Referral Program Benchmarks: What's A Good Referral Rate?
We've been running referral programs for thousands of ecommerce stores for over half a decade now, making retailers almost $320,000,000 in referral sales.
What are the best Shopify themes available?
We're always hearing from retailers and experts that getting the right theme for your store is one of the most important things you can do. Besides, there are some truly beautiful ecommerce websites out there that leave a great impression.
Good Shopify ecommerce themes can make the difference between having your store be professional or frumpy, stylish or sluggish. It can literally make or break your online store.
In this article, we have listed our favorite Shopify themes.
(NOTE: If you're interested in setting up a referral program for your Shopify store, I'd suggest trying ReferralCandy for free here, or perhaps your new domain needs a bit of optimizing? If so, check out our post on the best tools for new ecommerce stores).
Next, let's dive into some of the most stunning Shopify themes for your ecommerce website. Some of these are free Shopify themes, and some are paid.
Pricing: $380
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars (10+ reviews)
Best for: Fashion and apparel Shopify brands
Taiga is a 2.0 premium Shopify theme for brands that value visual freedom and high performance, available in the official Shopify theme store. Taiga is one of the fast loading Shopify themes.
Taiga is featured by the well-known D2C brand Daniel Wellington and a fast-growing apparel brand Almada Label. Taiga is developed by Woolman, an award-winning Shopify Plus agency.
Additional key features:
Pricing: Free
Rating: 170+ reviews (31% positive)
Best for: Shopify stores looking for a powerful free theme
Dawn is one of the best free Shopify themes, topping the charts in their theme store. Dawn serves as a chic and minimalist design so that products take center stage with large imagery, crisp lines, and simplified fonts that keep buyer attention focused on what matters. The best part is that Shopify constantly rolls out updates, so you never have to worry about compatibility!
Additional key features:
Pricing: $89
Rating: 4.99 out of 5.0 (1,600+ reviews)
Best for: Furniture, pets, electronics, and fashion stores
One of the best-rated Shopify themes out there, Kalles is a Shopify theme that allows brands to build a robust online store that provides a smooth and seamless shopping experience for their consumers.
Kalles is built for a variety of online businesses, with a modern and minimal design and a variety of specific demonstrations. Display products in a stylish manner and make it simple for consumers to explore, choose, and buy.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $170
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (20+ reviews)
Best for: Fashion and apparel brands
Blum is a modern and minimalist Shopify theme designed for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle stores.
It's one of the best Shopify themes for clothing, fashion, and apparel brands looking for an elegant design that showcases products in a professional and appealing way. Additionally, if you're looking for a clean and modern Shopify theme that's easy to customize and has excellent support, Blum may be a great choice for your store.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $99
Rating: 4.99 out of 5.0 stars (800+ reviews)
Best for: Shopify stores selling fashion accessories, pet accessories, and electronic products
Gecko is a Shopify theme that is jam-packed with incredible features, and with endless options and unmatched versatility, easily create a store that suits the needs of your business, is in line with the brand, and exceeds expectations in a matter of clicks.
It's one of the best Shopify themes available on ThemeForest.
Additional key features:
Gecko also supports 3rd-party apps. For example, if you want to further increase your conversions with referral marketing, you can accompany Gecko with ReferralCandy's referral program tools.
Pricing: $79
Rating: 4.89 out of 5.0 stars (480+ reviews)
Best for: Shopify store owners looking for a customizable and fast Shopify theme
WOKIEE Shopify 2.0 Theme is more than just one of the usual Shopify themes. This is a powerful ecommerce solution. Updated for Shopify 2.0 CMS, optimized with good performance.
There are a lot of predefined skins/layouts for your specific requirements - 90+ homepage layouts with predefined structures for your specific needs, six product page variants, seven collection page variants, and more.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $56
Rating: 4.85 out of 5.0 stars (1,700+ reviews)
Best for: Fashion stores
Fastor is one of the best Shopify ecommerce themes out there, providing better website performance and advanced features for store owners. Sections can be added to all pages, not just the homepage, unlocking a range of new opportunities to personalize every aspect of your store.
