A Definitive Guide to Shopify Local Theme Development

Shopify's eCommerce platform is widely preferred because of the creative and engaging themes it has. While some themes are available by default on the platform, others can also be developed in the local environment. Whatever the idea of the Shopify theme is to improvise the look/feel and ease out the functionalities. 

Shopify Theme- What Is It?

A Shopify theme is a template responsible for the look and feels or design of the online store. It is mainly used to maintain the aesthetics and functionalities of the store in front of the audience. Although all themes and templates of Shopify stores look and work in a different manner, the motive with every theme is to maintain the look and functionality better on the website.

The Shopify theme can be customized from the admin end with the help of the theme editor. In case, the template misses the modification setting, you can include the same with the code change in the local environment. The Shopify local theme development will also influence the other parts of the account. 

When it comes to Shopify theme development or usage, the eCommerce platform has the maximum flexibility to offer. Every admin can switch the theme with some alternative to achieve the desired look and feel. The theme designed at the local end should be compelling and flexible enough to allow everyone to make the relevant changes. 

The locally designed Shopify theme falls under the category of pre-built themes for the Shopify store. In simple words, the work on those theme designs is already done and you won’t need to make everything again from scratch. The admin/developer can install the Shopify customized theme on the store to allow it to look better and run flawlessly. If you are creating a local Shopify theme could be done in days, weeks, or months to make it completely reliable for usage.

One other advantage of local Shopify custom theme development is that they are a low-cost solution to design the eCommerce store. To be precise, there is no need to hire more resources for custom development, as the work on Shopify's local theme development is also being done. However, there might be some tweaks or changes required in the later phase of the theme usage, but that is also easy to achieve since you’ve already worked on the Shopify local theme development. 

The major need for Shopify's local theme development lies in the drawbacks of pre-built themes. You need to work on boosting the scalability power of the theme with limitless customization. While the themes are focused on aesthetics, they should be analyzed from the conversion point of view too. After all, the only goal with the Shopify eCommerce store is to bring sales and conversion opportunities.

How to build a local Shopify theme from scratch? 

Creating a Shopify theme from scratch is not a piece of cake for everyone out there. The person must be well versed with the technical knowledge and extensive Shopify platform experience in order to go ahead with the theme development task. However, such traits are not quite common with the developers and you wouldn't find Shopify experts with ease. Still, if you're focused, to begin with, on the Shopify website theme development, here are some of the key things to follow. 

Planning and Analyzing

Planning is essential for any Shopify or other eCommerce-related development work. You need to be sure about the objective of the work along with the approach to create the perfect Shopify theme for the online store. Simply put, you need to ensure that you possess a variety of technical knowledge before even starting the work. Along with that, you even need to be aware of the non-technical details too. One more thing involved in this step is to analyze the other Shopify-based online store themes or custom templates to get an idea. It is also a quite crucial step before actually stepping ahead for the Shopify theme development. 

There could be plenty of ideas in your mind, to begin with. Take a deep review of the ideas and innovation you can bring to the theme. No one would want to use the same theme on the Shopify store as others. There should be some distinctive factors to outshine in the market. Maintaining a certain level of discrepancy is also significant with Shopify's local theme development process. If you have no thoughts of making your Shopify theme stand out in the market, there won't be any results even after inputting a huge time and effort. 

To start with, calculate the available options and alternatives in the Shopify theme development process. You can determine the missing factor that could meet the requirement of a particular niche. In addition, never be afraid of experimenting and trying out new ways as they are the only means to bring innovation to your newly designed and launched Shopify eCommerce theme. 

Once you are sure about the inspiration source and the process, analyze the demand of the template market as well. Discover what all things website owners and customers look forward to achieving with the Shopify theme developed locally. Make sure you have thoroughly grabbed the user requirements before even starting to work on the Shopify store theme development. The process is going to be time taking and costly, thus it should be carried out with sheer perfection and minimal rework. The custom Shopify theme development should have a definitive concept for the result.  

Learning the Timber framework

Timber is another open-source Shopify eCommerce technology framework to make the process of crafting new themes more convenient. The useful tool can be a handy way to let any beginner design the local Shopify templates. You’re not going to face too much complexity with this framework to bring or implement new changes or features in the theme design. The small pieces of code all have seamless customization and flexibility as well. All you need to do is to get along with the requirement and start working on the same to achieve the desired outcomes. You may even use various sorts of snippets and other components to make the best use of the available options. 

