How To Design a Shopify Website in 6 Steps

Getting your Shopify store up and running is an easy process, whether or not you choose to bring on a professional designer.

Sara Mote and I founded MOTE agency in 2014. We specialize in ecommerce, providing refined design, cutting-edge engineering, and the highest order of service to an ever-changing marketplace. In my career as a web developer I’ve fostered an appetite for innovation and a focus on crafting websites for brands that want to cultivate enduring relationships with their audiences. Here are some insights gleaned from my 26 years of experience.

When designing an ecommerce website, your goal should always be to craft something both beautiful and strategic. Shopify makes it easy to create an ecommerce website that accomplishes both, even if you have no prior coding or design experience.

As a leading ecommerce platform, Shopify allows merchants to build online stores using customizable themes. Each Shopify website also comes equipped with a one-click checkout experience and AI features to help you write product descriptions, answers to FAQ questions, and marketing emails. These tools are simple to use, so you can get started selling from a DIY site now—with the option to eventually bring on a professional designer as you scale your Shopify store.

How to design a Shopify website

1. Create your brand style guide
2. Select your theme
3. Add brand elements
4. Check performance
5. Focus on curation
6. Harmonize across channels

When designing your Shopify site, the most important thing is to establish a solid baseline: a website that focuses on performance and ease of use, while simultaneously establishing your brand so you can stand out in the market from the start.

Here’s the best way to approach designing your Shopify website:

1. Create your brand style guide

Before you dive into building your website, you have some branding decisions to make. If you already have brand guidelines, great. If not, now is the time to finalize your typography, brand colors, and logo.

Typography

Start with a font that’s legible but not generic, like Basic Commercial from the Shopify font library. It’s a free font with a premium feel, used by luxury brands like The Row. Typography can convey a lot of personality very quickly. Your font choice will also affect your website’s grid layout—how it’s visually organized—so it’s wise to begin there and build off of that layout.

Color

Your chosen color palette can influence how consumers feel about your brand, as well as how they comprehend the information on your site. High-contrast color palettes are good choices because they’re the most legible and accessible. For example, you could choose black and white as your brand palette—and even within those basic colors, you can convey mood and branding by selecting specific shades of black and white, such as a charcoal and a warm off-white.

Logo

A logo is a crucial element of building brand recognition and awareness for your business. Spend some time on creating your logo—it should be memorable and convey the essence of your brand. If you’re considering working with a designer, they’ll be able to provide multiple directions for you to choose from, and refine your top logo pick. If a designer isn’t in your current budget, you can use an online logo maker tool to create your first logo.

2. Select your theme

In the Shopify Theme Store, there are many choices, including paid themes that range in price up to $450. But if you’re not sure where to start, try Dawn. Dawn is a free Shopify theme with incredible mobile performance, which is very important for conversion. It’s the perfect baseline for a quality Shopify store.

When comparing themes, consider:

Your budget

If you’re a new business owner with limited capital, you may want to stick with a free theme to see how far it gets you. You can always upgrade to a premium theme after your business has grown. By then you’ll have a much better sense of which features you’d be willing to pay for. If you want more features but don’t have the budget to hire a designer, a premium theme could be a good option.

Product catalog size

Your choice of theme will be determined, in part, by how many products are in your catalog. The majority of free and paid themes support more than 200 products, but there are some quality themes (like Dawn) with a maximum catalog of 199 products, and a small handful of themes featuring up to nine products. You can easily filter themes by catalog size within the Shopify Theme Store.

Website features

If there are specific features your Shopify store needs—like sticky navigation, video, or quick buy—you can use the search bar within the Shopify theme store to identify only themes with that feature.

Mobile experience

If most of your website traffic comes from mobile—for example, customers usually find your products via Instagram or TikTok—you may want to prioritize fast loading over fancy features like video or a mega menu. Your mobile users may not use those features at all, and they are likely to bounce if your site takes too long to load on their phones. This has the added benefit of improving your search engine optimization (SEO). When comparing themes, don’t forget to try the mobile version of the demo theme (ideally by viewing it from your phone).

3. Add brand elements

Once you’ve picked your theme, it’s time to add some branding. Here’s how to add brand elements to your Shopify site:

Add your logo and brand colors

In your Shopify admin, select Settings > General, then select Manage under the Brand assets section. You can then add your logo and brand colors. They will be applied automatically to your Shopify theme and any other channels with the Brand API.

Customize your theme

In the theme editor, you can further customize your Shopify store. Navigate to Online Store > Themes, click on the theme you want to edit, and select Customize. Then click the Theme settings gear icon to customize everything from typography to layout characteristics, like horizontal and vertical spacing.

Create a branded checkout experience

It’s the little details that can speak volumes for a brand. For a fully branded experience, you’ll want to customize your checkout experience, including the thank you and order status pages that show up post-checkout in any Shopify store. These should all align with the look and feel of the rest of your website. You can add your logo and change the colors and fonts in your Shopify admin by navigating to Settings > Checkout > Customize.

