228 | Shopify Themes: Off-The-Shelf vs Custom Built | with Shawn Khemsurov

Shawn Khemsurov  

For most people starting out or looking for a new theme, start with one from the theme store and build from there.

Chase Clymer  

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. 

And today I'm bringing to the show my business partner, Shawn Khemsurov.

How are you doing, Shawn?

Shawn Khemsurov  

I'm good. It is me. 

Chase Clymer  

Alrighty, so this is gonna be a really fun one.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Long time no speak. (laughs)

Chase Clymer  

You were on episode 100. And we might be getting close to 200 now.

Shawn Khemsurov  

I think I talked to you about every day. So yeah. 

Chase Clymer  

I mean I talk to you every day, but the audience hasn't heard from you.

Shawn Khemsurov  

That's true. You can follow me on Twitter...

Chase Clymer  

Yeah. 

Shawn Khemsurov  

...and hear more. 

Chase Clymer  

We are going to chat today about something that I think a lot of listeners are going to be curious about. And we're going to try to do a couple of these educational episodes littered into the rest of the year. 

So the topic of today is going to be Shopify Themes and the pros and cons of doing something more off-the-shelf, or templated, or a premium theme. 

There's a bunch of different terminologies for something that's custom. 

So I guess, Shawn, first and foremost, can you just explain to me as if I don't know anything --your favorite way to explain stuff to me-- what is the difference between  a premium theme or a custom theme, I guess? 

Shawn Khemsurov  

Actually I don't think they're called "premium themes" anymore, by the way, which is pretty cool. I think it's just "themes" that [are] in the Shopify theme store now. So I think that they used to be called that. 

But basically, the theme from the Shopify Theme Store is pretty self explanatory. You buy it, you install it in your store, and you design within the customizer if you want to, and it's fairly straightforward. 

And then that's your website, basically. The front end of your website. And it's how you design your store. 

Versus a custom website, which would start from scratch, potentially and not follow like a template or anything. It would be more freestyle but you need... 

You typically need a designer and a developer to get that done versus just buying one off-the-shelf that has a lot of cool features built in. 

So yeah, there's two roads you can go down or you can also customize a pre-built theme. So [that's] the gist of it. 

Don't want to get too crazy.

Chase Clymer  

Yeah. Alright. So what would be the advantage of using an off-the-shelf templated theme from the theme store?

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah. It's definitely speed to market. So if you're looking to get something stood up pretty fast, that's the way to go. You're looking at a lot less time. 

The themes that are in the Shopify Theme Store have countless hours built into them by developers and designers. They're vetted by Shopify and approved. And they just are jam packed with things that can make your store better. 

And it's just a really easy way to get on Shopify, test your idea, and see if there's a product-market fit without spending a ton of money and getting into super complex things like custom development. 

And so yeah. It's like just a fantastic way to get things rolling really efficiently, prove your sales, and prove the product. 

And then you can look at other things like custom themes or custom development for specific features. In all of the themes in the Themes store now, I believe, are Shopify 2.0 ready with Sections Everywhere. They integrate the app seamlessly. And so... 

Whereas before, sometimes you'd install an app, it wouldn't work. You'd have to put custom code in and things like that. 

A lot of it now is like toggling a button just because these themes are so well built now, well thought out, and like I said, they're vetted by Shopify. They have strict requirements. 

A lot of time and effort has gone into developing these apps. Sorry. These themes. 

And it just makes things so much easier for the merchant to get going and get a beautiful theme to market.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. So you mentioned the Shopify Theme Store two or three times already. But what if I buy something not there? Is that a good idea?

Shawn Khemsurov  

Sure. Sure, you can. I think there's some options out there. There's like ThemeForest, and things like that.

I would not recommend going that route just because I think it's best to stick within the realm of Shopify. 

And you want to use themes that follow the latest and greatest best practices from Shopify and have the seal of approval. They're going to work longer and they're going to have less issues moving forward. 

You just can't trust some of those themes out there in different marketplaces. I think there's probably some exceptions. There might be some really great theme developers within the Shopify ecosystem that just have extra stuff built in or didn't fit the requirements, but it's... 

