The first important choice regarding your store's theme is whether to use a premade theme or to have a theme custom-made for you. In the following table you will find the advantages and disadvantages of both. These are rules of thumb and greatly depend on the suppliers you pick:
Premade |
Custom-made | |
---|---|---|
Price |
++ (possibly free) |
- |
Technical quality |
+ |
++ |
Graphical quality |
- |
++ |
Match with your vision |
+/- |
++ |
Uniqueness |
-- |
++ |
Time before you can go live |
++ |
-- |
As you can see, you can assume it will be cheaper with a premade theme but the quality and uniqueness of the theme will be less. Because you can start selling quicker and the price is lower, a downloadable premade theme can still be a very attractive option to start with. Also remember it's possible to start with a premade theme and to have a custom-made theme built at a later time, when you have the time and money for that. A common way to work is to start with a premade theme and to make minor customizations to it to suit your needs.
The important aspect of everything you buy, is determine who is supplying it to you. This holds true for your downloadable theme as well. If you buy a theme from a well-known theme builder, the risk of a failure is much smaller. Later on in this chapter we have provided a list of several good suppliers of premade Magento themes.
When choosing your downloadable theme, you should at least watch out for the following:
Technical aspects to watch our for are as follows:
Do not base your choice for a premade theme on just some screenshots of the theme. Most stores that sell Magento themes also offer the possibility to view the theme in the live mode, so try before you buy.
By having a Magento theme custom-made for your store, you can get many advantages. The most important one is that you will get much more freedom in arranging the way visitors can find and navigate the information in your store. Often you will only get the necessary insights for this after you have been running your store for a while, and have had interactions with your customers. This again emphasizes that starting out with a premade theme is fine as is switching to a custom-made one later on when you're ready.
Immediately starting with a custom theme offers some other advantages though. Your store will usually look more professional (where your image "fits"). How important that is can only be decided by you. If establishing your brand is very important, a custom theme might be best for you. Starting online stores often overestimate the importance of branding, but if you already have an existing store or brand, this is of course something to give you more weight.
Another less obvious advantage of a custom theme is that you will get a development partner who knows your theme through and through and as such can perform adjustments relatively quickly.