Third-party Themes
When it comes to third party themes; updates and support is a major drawback. A lot of these themes lack periodic updates. Such third party themes can speed up your website’s creation. But, they will come without adequate customer support.

Low on cost and very affordable, to the point that many themes are free. Not only that, third party themes comes in thousands of varieties. Many of these WooCommerce themes also have an industry-specific focus. In other words, they get designed only for specific industries. Thus, such themes will generally come with all the plugins you’d need.

If you are starting your online store, then choosing a 3rd party theme will prove more affordable. The upfront costs on these themes are less. A lot of these themes are even faster to integrate. Plus, 3rd party themes are often tried and tested by many other WooCommerce store owners.

Many such themes have in-built functionalities that save you time. This includes widgets or plugins that you don’t need to search for. A few of them are social media sharing, forms, side panels, slides, and much more. There is an extensive lineup of quality and dynamic themes. A few of them may even turn out to be mobile responsive and are faster to install.

Third-party themes also aren’t free from demerits. Some third-party themes are difficult to customize. The coding on these WooCommerce themes could be incorrect. Plus, tweaking it will be problematic. Many of these WooCommerce themes have unproven vendor support. If anything goes wrong, store owners have to manage for themselves. Plus, you may have to deal with all the bugs in the code.

The bugs can then affect the user experience, SEO rating and pose a security risk to the store. Some of these themes are still sitting with redundant features. If that wasn’t enough, many of them even offer outdated functionalities. Hence, they are not suitable for the latest version of WooCommerce. Often, store owners may not find the required features for the site structure or plugins to work.

Plugin compatibility or mismatch with the theme is a common issue. Owners often face this problem with third party themes. Maintenance and management of the theme will also become an issue. Even more from a security point of view. Furthermore, many of these WooCommerce themes come overloaded with features. This may confuse visitors and create navigational problems.

You might face some compatibility issues with a theme. In this case, a functionality might not appear or will look out of place. Make sure to read the theme documentation before making any changes. On top of that, look out for hidden malware on some themes. Pirated themes can create errors on your server. Check to see if you’re not picking a nulled theme. Nulled themes are illegal and may contain viruses.

Custom themes are best for when you want a personalized design for your eCommerce site. Distinguish yourself from the crowd with a tailor-made theme. If you’re aiming for a never-before-seen distinct design, then, you’ll need to hire an expert developer or a certified eCommerce team. They will help you create a custom-coded theme from the ground up.

The main advantage of getting a customized theme is owners get what they want. The online store looks exactly how you imagined it. You get a website that is nothing like anything that exists out there. Also, owners don’t need to waste time and effort on hacking and modifying another theme.

Instead, dedicate the same effort towards developing a new and original theme. You rely less on external plugins and extensions. The developers will adjust all these functionalities into the theme. Furthermore, the security of custom themes will be much better. Especially, when compared to pre-developed themes, that come with security loopholes.

The lean coding and limited source code makes it a lot easier to integrate SEO into a customized theme. A custom theme ensures the latest updates, in-time management, and glitch fixing. The theme designer creates a theme that is efficient, convenient, and easy to edit. They do not bloat the theme, hence find it easier to maintain it later.

If the extent of personalization is more, custom development gets more expensive. Businesses that have more complexities will find custom development a little costly. More unique your theme, the more expenses you will incur to create the same. Various languages like Ajax, CSS, RTL, and HTML5 can create such a complex theme from the ground up.

Thus, in many instances, companies leave this as a last resort. Brands will only opt for a custom theme when any of the available themes do not fulfill their objectives. Else, if small tweaks aren’t possible. The chances are that there will always be a theme out there that will provide you the features you desire.

Often, the development work will stretch longer than usual. Thus, the investments may also increase. You would also need the developer or eCommerce team who created the theme to assist with any issues. Custom themes cost a great deal because of the time and effort that goes into such a project.

Over the years, there has been a rapid growth in eCommerce theme availability on the internet. Of course, there are the third party themes that you can use. But, what about themes that are native to WooCommerce. Such themes get created for WooCommerce and no other platform. You’ll find many fluid templates that will do wonders for your eCommerce website.

