Adding an online store to your website, or creating one from scratch, is a great way to increase your business revenue and reach new customers. This is especially true if you’re a small business owner looking to expand your customer base without a big budget needed for another physical location.
Incorporating an online store, or in other words, adding eCommerce functionality is an affordable way to spread the word about your business online and reach people beyond your regular business location.
When it comes to building eCommerce websites, a great design, no matter which eCommerce platform you’re using, is a must. A well-designed, responsive, and eye-catching template will put your products in the spotlight and help skyrocket your sales.
Whether you're a business owner looking to create a new online store, or a web professional that is helping your client with their eCommerce setup, working with a top-notch site template gives you a leg up.
Build an Effective eCommerce Store - With a Great Design
When shopping for an eCommerce website template, you should keep an eye out for some important features to make sure you are delivering the best possible experience to your visitors. These features include:
responsive and mobile friendly design
template that allows for featured product images
cart that automatically updates
customizable design options
product variation features
customer support included
You can find all of these features packed into our eCommerce website templates. Here’s a look at some of our best-selling, most popular site templates that are trending in 2016:
In this post, we showcase the best eCommerce website templates. These are all either new themes made in 2016 or have been freshly updated this year.
Best eCommerce Website Templates for 2016
Here are 15 fresh site templates perfectly suited for eCommerce stores. They have the features you need to get your online store (or that of your client's) set up quickly with a great design. So, you can start featuring your products and generating sales online!
1. Porto - Ultimate eCommerce Magento Theme
Porto is a responsive Magento template featuring 18 different homepage layouts including a full-width layout. Your products can be displayed in a variety of grid column sizes; from two to eight and individual category pages can draw your visitors in with a gorgeous slideshow or a parallax background.
Other features include unlimited color options, integration with Google Fonts, unlimited header types, product pages which include product variations, custom design blocks, and over 300 customization options in the admin panel. You can easily import sample data into Porto so you can get your online store up and running as quickly as possible.
2. Journal - Advanced Opencart eCommerce Template
Journal is an OpenCart template with more than 2000 editable options which give you total control over your store. It’s a versatile template that can adapt to both simple and complex shops, depending on your needs.
Journal includes multiple-level menus which let you build complex navigation with unlimited sub-categories, responsive design, full-screen backgrounds which can also be tweaked to include slideshows, the ability to create your own custom product sections as well as using the standard sections such as Featured, Specials, and Bestsellers. This template also includes unlimited color options, the option to modify any of the pre-existing skins and save your own, and much more.
3. Ultimo - Modern Responsive Magento Theme
Ultimo is a premium Magento theme with an advanced admin module that allows you to customize almost every aspect of your store. It’s extremely customizable, easy to use and fully responsive.
It's suitable for every type of store and optimized for SEO. Ultimo features unlimited color schemes, unlimited font options, gorgeous product images and galleries, multi-level menus, customizable grid views for different product categories, cloud zoom on individual product images and much more.
4. Warehouse - Responsive Prestashop 1.6 Theme + Blog
Warehouse is a clean and responsive Prestashop theme which takes advantage of many advanced modules and modifications like rollover images, clean cart, sliders, and more. Warehouse is based on the Bootstrap framework which means your store will look good no matter what device your visitors are using.
Other features include a theme editor which gives you advanced control over the design of your store, the ability to view individual product pages without the need to reload the page, autocomplete search, a blog module, countdown modules, product labels, and more.
5. Ella - Modern eCommerce Shopify Theme
Ella is a beautiful Shopify template featuring large banners which can showcase your most popular products to instantly catch the attention of your visitors.
Ella includes a special category module to display all categories, filterable products, integration with Google Fonts, unlimited color and style options, custom links and icons for social media, the ability to display payment options, product variations, and support for Google Rich Snippets.
On top of this Ella comes with a related products slider as well as a slider for recently viewed products, which are guaranteed to boost your conversion rates.
6. Yourstore - Stylish Shopify Template Design
Yourstore is a responsive, retina-ready Shopify template with 12 different layouts, three product page variants, eight listing page variants, seven different header styles, and six possible footer layouts. This trending template design offers plenty of customization and unique layout combinations so it’s a great choice for those who want their online store to stand out from the competition.
Features include a newsletter pop up form, unlimited color options, Instagram widget, product labels, countdown module, stunning hover effects for product images, product reviews, a wishlist for all customers, custom blog, contact, about, and 404 pages. Yourstore includes support for RTL languages and is SEO optimized.
7. Fastest - Multipurpose eCommerce Theme Design
Fastest is a new Magento site template that’s been created in 2016 to not only to look great but also to load fast. It includes 10 uniquely designed demo websites and multiple layouts for category and product pages.
With Fastest, you can display various promo banners and testimonials to wow potential customers with gorgeous sliders. Other features include unlimited colors and fonts, a portfolio page, social sharing, a responsive design, configurable product grids, vertical mega-menu, a price filter, and more.
8. Fastor - Multipurpose Modern Opencart Theme
Fastor is a modern, powerful OpenCart template with tons of options. Included modules and demo content allow you to create your store in just a few clicks. What sets Fastor apart is the ability to manage multiple stores from one admin panel. Fastor was built on the Bootstrap framework ensuring responsive design across all devices.
Other notable features include advanced settings panel which allows you to change the type of each module for your store, multiple color schemes, unlimited font combinations, 67 pre-made skins, custom hover effects, auto-update price on product pages, cloud zoom on product images, and much more.