As a premium Shopify theme, Fastor is priced at a quite low price, making it a cost-effective option.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $59
Rating: 4.96 out of 5.0 stars (240+ reviews)
Best for: Fashion and jewelry stores
Shella is one of the most responsive premium Shopify themes. It supports Shopify's Online Store 2.0 and has over 99 pre-designed pages for ecommerce operators to choose from. Shella theme is built with speed in mind, and you can expect your store to be faster than other Shopify stores on average.
Additional key features:
(RELATED: Need help with marketing your Shopify store? Check out our Shopify marketing guide.)
Pricing: $99
Rating: 4.71 out of 5.0 stars (260+ reviews)
Best for: Shopify stores in any niche looking for fast and responsive design
Porto is a powerful package that has everything you need from a Shopify theme. It has all the required tools and features to create a super fast and responsive website with an amazing UI and UX experience. The Porto Shopify theme boasts over 31+ niche demos & layouts and styles that allow you to create your own modern Shopify store.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $89
Rating: 4.79 out of 5.0 stars (1,100 reviews)
Best for: Multipurpose Shopify theme for stores in all niches
ELLA is an all-in-one Shopify template supporting Online Store 2.0 with multiple layouts and styles that allow you to create different structures and any specific requirements as well as provide you with numerous varying themes for different kinds of business. This theme has over 50+ home page and skin layouts, more than nine stunning shopping pages, product pages, and styles of headers and footers.
According to them, they're the best-selling Shopify theme of all time on ThemeForest. One reason customers appreciate the software so much is the fact that it has so many built-in apps. This means that users don't have to install new 3rd party apps from the Shopify App Store.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $321
Rating: 5+ reviews (86% positive)
Best for: Eco-friendly, beverage, and clothing brands
Paper is an effortlessly beautiful and fully customizable Shopify theme. It's great for helping you show off your products in an easy-to-use and just seriously good-looking design. The theme is built with conversion rate optimization in mind - Paper comes with plenty of promotional sections to get your customers to checkout with ease. It's available in the Shopify theme store.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $89
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (450+ reviews)
Best for: Fashion, clothing, bags, watches, and beachwear stores
Avone is a fully responsive and powerful theme that is compatible with Shopify's Online Store 2.0 update. Avone features over 1000 theme options with over 33+ stunning homepage designs and functionalities, making it the most customizable theme in the market. Avone is a favorite among industry professionals and experienced merchants.
Additional key features:
Pricing: Free Shopify theme
Rating: 20+ reviews (23% positive)
Best for: Shopify stores wanting a free theme with a modern design
When talking about Shopify free themes, you can't ignore Refresh. It's a Shopify theme with a clean and modern design. The segments emphasize product details where brands can share testimonials, ingredients, quality information, special certifications, and more with adaptive section layouts.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $320
Rating: 7 reviews (86% positive)
Best for: Fashion accessory, bag, and jewelry stores
Paper is an effortlessly beautiful and fully customizable Shopify Theme. It's great for helping you show off your products in an easy-to-use and just seriously good-looking design. The theme is built with conversion rate optimization in mind - Paper comes with plenty of promotional sections to get your customers to checkout with ease.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $89
Rating: 4.84 out of 5.0 stars (245+ reviews)
Best for: Gadgets, electronics, and watch stores
Electro is a clean, modern, user-friendly, responsive, and functional Shopify theme with a vertical menu. It's a unique Shopify theme in the sense that it's specifically built for gadgets and electronic stores. When you start using the theme, you will have different gadget and electronic-related home page skins that act as a good starting ground for your own website.
Additional key features:
(RELATED: Get inspired to succeed with your Shopify store by reading these Shopify success stories.)