I'm not going to discount that they... 

They still can be great themes and maybe they wanted to sell it for more than the limit on Shopify or something like that. There's a lot of different scenarios there. So I'm not going to write off all of them. 

But I would say, for most people starting out or most people looking for a new theme, start with one from the Theme Store and build from there. 

Chase Clymer  

Yeah, I can actually, within... I think it was yesterday, I spoke with a merchant and they used a theme from one of the other marketplaces. Not the Shopify marketplace. And they are having a lot of problems with it.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah. Not surprised. (laughs)

Chase Clymer  

(laughs) Alright, so you mentioned a lot of stuff about speed to market. It's a great tool for smaller merchants. Let's talk about a merchant that's got things off the ground and they have a business. They have consistent sales. This isn't... 

This is well beyond a side hustle. This is a real business. Is there like a line in the sand you draw where it makes more sense for a premium theme under a certain yearly revenue or [are] there any considerations there?

Shawn Khemsurov  

I don't think revenue-wise would be like a good judge. I think it's more of just like, "What do you need?" 

If you need some sort of custom UX and custom design that would better present your product, outside of the Sections that a theme from the Theme Store has, and you feel like that's important enough to go custom, by all means. That makes sense.

If you're adding some custom features that [are] not from an app or something like that and you got to really get in there and do some surgery, custom might be the answer. 

Also, if you're a really established brand and it's  important to you to look different from the competition or look different than another person that bought the same theme, that is actually a consideration. It's important to some brands to stand out. 

And yeah, that would be another reason just to go with something more customized. You can still achieve that by starting with a theme from the Theme Store. And it's like, actually not a bad idea. 

Because you're getting the backbone and the speed and performance and Sections Everywhere, and all the stuff that's built into that to make your life easy and your team like making changes to the theme. 

But then you can then go in and chop it up how you want and make it look different from the competition. So we've done that a little bit at the agency here. 

And you could go to the site and you wouldn't really know what theme it is off the rip because it's been so heavily customized. But it's important to have all that stuff built in so we can hand that off to the client and then they can go in and make changes on their own. 

You don't want to give them something that's super, super custom and has no flexibility on the back end to like jump in and make changes because then it's just like, increasing their expense and reliance on the developer, and reliance on you and us. 

And it's like, that's not what we're here for. We want to make things easier.

Chase Clymer  

Yeah. So something I wanted to highlight there that Shawn just said is when you go super custom, there's obviously some pros to doing that, which we will get into in a second. 

But one of the biggest drawbacks is it doesn't come with the flexibility that honestly most merchants these days, just assume...

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah.

Chase Clymer  

...is gonna be there.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Definitely, if you've used one of these themes before, you know what's there within Shopify, and what the capabilities are. 

And then if you get something different, it might not sit well with you.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. So let's talk about more, what would be a reason to go custom beyond design?

Shawn Khemsurov  

I think some of the... We talked about the functionality as well and touched on it. But if you're really going in and doing some heavy, heavy customization, that's... 

[That] might make more sense to start from scratch. 

I think performance is obviously a big one. I think everybody wants the fastest theme possible. And sometimes that's not that... [It's] not as easily achievable with a theme from Theme Store. 

There's quite a few things built-in to those themes to meet the requirements of Shopify. And so counterintuitively, it might slow it down a little bit. 

But I've seen most of the themes from the store, out of the box, as long as you're not adding a ton of apps, I think they stand up. 

And still the benefits outweigh the speed you get with a custom theme. So I think it's like... At the end of the day, I would still say "You're gonna have a fast site, the Shopify checkout is still the same, and it's spectacular at conversion." And so yeah. 

But some people, they just want a really, really stripped down version of the theme with nothing extra. 

But the problem is once you start adding things like third party apps, everything slows down.

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Chase Clymer  

We ran through this a little bit quickly so I want to just quickly hit on some of the key components here. And then if there's anything I forget, obviously Shawn, please bring it up.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah. I had some extra stuff but go ahead.