9. Market - Premium Responsive Magento Theme
Market is a responsive multipurpose Magento theme which is fully customizable and suitable for any store. The template integrates with various Magento extensions such as SM Camera Slider, Vertical Mega Menu, SM Tab Listing, SM Categories and others.
Market offers eight different homepage layouts, various color and font options, four header styles, stunning slideshows and quick product views, Rich Snippet support, highly customizable static blocks, and a powerful search box which allows your customers to quickly find products by entering directly the product name, description, price, and SKU.
10. Logancee - New Premium OpenCart Template
Logancee is an advanced OpenCart theme with plenty of customization options and is suitable for any type of eCommerce website. It's a beautiful eCommerce site design that features unlimited colors, gradients, Google Font integrations,12 pre-existing demo designs, gorgeous sliders, a newsletter subscription box, megamenus, a header notice, advanced product blocks, and grids. Logancee is also fully SEO optimized and responsive.
11. Everything - Creative Magento Fashion Store
Everything is a truly remarkable bundle of great looking premium themes for Magento that have been freshly updated in 2016. Templates include various styles: creative, unique, flat, material design, clean, elegant, minimal, minimalist, simplicity, generic, common, modern, luxury, outstanding, eye-catching, retro, and vintage which makes them suitable for any niche and any type of eCommerce website.
This bundle includes 11 different custom designs for a variety of niches such as fashion, games, electronics, apps, and others. All templates in this bundle feature responsive design, gorgeous imagery, advanced customization features, product customization options, and more.
12. Intenso - Fresh Magento Webite Template
Intenso is highly customizable, responsive Magento theme based on the Foundation framework. Intenso has powerful, advanced customization options and features which make it stand out from the competition.
Design options include unlimited color and font combinations, ready-to-use icon fonts, and off-canvas menus on mobile which slides in and out on smaller screens. Other features include Google Rich Snippets, full-page zoom, gallery images, and pinch-to-zoom gestures to enlarge images to their full-width.
13. Panda - Modern Prestashop Site Template
Panda is a modern, clean and professional Prestashop template with a responsive design that pays special attention to touch-based devices with optimized sliders and slideshows.
This eCommerce theme is fully customizable and design options include unlimited header and footer layouts, multiple color schemes, stunning parallax sections, font icons, fly-out buttons, and Google Font integrations. On top of that, Panda is fully SEO optimized, and retina-ready.
14. Luxury - New Premium Fashion Magento Theme
Luxury is an elegant yet simple Magento template with blog, portfolio, store locator, and other useful pages. Luxury comes with more than seven pre-defined layouts and integrated front-end builder which allows your to build your own layouts quickly. The template is responsive and optimized for mobile viewing.
Other features include multiple header options, daily deals page, advance reports, promo banners, testimonials, product sliders, and multiple color schemes.
15. Comohos - Premium OpenCart eCommerce Site Template
Comohos is a versatile, multipurpose OpenCart template which can be adapted to fit any niche. Comohos comes with 28 custom designs for various niches and includes FontAwesome icons, unlimited color schemes, advanced admin theme options, various product labels, filterable products, Super Daily Deals Pro extension, attractive sliders, product images, and much more.
9 Quick Tips on Best eCommerce Practices
When building an eCommerce website, it’s important to follow best practices to ensure your online store will be a successful venture. Here are some of the tips to follow to get you started on the right path.
1. Include a FAQ Section
No matter how simple your store is or how clear your copy, there will always be customer questions that arise over and over again. Make sure to take note of these questions and include them on a page or a section in your store, then add it into your main navigation.
2. Add a Live Chat Widget
A Live Chat option can help turn reluctant visitors into guaranteed buyers by helping them make a decision and answer their immediate questions.
3. Clearly Label Your Sale Section
Recent studies have shown that a large portion of online shoppers are looking for a separate section of products on sale. Give yourself a headstart and group all your on-sale products together in one section which is easily to find on your homepage.
4. Include a Search Box
Make it easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for. If you can incorporate autocomplete suggestions in your search bar like in the case of Warehouse, or a give them the ability to search not only by category but by product name, SKU, description, or price like in Market, even better.
5. Use Customer Browsing History for Personalization
Creating a personalized customer experience is extremely important in eCommerce. Metrics such as location, traffic sources, what customers bought, and what pages they viewed can greatly improve your customer service, foster loyalty, and improve sales.
6. Add Big and Beautiful Images
Images are a big part of eCommerce. Make sure your template has the ability to show big product images, display product galleries, and consider giving them the option to zoom in or view your product in a 360-degree view like in the Ultimo, Intenso, or Fastor eCommerce site templates.
7. Insert Clear and Compelling Call to Actions
Your product images are just one part of a bigger puzzle. Great calls to action are the other part. Make sure each product is accompanied by a call-to-action that clearly states what the user should do next.
8. Incorporate Customer Reviews
It’s basic human nature to see what others are saying about a product before we make a purchasing decision. If you have customer reviews, don’t be afraid to show them. However, they don’t have to be displayed front and center. You can safely place them lower on your product pages to leave enough space for a product description and your call to action.
9. Have a Clear Shipping and Return Policy
Your customers like to know all the details before making the final decision about purchasing, this includes your shipping and return policy. Don’t leave them in the dark. Have a section on your website that clearly outlines your shipping and return policies as well as your contact and customer support information. Give them confidence to purchase from you.
Are You Ready to Launch an eCommerce Site?
Running an eCommerce site is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of things that can go wrong if you’re not careful. However, with well-chosen eCommerce theme from one of our best-selling eCommerce templates and the above tips in hand, your online store is sure to start out on the right foot.