Pricing: $210
Rating: 280+ reviews (97% positive)
Best for: Home accessory and fashion store owners
Retina features beautiful testimonial sections, featured product callouts, and other features that help build brand trust. The theme also has a user-friendly editing experience and simple layout options, making creating a professional-looking store as simple as possible.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $280
Rating: 339 reviews (93% positive)
Best for:
Icon is a Shopify theme that allows merchants to promote products within products with meta fields to drive upsells, highlight complimenting products, and increase the average order value. It also allows for increased product visibility with built-in Online Store 2.0 filtering with color swatches. Customers can break down large collections into manageable sizes.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $88
Rating: 4.97 out of 5.0 stars (500+ reviews)
Best for: Multiple niches, including clothing, fashion, food, home & garden, and health & beauty brands.
Minimog is created with the most modern and sophisticated design and caters to many popular Shopify niches. It also comes with a Shopify app—FoxKit, which is packed with a bunch of free and integrated ecommerce tools, such as Variant Group Images, Countdown Tools, Lucky Wheel, In-cart Suggestions, Chat Bot, and many more, to help your business boost conversions and maximize profit.
Additional key features:
Like Minimog and other Shopify themes with built-in apps, these themes can still be paired with 3rd party Shopify apps. For example, you can combine referral programs with store discounts by installing referral program software, such as ReferralCandy.
Pricing: $49
Rating: 4.88 out of 5.0 stars (180+ reviews)
Best for: Shopify niche stores
KALA is a multi-purpose theme with a responsive design and UI/UX mobile-friendly. Its UI/UX design on mobile is optimized and perfectly suitable for shopping on smartphones or tablets. This Shopify theme provides 50+ uniquely designed sections and product sections that merchants can easily mix and configure to build their own unique store.
Additional key features:
Pricing: Free
Rating: 9 reviews (22% positive)
Best for: Food, beverage, and any other highly visual brands
Want an eye-catching theme that helps you showcase your brand's personality? Crave is one of the most vibrant free Shopify themes out there, enabling you to showcase your brand colors. It's designed especially for niches like food and beverage, where your visuals play a key role.
Additional key features:
Pricing: Free
Rating: 17 reviews (59% positive)
Best for: Clothing stores looking for minimalist design
Looking for a minimalist and responsive design for a clothing store? Spotlight is one of the best Shopify clothing themes! Spotlight is also one of the best Shopify free themes out there. Shopify mentions that it only takes a few minutes to get Spotlight up and running since the design layout is so minimalistic.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $350
Rating: 65 reviews (100% positive)
Best for: Clothing stores looking for a modern look
Baseline is one of the best Shopify themes for brands that are looking for a modern look. Shopify describes the theme as "digital taste of the arty mid-century." As you can see in the above image, the layouts are heavily text-centric, which helps brands to drive brand storytelling and help customers navigate around the store.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $340
Rating: 400+ reviews (80% positive)
Best for: Marketplaces and general stores with large catalogs
Designed and supported by Pixel Union, Empire is a theme meant for marketplaces. Perfect for large catalogs, this Shopify theme's visually appealing marketplace-inspired design is equipped to optimize large product catalogs for maximum conversions.
According to the theme creator, it's especially a good theme for dropshippers.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $240
Rating: 240+ reviews (96% positive)
Best for: High-volume stores in any niche
Parallax is a Shopify theme that allows your user to check out your store using a parallax scrolling effect. It also provides an easy shopping experience with features like a slideout cart, quick shop, promotional banners, and sticky dropdown navigation so that customers cart out faster.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $360
Rating: 470 reviews (97% positive)
Best for: Outdoor apparel and gear brands
If animation and videos are required to bring out the best in your store's products, then consider Motion. Every part of the store can smoothly animate into view, capturing customers' attention and conveying a premium look and feel.