Chase Clymer  

Yeah, so the advantages of an off-the-shelf theme is you're gonna have a faster launch. It's pre designed and pre developed so you skip that part of the process completely. 

But some of the limitations there are you're stuck to that design, and the functionality is how they come. They might be a little bit slower. But that is honestly maybe not even  a real consideration, because it's not a huge thing. 

And potentially, you may end up looking like someone else. But honestly, we've done touches on these projects and they all look different.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah, your branding is what's going to set you apart. If you're just downloading the theme, and like using the same imagery or something like that, and just like not touching it at all, not getting in the customizer, and changing colors and fonts, you might end up looking like someone else. 

But I would say 99.9% of customers would never know. So it's still a really efficient way. And obviously, like we didn't talk that much about price, but... 

Chase Clymer  

I saved the best for last.

Shawn Khemsurov  

[It's] way cheaper too. Yeah, it's way cheaper to jump on and get one of these awesome themes. 

And potentially depending on how savvy you are, you can set it up yourself. It's made for that and that's fine. It's not putting us out of work or business if you design it and put things together yourself. 

But a lot of the time, people will come to us, I'd say after the fact that they have maybe installed one of these themes and got stuck with just like they want to do something cool design-wise or feature-wise. 

And they'll say, "Hey guys, I got this theme going..." 

Oh, my cats here. So this is Giorgio making a special appearance, of course. But yeah, so people will come to us afterwards saying like, "Hey guys, we got started. But I'm a little stuck. I'm not a developer. I don't know exactly what I'm doing or..." 

And they'll come to us and ask for some help just to get them across the finish line or add a really cool feature that they had in mind. 

So yeah, there's different ways to do it. But I think like, if you were just starting out and you have a cool product, and you download one of these themes, and you can put things together, you could be live in a day and selling. 

So that's the beauty of Shopify, I would say. It's the speed to market and usability of it all, let's say. It's just very friendly to the merchant.

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. It sounds like a love letter to off-the-shelf themes at this point.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah, I mean, I'm not. We've done it both ways, obviously. So I've seen the advantages. I think I've said this in our newsletter and written about it a little bit. 

And things have just changed so much, I would say, even in the past year or so, with Shopify. 

And even just 2.0, Sections Everywhere we wouldn't be having this conversation a year or two ago. It would just be like, "If you want something really, really good, fast, you would go custom." 

But now, I don't know. I'm not gonna sit here and lie to people and say, "Go custom." because it's going to cost more money and we benefit from that. It's like, we want something that's really easy [and] that makes sense for the specific business. 

So for someone just starting out, these themes are great. I know a lot of the developers --which we'll get into in a second-- they've put a lot of time and energy into making these themes. And they're really cool. The designs are good off-the-shelf and they're super flexible. 

That also wasn't the case, I would say, a year or two ago. Some of these themes were super limited with what you could actually do and control. Anything from fonts or colors or changing a headline here or moving a section around it just wasn't like that. And so the barrier there was just... 

It was a lot different. Custom seemed like the only option, I would say, at that point. Now it's like 50 - 50. 

So if it makes sense to do custom, we'll tell you that. If it makes sense to do off-the-shelf themes, then we'll tell you that as well.

Chase Clymer  

I already have another idea. We'll have a conversation soon about headless versus not. And that's a whole other rabbit hole. 

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah.

Chase Clymer  

But I do want to give some... Shine some light on the advantages of a custom theme. It can be extremely catered specifically to the needs of your brand, functionality-wise or design-wise. 

It's as custom as it wants to be. It's a custom website. You can get it unique with the design the features, and you potentially could go headless, a lot of custom sites are headless, as well. 

And you can use the best of the best API's. Do whatever you want. With that, it is a longer and costlier design and development process. 

The QA is seemingly never ending and you're signing up for ongoing maintenance forever. So it's the pros and cons of a custom website. 

I know that we want to talk about our favorite themes, but I think we need to speak to budget. 

And I thought about this before the podcast. We could use the restaurant menu thing of the dollar signs. How many dollar signs or how expensive it would be? 