Advantages
Native eCommerce themes come in handy, as they help save time in development. They also make the creation of an eCommerce store design fast and efficient. Many of these templates are simplistic, basic, and easy to install. The template comes with support for several languages. It also contains a plethora of payment solutions, feature upgrades, and more.

Almost all the native themes are safe and secure. Such themes get crafted, keeping a specific eCommerce platform in mind. They aren’t compatible with any other platform. Hence, the name native themes.

Disadvantages
Your store may likely want a unique, trendy, and exclusive template. In that case, selecting a native eCommerce theme will fail to provide the exclusivity. Free themes come with limited functionalities. Also, they are often unable to cope with the demands of growing companies. For such businesses, developing a full-fledged, powerful, and dynamic WooCommerce theme is the best way to go.

Then, the variety of such themes sitting on WooCommerce may also be a concern. You may not find too many styles that sync well with your brand’s identity. If that were the case, you’ll have to tweak the theme, which again takes you down the customization path. Changing and adjusting the theme to your liking may also take forever.

Divi, Elementor, and WPBakery are some great theme builders. These names are the best solutions for designing your eCommerce store. They are often equipped with customizable templates and tons of great features. Such tools contain image galleries, drag & drop elements, form creators, and much more. But, if you are not going to use any of this, it may create a lot of extra code.

The excess code will then slow down your website. Not only that, but it will also make the admin interface of the page editor very cluttered and confusing. All this is due to the extra features you don’t need. But, a theme builder that has decent support can address these issues. Many premium WordPress themes come with page builders pre-installed.

Builder is a theme plugin that allows you to create page layouts using a drag and drop user interface. So, if you were to use a theme that goes with one of these plugins, you’ll get the ability to edit the theme from a page builder. Using this, you could control your site, save time, and enhance your results. Access and design all the pivotal site sections from one place.

Using a page builder to create landing pages may end up producing a lot of unwanted code. If you ever tried to switch the theme, those pages will need a lot of cleaning up. Customers also have the option to buy these page-builders. If done, they’ll be able to use it with other themes as well.

The theme decides the aesthetics or the look and feel of your WooCommerce store. The theme creates the navigation and the user experience on a WooCommerce store. It is the theme that decides how your users will interact with the website.

Owners tend to dedicate enough time to selecting the right theme or even customizing it. They will go to any extent to prevent their website from looking dull and monotonous. The theme will add that extra attractive spark, and fluidity. Besides, creating a seamless experience on the website.

The theme you use will impact your site’s usability. It will also influence the way customers see your brand. The theme will become the interface of your eCommerce website. The theme is the component that dictates the visual design of your WooCommerce store. The theme will use a combination of custom templates, layouts, styles, and images. This combination will help to generate the best look and feel.

The theme dictates the visual front-end elements like the layout of your home page. The template you select will contain the colors used in the header. It will also contain the font styles, carousels, content blocks, and much more. All the features like menus, search field, banners, sliders, footer, filters, and more are all part of the theme.

The theme also controls how responsive or mobile friendly your site is. Owners would want their themes to look creative and captivate the audience. Furthermore, they’d also want it to look professional. The theme, to some extent, provides the site structure. The theme you pick must align with what your business hopes to achieve online.

Some owners settle for stock, out-of-the-box, or native themes. Most owners would instead aim for a hybrid theme. They may also want to customize a theme from the ground-up for their WooCommerce store.

The WooCommerce theme will play a crucial role in your website’s SEO friendliness. Improper HTML coding could affect your site’s ranking in search engines. As such, opt for themes that are already SEO optimized. There exist Google friendly themes created with SEO in mind. Check to see if the theme generates proper HTML5.

The latest themes use HTML5 markup and CSS3. This helps to make your online store fast, clean, and easy to detect by search engine bots. Furthermore, these coding standards allow you to add different tags to your content. You can also attach rich Google snippets. Besides being able to create other sorts of SEO magic that help search engines index your pages.

Many themes in the WooCommerce marketplace allow the addition of keywords. You may add them to several areas on your site. Furthermore, you can even add other powerful hacks to make your site easily-discoverable. The SEO juice of your eCommerce store is what wins you traffic, conversions, and revenue. Don’t neglect this aspect when picking a theme.