The timber framework can save you from repetitive tasks and let you stick to the basic ones. You can avoid the burden of unnecessary tasks and focus more on design and aesthetics. In addition, there is no need to create everything from scratch too as various elements are reusable. Thus, you are allowed to use the interesting aspects to create the on-screen temptation to focus on the interaction part. 

Consider paying attention to the Theme Kit, a trending cross-platform tool to assist with the Shopify eCommerce theme development. It allows you to use the default features along with additional ones with the configuration file. 

Learning Shopify Asset CDN

With the usage of Shopify Asset CDN, all sorts of assets are driven up to the server like fonts, images, javascript, etc. The entire process of deploying, concentrating, and others will be carried out via the means of Shopify CDN. You can even find ways to reference certain assets to get much-needed assistance. 

So, you should be having all the necessary things to package and deliver assets without any hassle. Although, there might be some problems in the development process while dealing with the minified CSS. On the contrary, Javascript is not uglified/minified in any possible way.

Other tips to design a Shopify local theme website 

While designing the local theme, the Shopify eCommerce platform allows multiple sorts of page creation as per the design. You can be very careful while designing each page and keeping the similarity between all of them. These Shopify website theme pages will collectively contribute to the Shopify store theme development, there shouldn’t be any laxity while setting them up. 

Every Shopify store theme/design differs from the other. However, there are certain standard pages to include in every theme design, irrespective of the fact that their design can still be unique. The better are pages of your Shopify store, the higher will be chances of grabbing the audience's attention. Your focus should be to develop an eye-catching layout/template that fits perfectly with the expectation of seamless navigation. 

- A home page in a theme should be portraying a clear message, easy navigation, and unambiguous CTAs (Call To Action). 

- Landing pages should be well thought out and designed with attractive elements and components. For instance, displaying services, sales meters, a sense of urgency, etc. 

- All the product pages should have an optimized design, user testimonials, easy add-to-cart, and a lot more. 

- Similarly, the collection page should be able to allow the filtering of products based on the brands, interests, domains, etc. It will make the page optimized and boost the usability of the Shopify theme.  

- Consider adding a blog page to let the theme become SEO friendly and boost organic search engine ranking. Coming in more and more searches will increase the dependency and credibility of the theme.

While developing the efficient theme design for the Shopify store, you must be sure to take care of the content part also. Determine the entire range of content that should be rendered for a specific page. All you can do is craft the perfect JSON or Liquid templates matching the requirements. Although, you can craft hundreds of templates to cater to the major set of standard pages. 

The Shopify store homepage is one of the potent things to put in your maximum effort. The users visit the home page to get an idea about the business offering and service details. You need to be more careful about the design, content, value, personality, etc. Not just the design part, the homepage structure should offer seamless navigation as well. 

The pages should be loaded with testimonials, product details, Add To Cart, and other relevant functionalities. The key is to fill the web page with every bit of important and handy approach that can cater to a wide range of targeted audiences. 

A landing page in the Shopify theme allows you to showcase unique items, product launches, more details, etc. These must be designed with an attractive interface with all major functional benefits. You must be looking forward to developing a flexible Shopify theme that could offer dynamic landing page designs.

Every website needs a contact page so that any customer can reach you. The contact page should have reliable information to guide the customers on where to go for quick support. It is a thumb rule to use the contact us form on every page. You may even take the assistance of the chatbot to serve the purpose. 

The blog page might be the last one but necessary addition to the Shopify theme. It can drive immense traffic to the online store with relevant content. Ensure that the blog post in the Shopify theme can be made responsive and easy to navigate. 

Choose SeedCart for local Shopify Theme Development

Are you still not sure if you have the ability to design the Shopify local theme? There is nothing to worry about as Seed Cart brings an extensive pool of Shopify developers and template designers to deal with the same. You can feel free and relaxed while our team will be crafting the perfectly-designed and working template. 

We ensure to use of only reliable, secure, and trending practices while designing the local theme development. Gain maximum customization and flexibility with our state-of-the-art Shopify theme design approach. SeedCart is a leading Shopify development company providing a plethora of services for Shopify as well as other eCommerce platforms. 

Connect with us today to share your custom Shopify theme idea to which we can breathe life with our skills and expertise.