Menu Close

How To Design Shopify Themes – Plobal Apps

design shopify theme

A number of Shopify merchants flock to the Shopify App Store every month to find the perfect theme for their online store. Since most of these themes are created by Shopify partners, it’s a great way for freelance developers and designers to earn residual income by designing and selling a theme on the App Store.

Here are some tips to design shopify themes :

  • Getting familiar with Liquid – 

    Shopify has its own open source template language called Liquid. Hence, it’s extremely important for web developers to get familiar with it in order to design a completely new theme or build on an existing one for a customer.
    Liquid is a highly readable Ruby-based language that powers all Shopify themes. As a template language, it acts as an intermediary between the content in a Shopify store and the HTML rendered in a user’s browser. More technically, Liquid uses placeholder constructs to access a given store’s data (say product title or price) and output that relevant data directly into a template.

    Shopify has a number of resources to help familiarize developers with it. Here are some of them :

    A. Shopify’s Liquid Reference Documentation
    B. The Liquid Cheat Sheet
    C. Getting Started with Liquid
    D. Shopify Theme Template Documentation
    E. Shopify Design Tutorials
    F. 11 Easy to Learn Tips for Liquid

  • Use Timber Theme framework

    Shopify has its own open source theme framework called Timber. Timber acts as a bare-bones theme template that designers or developers of any level can use as a starting point when learning Liquid. It comes ready to roll with everything you’d need to build your first theme, including a wide range of templates, snippets, and code that you can copy and modify in your own projects.

    You can learn more about it here :

    A. Shopify Theme Gem
    B. Desktop Theme Editor
    C. Theme Kit
    D. Twigs for Timber

  • Get familiar with the theme review process :

    Very few themes submitted to Shopify get published on the App Store. Hence, we’d recommend getting familiar with guidelines and review process for the Shopify App Store.

    When you submit your theme for review, ensure the following is included :

    A. Mockup designs for the desktop layout of your theme’s homepage, collection, and product pages (3 total).
    B. Mockup designs for the mobile layout of your theme’s homepage and product pages (2 total).
    C. A rationale for your design choices.
    D. A link to your portfolio website.

    Check out the below for some tips and tricks too :

    A. The Liquid File Checklist
    B. The Content Checklist
    C. Internationalizing Your Theme
    D. How to Get Published in the Shopify Theme Store

  • Make your design creative :

    One of the biggest requirements to be accepted into the Theme Store is ensuring that your design offers something new that existing themes do not. Try filling a need that isn’t being met for niche industry merchants, specific product types, inventory sizes etc. Make sure that your theme looks, feels, and functions differently than existing themes.
  •  
     

    Smiley face