Today, a mobile friendly website is no longer optional. Brands are going the omnichannel way. As part of this change mobile websites will play a massive role in that transformation. owners may need to identify red flags in their WooCommerce themes. Such red flags prevent your eCommerce site from going mobile-ready. Most themes are mobile friendly already.

But, there are still sellers who are selling limited to desktops and fixed width themes… Ensure you determine the right WooCommerce theme. Local searches tend to happen on mobile devices. In this case, users are likely to access your site from a smartphone. Not finding a site that is compatible with the device will lead to immediate abandonment.

Your customers access the site from different browsers. Now, you wouldn’t want to favor a single browser. What you will do instead is test your website across all popular browsers. eCommerce owners do not want a broken website on browsers.

Most developers test their WooCommerce themes with sophisticated browser compatibility testing tools. But, there may be a few that don’t sync with every browser in the market. Run some tests to check the WooCommerce theme on browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Test the templates on mobile browsers as well.

Some developers provide extensive support for their themes. But, many free WooCommerce themes don’t come with the same type of support options. Many WooCommerce themes don’t even allow you to contact the theme creator for any help. Hence, if anything goes wrong, you’ll have to either figure it out on your own or rely on an external developer.

Pick a WooCommerce theme that has good documentation and support options available. Many themes provide a lifetime of updates, fast support, and detailed documentation. Beyond this, some themes even offer a six month support period. You can even extend the support period to twelve months for a small premium.

Your brand identity must reflect on the WooCommerce theme that you select. Not only that, but the theme must also be in sync with your unique business objectives. The ideal website template is the one that covers all the goals you have in mind from your eCommerce store. Determine the KPIs and narrow down to the themes that complement them best. Top WooCommerce themes are the ones that sync with your business model.

It would help if you had clear, smart goals while choosing a design template. A firearm website may not have the same look and feel like a pharma website. Your customers, too, want a different level of interaction. The functionalities you want to incorporate will vary depending on the business type. Create a checklist of features you want before you start looking for a WooCommerce theme.

You want a theme with extensive customization abilities. The extent of customization will help to personalize the theme. Owners get to adapt the look of the website to fit their vision. A staggering number of owners opt to edit the default theme. Some even go to the extent of editing the child theme and the parent theme as well.

Owners can alter styles, functions, layout, templates, and more. You can integrate a lot or as little customization as you wish. One of the simplest ways to tweak your theme is via CSS. So much so that you can even change the entire layout. Thus, owners can get to work to tweak the theme and change their website’s appearance at will.

The theme you select must resonate with your target audience. The intuitive interface must create a seamless browsing experience for your visitors. The theme must match your customer’s expectations. The website must have a stunning interface and come loaded with imagery. Your website should generate a sense of ease in finding any information about a product.

If you are changing the theme or modifying the current one, it will prove useful to analyze the browsing sessions. You may use a tool like HotJar for this purpose. The session recordings, heat map, mouse flow, and more will show how users interact with your site. Using this as a reference point, you can reposition various page elements. Move the CTA’s, social sharing buttons, review box, gallery, and more.

WooCommerce store owners can choose a customized theme. Such a theme would let them create a whole new and unique website experience. Custom WooCommerce themes allow you to design a unique online business. The site would have a distinctive landing page, structure, and several other elements. A unique interface will help you stand out from your rivals. owners can even opt for free WooCommerce themes.

A pre-built WooCommerce theme will restrict the look and feel of your website. Owners get limited to what’s already present in the theme. It may become a hassle to edit the theme later for extra functionalities. But, they are low on cost. So, if affordability is a concern, then pick a generic theme. But, the lack of support and infrequent updates may leave you vulnerable.

You may choose premium WooCommerce themes or free WooCommerce themes. Whatever be the theme, in the end, you want it to align with your business model. The features, functionalities, and framework must compliment your business needs. When you start the theme selection process, make sure to list down everything you wish to achieve. The best theme is the one that is symmetric with your business.

Visitors expect an optimized user experience. Furthermore, they want a beautiful design at every stage of their eCommerce journey. Themes play an integral role in that and help to boost the success of an eCommerce store. The last thing a store owner wants is to make the themes too cluttered and repulsive for the visitors.