So out of $$$$$, custom is going to end up being $$$ to $$$$$. They are not cheap to go custom in any regard. 

And on the flip side, using an off-the-shelf solution, we're probably looking at $ sign maybe $$. 

And then we alluded to this earlier, but the hybrid approach, which I want you to speak more to, would be in the middle there, between like $$ and $$$$. 

It's how much work do you want to put into this thing to customize it?

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah, I love that approach. I just think it's like the best of both worlds, where you have the foundation, and you got the customizer, and everything's in there. But you're also getting like... Putting…

 "Let me get a little bit more time into design."

Having a designer lay stuff out in Figma create something really unique and then having a developer go in and make those changes and just build off the codebase. 

Because let's say you just use some random theme, that's put together with toothpicks. I'm not saying you're gonna do that. 

But down the line, if you have another developer working on it, it's not going to be as familiar and it's not going to be as recognizable. It's not going to be as trusted as something you'd get in Theme Store. 

You're starting from like a really good place and then building upon that in making it work for what you're trying to do. 

So I really love that approach. And it's definitely going to work for a large percentage of businesses out there in Ecommerce, in my opinion.

Chase Clymer  

I cannot stress enough how much more stuff you get starting from a premium theme. 

And by stuff, I mean Sections and features and functionalities versus going fully custom because all of those additional considerations aren't included in the scope. 

No agency is just going to include all that stuff when they're starting from scratch. And for most merchants, you need that extra flexibility built into the theme. 

And then when you're doing this hybrid approach where you're customizing on top of a pre-vetted design direction and development, you're just gonna get a lot more stuff.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah. There's also animations and stuff like that have come a long way within the themes. I'm not a huge fan of crazy animations that slow things down. But it does put a level up. It's like there's a bit of polish on the car. But yeah, it's just like... 

There's so much cool stuff out there and you can build upon that and make a really good site. And I'd say like, unless you're enterprise, Shopify Plus, high up, crazy revenue, I would shy away from custom. 

And, of course, it's not always like that. But you might have some requirements that lead you towards that direction. I would say the majority of stores that stay off-the-shelf and off-the-shelf/hybrid like doing some extra building on top of the theme, it's the way to go.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. Now, I know you've got a handful of favorites, or some pre-vetted development design solutions. You want to give some shout outs?

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah. A couple of Switch Themes. They're a really cool company. It's William from Switch Themes. [He] became friends [with us] this year. But they do a really good job. 

I'd say their stuff is more design-focused. And so I think that they have the coolest looking themes out there. And so obviously if you follow us or have been paying attention, we use the Baseline theme for our store. 

We used to have a custom website and off of Shopify and stuff. And we just thought it'd be much easier to go to Shopify, eat our own dog food, and use a theme, and then just get some more familiarity with it, and see what we can do with a theme ourselves. 

And so we built electriceye.io, which is our website, on Baseline. And also [we] didn't really do much customization to it at all. So I just wanted to see...

Chase Clymer  

I don't think we've done any customization. 

Shawn Khemsurov  

No, no, no, no. Maybe just a couple of things. So that's like an example of what you can get without any development at all, really.

And so we were able to convey, I think, what we needed to with the theme, and that just alludes back to like, "These themes are so flexible. You can do what you need to do in there without a developer." And so that's a great one. 

He's also got some or they have some other great themes. Shapes, I think from Switch, is extremely cool. It does some things with Sections that are really creative that I don't actually... I didn't actually ever think of or think could be done. 

But it looks a lot more like a custom design just the way you can use shapes to create borders and stuff. 

And it's like, I think a lot of people, a lot of theme developers before that were thinking more in terms of just these blocks with these sections, whether it be on the homepage or the product page and just "Here's a block. Then there's a block." with not a lot of transition and not a lot of thought. So Shapes I think is really cool. 

Also, outside of Switch, for maybe, I would say, bigger catalogs or maybe more functionality versus design, I would say, Maestro or Maestru, however you actually want to pronounce it. I don't know. 

We'll find out maybe one day. 

