Should You Use A Prebuilt Shopify Theme

I would guess that most Shopify stores are using a prebuilt theme from the Shopify theme store. However, there is an increasing number of larger businesses on Shopify that have developed custom themes or heavily customized a prebuilt theme to the point where it is essentially a custom theme.

Additionally, there are more and more businesses going to Headless storefronts on Shopify including some of our clients. Trellis is focusing heavily on this because we believe this is the future of eCommerce theme development.

So when should you use a prebuilt theme? There is no cut and dry answer and we have done very large projects using a theme so it can be successful for both small and larger projects.

Budget

Chances are it makes sense to use a prebuilt theme because of budget. Even with a high budget, a theme can still provide a lot of value and often save time for larger more complex projects. Most of the time your budget will limit the amount of development you can afford and it makes sense to use a theme to speed up frontend development even if you have a relatively custom design.

What is the threshold? That is tough to answer but from our experience, most projects that were under six figures benefitted from a prebuilt theme especially projects under $50,000. Once you get into the six figures you have more freedom to develop something heavily custom.

Future Plans

A prebuilt theme may come with extra baggage and stop you from executing on future plans more easily. It’s important to think about a theme and how it might help you achieve future plans and improvements. Typically I recommend that any major theme or implementation project lasts you at least 3 years. If you don’t have a plan to achieve that with your current strategy you should rethink how you plan to execute that.

Flexibility

Typically you will have more flexibility with a custom theme in that you can build whatever you want. Prebuilt themes come with baggage. That baggage may require you to rewrite or redo work in the theme which is actually less flexible and more work that starting from scratch or a basic framework. If you want maximum flexibility a custom theme might be a better route.

Content

Theme demos often look amazing. The reality is rarely do companies execute their content in the fashion that will make the theme look as good. It’s important to be sure your content will fit closely to the theme you decide to implement, whether that be a prebuilt theme or custom theme.

Currently, our favorite prebuilt theme to use is Turbo. Comment which theme you like to use!