Edit your email template

When a customer places an order, you have the opportunity to further build your relationship with them. Instead of sending a generic email, create a branded email template within your Shopify admin by navigating to Settings > Notifications > Customer notifications > Customize email template. Add your logo and brand colors to make the email instantly recognizable. Edit the text, too, to remind the customer of your shared values or to help them get excited about their purchase with some product education. Make sure to infuse the email with your brand voice and personality.

Incorporate photography

A simple, intuitive website doesn’t have to be boring. You can convey a lot of brand personality through lifestyle and product photography. Be consistent with the images on your product pages—for example, by shooting each of your products against the same color background in the same lighting. High-quality product photography will give your customer the confidence to make a purchase, but the colors, textures, and props you select can also go a long way toward creating a mood and establishing your brand.

4. Check performance

You can have the most beautiful site in the world, but that won’t matter to your customers if it doesn’t load properly. That’s why website functionality should always be your top priority when designing a Shopify store and site.

The standard for measuring web performance is core web vitals—Google’s term for the basic functionalities users care most about: loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. If your core web vitals are poor, website visitors are likely to have a frustrating experience on your site—or even leave, increasing your bounce rate. Worse, they may not find your site at all— search engines will actually deprioritize your site in their results if your web vitals aren’t up to standard.

You can check your core web vitals in your Shopify admin by navigating to Sales channels > Online Store > Themes.

One of the advantages of using a minimalist theme like Dawn is that it’s high-performing out of the box. (All Shopify themes have been vetted for speed and reliability.) If you start from a solid baseline of performance, it will be easy to see how changes affect your core web vitals.

Designing a Shopify website is all about balance. For example, video can be a really powerful storytelling medium, but its large file size can decrease loading speed. For jewelry brand Jacquie Aiche, the solution was to show a placeholder image to users with slower internet connections. That way, regardless of load speed, users’ experience won’t be compromised.

Video, large images, and other visual elements aren’t the only things that can affect site speed. Plug-ins—third-party pieces of code that add features to your Shopify site or connect it to other platforms—can also slow down your site. As a web designer, you’ll need to decide which features are worth a dip in performance and what web vitals tradeoffs you’re willing to make in order to improve other site experiences with your brand.

5. Focus on curation

As an online store owner, you have the ability to influence your customers’ decisions through merchandising decisions. Curation is a key component of quality ecommerce merchandising. Behavioral economists call this choice architecture, a term coined by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book Nudge.

Here’s an example of choice architecture: Let’s say you have a New Arrivals product collection. Instead of displaying products in the default order, you manually rearrange them so that products that look good together are next to each other.

This kind of thoughtful curation can have a subtle psychological effect that builds your customer’s trust. They might think, “If this brand cares enough to arrange this New Arrivals page, they might care about my package, too.” Shopify’s drag-and-drop theme editor makes it easy to rearrange products and images for the best customer experience.

Your collection pages aren’t the only place where you can show your skills as a curator. Shopify’s Search & Discovery app allows you to display complementary products on every product page. For example, if you own a fashion store, and someone is looking at the product page for a T-shirt, this is a great opportunity to say: “I think that this T-shirt would look great with these pants and this jacket.” Curating complementary products not only helps establish trust, but it has the added benefit of likely increasing average order value.

6. Harmonize across channels

Your Shopify store probably isn’t the only place where customers can find your ecommerce business. If you use social media or other platforms, it’s important to consider your Shopify store as part of a larger multichannel selling strategy.

For example, say you’re running an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram. Get a picture of that influencer right on your homepage. That way, if your customer lands on your website via Instagram, they’ll experience a sense of continuity. Their expectations will be met, and you’ll immediately start to establish trust.

In the Shopify App Store, you’ll find apps that allow you to connect your Shopify site to other channels, like Instagram and TikTok, so you can manage all of your campaigns from one place—your Shopify admin. Having everything in one place makes it a lot easier to consistently apply any changes to your branding.

When to hire a designer for your Shopify store

As your brand grows, you may find it no longer makes sense to manage your own website.

It may be time to hire a designer for your Shopify store if:

• The time you spend working on your site takes away from crucial Shopify store business activities like designing products, curating collections, or managing staff

• Your Shopify theme no longer meets your needs

• You’re rebranding and want a new website to match

A good designer or developer will stay with you as your brand grows, checking your analytics monthly to recommend any updates or redesigns. They can also add custom features you won’t find with an out-of-the-box template as your website needs become more complex.

How to build Shopify website FAQ

How much does it cost to build a Shopify site?

You can build a Shopify site with a custom domain for as little as $39 a month with the basic Shopify plan, which has everything you need as a solopreneur with an online store. Choosing your plan basically comes down to the size of your team:

• Shopify’s Basic plan comes with one Shopify account user.

• Standard Shopify plans include five additional staff accounts ($105/month).

• Shopify Advanced gets you 15 more staff accounts ($399/month).

• High-volume merchants can upgrade to Shopify Plus, which includes unlimited staff accounts and B2B capabilities ($2,300/month).

Do I need coding experience to make a Shopify website?

No, you do not need coding experience to make a Shopify site and start selling in your own online store. Shopify’s drag-and-drop theme editor makes it easy to customize your ecommerce website—no coding needed.

How do I hire a designer to build a Shopify site?

There are many web designers who specialize in building Shopify sites. You can find them in the Shopify partner directory.