Ecommerce fashion retailers are faced with a bewildering choice of Shopify themes, so before you take a leap in the dark, we’d like to look at some of the key features that will help you stand out from the competition. Before we look in detail at some of the best options within the RankHigherTheme collection, here are some essentials for every aspiring ecommerce fashion store.
A great ecommerce site needs four things: trust, visual appeal, responsive design and easy navigation. It has to look impressive and offer watertight security as well, but these four attributes go to the heart of a good user experience.
Trust
Customers need to believe in your professionalism and for this, a well-presented and organised store is vital. Aim for transparency, with clear contact information, technical certifications and a returns policy that is as user-friendly as you can offer. Make it easy for customers to find their way to the products they seek, but also encourage them to look around. This isn’t hard-selling, just a way to help them get the most out of your store and hopefully increase your sales conversions. If you don’t present yourself as a credible merchant, you won’t see them for dust.
Visual Appeal
The way your store looks can make the difference between success and failure. That doesn’t mean you need to go over the top with bells, whistles and other pyrotechnics. Apart from anything else, these can end up distracting customers and even chase them away. Make sure your design is on-trend with current website standards, which means clear menus, easily readable content and visual characteristics which both serve your site’s functionality and make the customer experience enjoyable. Visiting an aesthetically pleasing physical store is one of the pleasures of shopping, and your ecommerce store should replicate this.
Responsive Design
It should be well-known by now that over 50% of all internet shopping is now carried out on mobile devices. It’s important to keep things clear and simple on the desktop version and it’s vital that the mobile version should be designed for the smaller screen, in terms of appearance, searchability, product selection, information and, of course, the checkout experience. Visitors browse differently on phones and tablets, so you need to have a responsive design that strips away anything that interferes with easy interaction. Shopify themes come with mobile responsiveness built-in, together with options for customization. Neglect the expectations of mobile users at your peril.
Easy Navigation
The obvious reason to make your site easily navigable is to help customers find what they need and increase your sales. Menus and buttons should be designed for intuitive use, with product pages, information, shopping carts and checkouts accessible from several places. The easier you make it for customers to travel through your virtual aisles, the more likely they are to stay and spend.
The other big advantage of clear navigation is its effect on the search engine crawlers, which respond very positively to logical site structures. Clearly defined fields for product categories, best sellers, new arrivals, discounted specials, as well as contact and ‘about us’ sections are essential. Your SEO performance will be significantly improved if you observe these principles.
So if you’re looking for the best Shopify themes for fashion in 2023, we have the answer.
RankHigherTheme
All the templates within this collection share core features. Algorithm Aligned Platform technology enables one site to adapt automatically to the search priorities of desktops, tablets and smartphones. Built-in responsive tech ensures optimum performance on any device. Our super-fast loading speeds of half a second make these themes the fastest in the world for use on the Shopify platform.
We offer one core theme with 9 pre-sets for every one of Shopify’s industry classifications which are fully optimized so that all you have to do is load your product information and you’re ready to start selling. We also provide extensive options for customization if there’s a particular look or configuration you prefer.
Our non-conflicting product filters give you 8 main product filter types and an unlimited number of sub-filters. They are accurately canonicalized to prevent root collection page duplication.
All our themes incorporate advanced structured data markup, which means without any programming or apps, your store can communicate with the search engine crawlers to provide the information they need to rank you highly in search engine results pages. Our collection page content is also optimized for SEO, with content sections pull-through as standard.
You can place keyword-rich text in your site’s dynamic banners and overlays which are crawlable, enabling you to pass link equity from one page to another, so that you can designate specific pages to rank higher.
The easily customizable theme settings enable you to stamp your brand identity on your chosen theme, with a generous choice of fonts, typography, colors and widths. You can even add custom CSS code to perfect the look.
Social icons come as standard, making it easy to share your social media activity, including all-important customer feedback and reviews.
With scores of features designed for the very best customer experience, the award-winning RankHigherTheme collection exceeds expectations and guarantees an outstanding commercial performance for your ecommerce fashion store. It’s now time to take a look at four of our templates in detail.