[Maestrooo] has some really cool themes. I think they have Focal, which is a favorite of ours. And also Impact which I'm looking forward to trying. It's a really slick looking theme. 

Looks like it has a ton of functionality and flexibility. So we're gonna get into that and probably use that soon. And also Impulse I think is... 

Chase Clymer  

Archetype.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Archetype. Archetype is cool too. They have like a lot of people from Shopify and that's how they got started. And so Impulse is a trusty standby. 

It's another one that's very flexible and you can get up and going really easily. And so I'd say those are my favorites right now. 

And then I've seen some other cool ones like Mode. And there's themes all the time being added to the store. And I know they're opening things up and I would expect to see more and more. 

But I think those 3 developers are really good and trustworthy.

Chase Clymer  

Yeah. Yeah. I would also have to shout out to Out of the Sandbox as the developer and Pixel Union as well. Those are some trustworthy names too.

Shawn Khemsurov  

I think. I think Mode was... My buddy Alex Leer --our buddy Alex Leer-- showed me Mode. I think it was Clean Canvas. So that was a cool one too and I hadn't even seen that one.

So that's like, even for me, I'm in there looking at them all the time and [I'm] super interested in it. There's even new ones that I've seen that I hadn't... 

I didn't know about [it]. So it's new stuff all the time. And they're only going to get better and better. 

2.0 hasn't even been around that long so I could see things just getting like people getting more creative with like... I've even seen... 

Chase, I think you sent me the one with a bundle builder...

Chase Clymer  

Yeah.

Shawn Khemsurov  

...built in. It's like, that's so freaking cool. The way you search through the products is not something I had ever thought of. Really, really cool. 

It works and it's creative. And that's the thing I think it needs to happen more often with the themes: Coming up with cool features or cool niches that would benefit from the type of theme or functionality you're putting into it.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. Well, this recording went a lot longer than we both thought it would, which is fantastic.

Shawn Khemsurov  

We could probably talk a lot longer but it’s probably time.

Chase Clymer  

Is there anything I didn’t ask you about when it comes to this conversation of off-the-shelf themes vs custom themes?

Shawn Khemsurov  

Not really. I think we covered most [of] everything. I just think it’s super interesting to see how things progress. Who knows. 

There might be AI components. They’re already putting that in Shopify, with product descriptions and things like that.

So it’ll be cool to see that. It’ll be cool to see more A/B testing stuff. So it’s something like that. 

I think Google Optimize is going away. There’s some cool options coming out. 

I think Shoplift was a cool app. And it will be interesting if some of that leaks into the themes side as well, just the ability to serve up different designs to different people, different groups or segments.

There’s still a lot more stuff that could happen in the future to explore and make the experience better for people just starting or utilizing these themes.

Everything on Shopify should be, I think, easy to use and should convert. And so yeah, I think that’s the direction that things are going. And it’s cool.

And we’re here if you need some [cool things] added to the theme. But if you’re just trying to get started, and you’re an entrepreneur, and you wanna sell, just give ‘em a go. See what happens.

Chase Clymer  

Yeah. See typically with interviewing merchants, this is where I let them plug their product. But plugging my own product sounds a little bit (laughs)...

Shawn Khemsurov  

Yeah. Yeah. Double plug. Yeah. 

So, Honest Ecommerce podcast. You’re listening [to it] right now so you know what that is.

And then Electric Eye is the agency and so we’re in there all the time working with these themes doing design, doing development, optimization.

We just… 

We care about communication, and our client's happiness, and all that stuff. And it’s really important to us to see our clients succeed.

We’re never trying to sell them stuff that they don’t need or anything like that. We’re just trying to be as honest as possible and help them be the best versions of themselves and sell more.

It’s what we do at the agency.

Chase Clymer  

Thanks for coming on today, Shawn. I’ll have you back in a couple of weeks and we’ll talk about something else fun.

Shawn Khemsurov  

Alright. Let’s wait about a month. (laughs).

Chase Clymer  

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.co to get each episode delivered right to your inbox. 

If you're enjoying this content, consider leaving a review on iTunes, that really helps us out. 

Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.

Until next time!