Motion is one of the best Shopify themes in the outdoor niche because it allows you to showcase visuals in a minimalistic way.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $280
Rating: 215 reviews (95% positive)
Best for: Fashion brands with multiple collections
As its name suggests, Fashionopolism is a sophisticated style for stores with impactful imagery and multiple collections. This Shopify theme is built to scale with its wide selection of different sections, easy checkout process for customers, and quick setup process.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $49
Rating: 4.60 out of 5.0 stars (270+ reviews)
Best for: Furniture, wine, fashion, electronic, and cosmetic stores
Basel is a minimalist AJAX responsive Shopify theme that allows you to use a drag-and-drop page builder to set up your store. It comes with many header variations that can be used on the website. Customization can also be done while using the header layout in addition to the options related to colors and backgrounds.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $250
Rating: 7 reviews (100% positive)
Best for: Pet stores
Minion is the ideal Shopify theme for the pet industry, with flexible features to fit more niches. The theme provides versatile customizability with 24 sections and 3 different menu types to choose from, as well as flexible design settings and customization options to achieve your professional look for your store. There's also a variety of predefined skins and layouts. It minimizes the resources required for building a powerful website.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $89
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (60+ reviews)
Best for: Multipurpose Shopify theme for almost any niche
Optimal is the best multipurpose Shopify theme that you have ever seen, which offers an exciting, stylish design and exclusive features. This theme can be a perfect fit for anyone looking for a clean, user-friendly, high-performance website. Optimal is loaded with all the tools you need: speed, performance, flexible sections, predictive search, SEO, advanced product filters, and much more.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $320
Rating: 11 reviews (91% positive)
Best for: Fashion brands
Tailor is a Shopify theme made for fashion brands with a story to tell. It includes shop the look, image banner, and more dynamic sections. Out of any Shopify theme, it offers customers one of the best browsing experiences, with features like product labels, color swatches on product cards, and quick add-to-cart.
Additional key features:
Pricing: $250
Rating: 81 reviews (94% positive)
Best for: The theme is made for stores raising money or charitable purposes
Editions is a simple, spacious theme with a focus on featured products. Editorial-style sections and templates to showcase your brand messaging in style.
Additional key features:
Pricing: Free
Rating: 15 reviews (60% positive)
Best for: Handmade and other jewelry brands needing to show work visually
Craft might be the best Shopify theme when talking about the free options. At least one of the best free themes! It's specifically designed for brands that need to showcase their products and work in a visually beautiful way.
Additional key features:
Choosing a top-tier Shopify theme is critical to the success of your Shopify store.
Look through these popular themes and carefully consider whether it fits the needs of your brand and products.
Make sure you select the Shopify theme that fits your store like a glove—not one that simply "looks good." You should also consider whether the theme has built-in apps or if you have to install 3rd-party apps from the Shopify App Store.
And remember, an aesthetically pleasing or ergonomic theme isn't the only marketing strategy you can use to increase your domain's conversion rates.
A good marketing strategy is a great place to start or if you wish to hear from the pros, check out our post on the best ecommerce podcasts.
Now that your theme is in place, why not find the best apps and strategies to grow your Shopify Store in our Ultimate Shopify Marketing Resource.
Or start bringing traffic to your store using the strategies in our Step-By-Step Shopify SEO Guide.
Here are more articles we think might be insightful for you:
So you have a WooCommerce store, and you're looking to set up a referral program.
How do you get it done? You'll need to do three things:
In this blog post, we’ll focus on the first two parts and we've broken down the setup process into 4 parts:
There are 2 methods to install the ReferralCandy plugin; you only need to accomplish one of these methods before proceeding to Part#3
4. Once uploaded, the installation will begin automatically, Please proceed to Part#3
4. Don't forget to click Save Changes at the bottom of the page
In this article we've also highlighted the different configuration options available via the plugin: WooCommerce Article
And you're done with the integration!
[Note: ReferralCandy's system will need to detect a purchase at your store before it can confirm that integration is successful.]
The ReferralCandy plugin is available for WooCommerce 2.3.3 or higher. If you use an older version, we recommend one of our manual integration methods.
Congrats!
From here on, there's still more that you'll want to do. Beyond this, you'll want to set the referral conditions, the rewards themselves, the Emails & Pages, and referral widgets on your store itself.
