to increase as the visitor will need to download both Prototype and jQuery when they access your store. On fast connections this effect is not a big problem, but if you have visitors on slow connections this can pose a problem. Another issue with using Prototype and jQuery in the frontend is that bugs may arise because the two libraries can interfere with each other.
Do not base your choice for a premade theme on just some screenshots of the theme. Most stores that sell Magento themes also offer the possibility to view the theme in the live mode, so try before you buy.
By having a Magento theme custom-made for your store, you can get many advantages. The most important one is that you will get much more freedom in arranging the way visitors can find and navigate the information in your store. Often you will only get the necessary insights for this after you have been running your store for a while, and have had interactions with your customers. This again emphasizes that starting out with a premade theme is fine as is switching to a custom-made one later on when you're ready.
Immediately starting with a custom theme offers some other advantages though. Your store will usually look more professional (where your image "fits"). How important that is can only be decided by you. If establishing your brand is very important, a custom theme might be best for you. Starting online stores often overestimate the importance of branding, but if you already have an existing store or brand, this is of course something to give you more weight.
Another less obvious advantage of a custom theme is that you will get a development partner who knows your theme through and through and as such can perform adjustments relatively quickly.