Xclusive
This is a theme constructed to meet the highest standards of luxury fashion retail. It combines a bright, spacious modern look with a bold, clean configuration for photographic imagery. As with all our themes, the demo has been created to demonstrate how easily you can populate it with your product lines. If you wish to customize it, then the potential is huge but if you wish, you can use it to begin trading almost immediately. As your business establishes itself, you can make any adjustments you like but it provides all the pre-set functionality that a fashion startup requires.
The demo presents a full-width menu with well-spaced headings in neat block capitals, with drop-down options. The banner image fills the top of the homepage for a really strong first impression, with the facility to add navigation buttons to selected webpages from within the image. Below this, you’ll see an image grid with photographs presented in decreasing sizes arranged as gateways to the various categories or collections with a final line of images which can be customized to foreground new arrivals, best sellers, special offers or any items you want to draw the visitor’s attention to.
Click on any product image and you’re taken directly to the product page, where a scrolling banner offers the facility for several images which can be enlarged and viewed in sequence. Color swatches display the full extent of the product options and sizing choices are simple to select. There are also links to product description and product review sub-pages as well as your company’s privacy and shipping policies.
To encourage further browsing, you can create a ‘You May Also Like’ selection of images accessed from the same product page, keeping customers interested enough to explore much more of your site. One-click adds an item to your cart where you see a running total and buttons to view the entire cart or go directly to the checkout. Customers can pay through a personal account or as a guest, with minimal information required and easily selectable payment options. It’s a simple, intuitive process which minimizes the likelihood of cart abandonment.
Returning from the product pages to the homepage, you can scroll down further to a section where you can highlight your most important blog posts with clear ‘Read More’ buttons reversed out of black.
There is a generous amount of white space, which makes the homepage very easy on the eye and focuses attention on the contrasting richness of your imagery. Behind all of this, you can position a large static image chosen to exemplify your brand values. The footer clearly sets out contact and information fields as well as an ‘About Us’ page and links back to the top or directly into the collections. The design has been created to make it easy for customers to stay and browse. The whole experience is clear, fast and simple.
Bleek
For retailers of casual fashion, sportswear, trainers and accessories, our Bleek theme provides a perfectly styled look. The default banner image option is a split-screen borderless arrangement for the Men’s and Women’s sections with clear ‘Shop Now’ navigation buttons and a customizable strip to promote special services. You can then foreground new arrivals or specials with images that take customers directly to the product pages and ‘Also’ teasers.
Bleek makes excellent use of white space, without compromising on the boldness that this kind of fashion store needs. Navigation is intuitive and simple all the way to the easy checkout process. Collections, blogs, contact information and policies are accessible from several places and the whole user experience is tightly controlled to keep customers looking and browsing.
Kidology
Childrens’ fashion has come a long way from the days when a few racks of clothing were shunted slightly apologetically to a corner of an adult fashion store. The malls are full of specialist retailers and that’s mirrored in the world of ecommerce. Our Kidology theme is designed to appeal to kids with its large, powerful images but keeps the essential functionalities of all our fashion themes to make it easy for adults to browse and shop with ease. Whether customers are looking with their kids or on their own, Kidology makes for a bright, appealing, easily navigable experience.
All the information and prompts necessary for a fast, convenient shop are here, with girls’ and boys’ collections clearly demarcated from the homepage with navigation buttons incorporated into the header images. As ever, we’ve made it easy for you to foreground your most important blogs and the footer has all the links needed to guide visitors back to the key areas of the site. Product pages are instantly accessible, with all the details needed for informed purchasing and, once again, we’ve made it simple to showcase other items likely to be of relevance.
Alteir
For luxury accessories such as expertly hand-crafted leather goods and other high-value discretionary items, Alteir brings a classic sense of class and refinement within a clean, modern design. The above-the-fold banner image is generously sized so you can make a real statement of intent from the moment the homepage loads. From here, navigation to the collections, bestsellers, new arrivals and special offers is quick and direct. Our demo focuses on leather items but the theme works beautifully for all kinds of upmarket fashion products, such as footwear and jewelry.
The default header menu includes a customizable search function and drop-down options. The product pages are smart and clear, with images well-highlighted with white space and the function buttons clearly delineated in black and white. Customers can choose between adding to the cart or buying now, with no obligation to sign up for an account. The quality of the experience matches that of the products you’re selling.