You'll also want to promote your referral program through your various marketing channels so that you get more reach.
Here are some relevant reads to help you along:
May it rain referrals on your store! 🤓
Here at ReferralCandy, we're super excited to introduce something we've been working on: the Ecommerce Agency Confidence Index. Each month, we're gathering information from ecommerce agencies: their results, thoughts, and predictions, and then sharing these insights in an aggregated and anonymous index.
We believe that ecommerce agencies are the unsung heroes in the world of ecommerce. They’re the ones working closely with brands, crafting their online shopping experiences and, in many cases, doing the hard work so brands can focus on improving their products and services. That's why their insights are pure gold. They have courtside seats to the world of ecommerce, and they see everything – the trends, the hits, and the misses.
We also believe that agencies are sometimes forgotten when it comes to analyzing the evolution of the ecommerce industry. We focus on metrics like merchandise volume and customer acquisition costs, but we don't ever gather data about ecommerce agencies' revenue or their customers' price sensitivity to their services.
The main aim here is to get a real-time feel of the mood of ecommerce agencies. It’s about understanding the here and now, the changes in confidence levels. This isn’t just number crunching; it’s about getting a sense of the human element behind the data.
We're setting our sights high with this index. We're not just content with understanding today's trends; we want to get a sneak peek into tomorrow’s. The idea is to track these insights over time and start predicting where ecommerce is headed.
This index gets better with more voices joining in. It’s a community thing – the more agencies chip in, the richer and more insightful this index becomes. It acts as a growing, evolving knowledge base for all of us in the ecommerce sphere.
Some of our agency participants include: SeaMonster Studios, Swanky Agency, Thooja, Audacious Commerce, Ecommerce Today, For My People, RPF Agency, Pluro, Webcetera, SmartBug Media, Gloross, VT Labs, Motif, TatJones, Growth Heist, MageMontreal, GetVisible, StubGroup, Thooja, Gudu, and SEOWorks.
If you're an agency and would like to participate and receive the full report, you can email ReferralCandy's Partnerships Lead Raul Galera at raul [at] referralcandy.com
We've been running referral programs for thousands of ecommerce stores for over half a decade now, making retailers almost $320,000,000 in referral sales.
Our guide helps you choose your referral program incentives (with 20+ real examples!) and explains referral offers vs rewards.
Setting up a referral program should not be hard. Here's how you can do it in six steps and start getting referrals!
What are the best Shopify themes available? Here are 30+ of the most reviewed Shopify themes for 2024 based on our research!
So you have a WooCommerce store, and you're looking to set up a referral program plugin. Well, you're in the right place as we have all the details here for you
Discover the innovative Ecommerce Agency Confidence Index by ReferralCandy, a monthly aggregated and anonymous report providing invaluable insights from ecommerce agencies worldwide. Dive into the latest trends, predictions, and the unique perspectives of ecommerce experts shaping the industry. Join this collaborative effort to understand the real-time sentiment and future directions of ecommerce. Be a part of the evolving ecommerce narrative with ReferralCandy's groundbreaking index.
Discover the top challenges faced by ecommerce founders in 2023 and unlock actionable solutions to propel your online business forward. Learn how to navigate these obstacles and optimize your ecommerce strategies for success.
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Discover 5 powerful ways AI revolutionizes ecommerce customer experience. From personalized recommendations to efficient chatbots, harness the potential of artificial intelligence to boost customer satisfaction and drive sales. Read more to stay ahead in the competitive ecommerce landscape
Learn how to craft compelling referral email campaigns, turning customers into powerful brand advocates with these 5 actionable tips.
Discover the ins and outs of email marketing metrics in this comprehensive guide. Learn about key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates. Unravel the secrets to achieving high ROI with actionable strategies and data-driven insights.
Discover the impact of consumer reviews on Ecommerce success. Learn how reviews build trust, influence purchase decisions, and boost SEO. Explore best practices to acquire valuable customer feedback and optimize your brand's online presence.