Brendan Tully0 Comments
February 27, 2022
Regardless of what kind of site you run, loading speeds are a key factor in how many return visitors you’re likely to see.
If you run a Shopify focused site, then you’re likely going to have a lot of product details and images that are notoriously slow to render and can really affect the performance of your site.
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There are quite a few things that you can do in order to improve these loading speeds, but by far the easiest is to get a theme that can work well in tandem with Shopify and make good use of all of the available features you have at your disposal.
While there are quite a few different elements that can be a hindrance to your loading speeds, there are essentially 2 major contributors to your render times – disc space and unnecessary code.
Sites are composed of many different elements. Most of the time, the bulk of the disc space that a site uses is dedicated to saving and rendering a large amount of text and a large number of images that most product-focused sites contain.
The larger the product image or description, the more disc space will need to be dedicated in order to store and retrieve that data at the request of the site visitors.
You can make a strong argument that this point can also be included in the “disc space” category, however, while the size of the code does influence site speeds, there are also other problems.
Cleaner code has fewer lines, meaning it can download and render faster.
The issue is that certain processes require more complex code, so while a lot of themes have a built-in CSS code specific cleaner or don’t require the use of jQuery, there will be exceptions that will need to be made if you want to use more complex features on your site.
Each contender on our best Shopify themes in 2024 list is different from the others in a number of ways, but most of them have quite a few features in common. Lazy loading and disabling selective apps are two such features.
Lazy loading allows the image to load only after the visitor has scrolled far enough down the page, and disabling background or certain apps can help reduce CPU usage drastically. Both of these features essentially reduce the processing power that most pages require and focus it instead on the more essential site functions.
Both of these features are common enough that most themes have them in one form or another, as well as a few other data-saving focused features that are too varied to name. However, most quality Shopify themes contain at least some minimization and data compression options, on top of the other features they offer.
While speed is key, it isn’t the be-all and end-all of site management.
A good theme should also have at least a few good site creation and customization options that you can use in order to make your homepage look like something you’d be proud to show to your site visitors.
Additionally, you might also want to have a few boosters or maybe even some choice when it comes to your font and headers. The themes we’ve listed below all have a number of useful tools and can be helpful to you in many different ways.
Flex offers an incredibly large array of different customization options. While you do get advanced CSS coding options built into the theme itself, you also have more easy to use drag-and-drop creation options that are super-helpful if you’re less experienced in terms of programming knowledge.
The theme also contains a few of the aforementioned data space-saving tools that really help boost the speed performance of any site that uses Flex.
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Final Verdict:
The most surprising element of this particular theme isn’t the multitude of design tools that you have on display, but rather the ease with which all of them can be used. The simple placement oriented site design style is so intuitive and easy to use that it alone is a big factor as to why Flex appears on our best Shopify themes in 2024 list.
This theme comes from the same developers as the previous one on the list. However, unlike Flex, Turbo is a theme that’s much more focused on speed rather than customization or page creation options.
Turbo is designed to provide visitors with the quickest possible interval between the moment that a request is sent in and the moment when the request is actually fulfilled.
While the processing speeds and loading times that it makes possible are worth noting, the design tools it has leave a lot to be desired. This simply means that you shouldn’t go for this particular theme unless you’re fully committed to improve your page load times.
The optimized code that reduces render times, the few but interesting layouts, and the incredibly low price of the theme itself are all key factors as to why we rank Shoptimizer as one of the best Shopify themes in 2024.
Shoptimizer can be purchased by making a one-time fee of $167 for the Basic plan, $197 for the Pro plan, and $597 for the Ultimate plan. The more expensive plans will naturally have more options, but even the basic package can offer a large number of useful features.
This is another theme that prioritizes performance over appearance. Despite this, Shoptimizer still has quite a bit more diversity in its creation tools than a lot of the other themes on this list that focus solely on loading speed. In essence, this makes it an all-rounder type theme, with a bit more emphasis on site speeds.
Booster is a theme that’s focused on providing you with all of the necessary tools you might need to start selling your products as soon as your site visitors hit your homepage.
The theme contains a number of social proof sales notifications that can really help you spread awareness for your products among a large group of potential customers in a very short amount of time.
The main strength of this theme is the large array of tools that it has at its disposal that are specifically focused on selling products to any and all site visitors. While most of these methods have proven to work very well, you should be careful when choosing which ones or how many to enable at once or otherwise the constant reappearing notifications might actually drive customers away.
Shella is a jack-of-all-trades that can really provide you with just about everything you might need from a Shopify theme. Similar to other all-rounder themes, it doesn’t have any particularly note-worthy features, but the large number of smaller tools that it boasts are more than enough to make a great site with.
Regardless if you’ve already created a site or two, or if it’s your first time and you don’t exactly know what you’re doing, Shella can help you make your site as simple or as complex as you’d like.
Shella is both fast and SEO-friendly, макинг it easier for people to find your site in the Google search results, but much harder to leave because of the responsive display and the intuitive and eye-catching product layouts.
Fastor can be used for a large variety of different sites. It has a large number of different layouts that you can choose from, and while most of them are pretty simplistic, they still manage to catch the eye and give each site its own style and feel.
The theme also has good code compression, significantly reducing the CPU usage and allowing you to host a lot more images and item descriptions on your site.
The theme has a great selection of tools that can really help you get some products off of the shelves, and comes with good site speed and customization options.
Debutify has the rare distinction of having as many good features in the free version as it has in the paid version. It stands to reason that the paid version is going to have a lot more tools, however, the free version still comes with options that can really provide a major boost to the conversions and overall performance of your website.
The prices for the theme start out at $19 a month for the Starter plan, go up to $47 a month for the Hustler plan, and top off at $97 a month for the Master plan. Both the free and the paid versions receive regular updates, conversion-boosting apps, and product research tools.
The theme is average in both site performance and customization options. Luckily, the plethora of useful features it offers when it comes to things like dropshipping optimization and brand stores more than make up for it.
At the end of the day, these all deserve to be considered for the title of the best Shopify themes in 2024, however, since you’re going to need to make a decision, let us give you a final word of advice.
If you’re still unsure about which theme would best suit your site, then one last thing that you can do is check the public updates for every theme we mentioned.
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