When setting up your online store, you want to be aware of the best WordPress ecommerce themes that are available. Choosing the right one can be challenging, since the number of options are overwhelming. What’s more, the wrong decision here can cost you valuable time and sales.
While it would be impossible to list all of the free WordPress ecommerce themes available, you can narrow your choices down with a little research. By being aware of the type of site you plan to launch and understanding what functionality you will need, you can sort through everything out there and make a smart decision.
In this post, we are going to discuss what you should look for in WordPress ecommerce themes, and how to pick the best one for your site. Then we will introduce 35 of the best free ecommerce WordPress themes of 2017. Let’s dive in!
What to Look for in Free Ecommerce WordPress themes
A WordPress theme is a collection of files that determine the layout and appearance of your site. The beauty of WordPress is that there are an endless number of themes available for free. Most can be found in the WordPress theme directory.
What’s more, you can find themes that are specific to ecommerce. These specialize in providing designs and features to help you get the most out of your online store or business. When looking for the right ecommerce theme, there are several things that you should consider before making your decision. Here are a few key criteria to keep in mind:
- Visual design: Your theme should be visually appealing. Choose a layout that enables you to showcase your products and is easy for customers to navigate.
- Responsiveness: With the rise of mobile platforms such as smart phones and tablets, it is imperative that your theme displays well and functions on mobile devices.
- Plugin support: Any theme you choose should provide support for crucial ecommerce plugins you intend to use, such as WooCommerce.
- Social sharing options: 71% of customers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals, which makes it imperative that your theme lets people share your content through those channels.
There are many other criteria that you should consider, such as speed and navigation. However, the above set of features will offer you a good starting point. Of course, we recommend that you also check any potential theme’s ratings, reviews, update history, and support options before making your final decision.
35 WordPress Ecommerce Themes
If you aren’t sure what WordPress theme to use for your ecommerce store, take a look at the following list. All of these themes are free (some offer a premium version as well), and provide a demo so that you can see it in action before you commit. In addition, each has been selected for quality, excellent reviews, and a history of consistent updates.
1. Shapely
Shapely is a one page WordPress theme that is both visually stunning and extremely versatile. It includes widgets that enable you to add testimonials, calls to action, and much more. It is also fully compatible with most WordPress plugins, including WooCommerce, and can be used successfully for small to large stores.
2. Shop Isle
Shop Isle was designed specifically for WooCommerce shops. It is flexible, supports most WordPress plugins, and is SEO friendly. You can use this theme for a full ecommerce site or a single page business website with an accompanying storefront. The style is simple and clean, and is perfect for almost any type of store, such as fashion or electronics.
3. Athena
Athena is a fully responsive and user-friendly theme, which is compatible with WooCommerce and was built with SEO in mind. Best of all, Athena features an easy-to-use live customizer that enables you to make any changes you would like without having to deal with code. You can then preview your changes before you publish them live, in order to perfect your store pages and items.
4. Flash
Flash is a multipurpose theme that can be used for any kind of site you want, but is particularly effective for ecommerce stores. It offers multiple layouts and WooCommerce support, and includes multiple demos that will be useful in building your store pages quickly. This theme has over 10,000 active installs and multiple five star ratings as well, so you know it’s a winner.
5. Shopera
Shopera is a highly customizable WooCommerce theme, and is a smart choice if you’re intending to build a store with that popular plugin. It’s perfect for almost any type of ecommerce site, offering lots of layouts and other options to get you started. Plus, it features a clean responsive design that will ensure a strong user experience.
6. Llorix One Lite
Llorix One Lite is an elegant one-page business theme, and is perfect for company sites that wish to include an attached storefront. It is compatible with most ecommerce platforms, and features an attractive modern look. What’s more, it incorporates a focus on visuals that will make it easy for your products to stand out.
7. Virtue
Virtue is a fully responsive and extremely versatile ecommerce theme. It comes with enough tools and options to design any type of online store, and enables you to customize the look and functionality to suit your business’ unique needs. With this theme, you can change layouts, use custom fonts, and add sliders, all without having to touch a single line of code.
8. iFeature
iFeature is a fully responsive and powerful WordPress theme. It has a variety of uses, but caters to ecommerce sites in particular. Its drag and drop editor enables you to quickly set up a professional storefront, and add in all the features you’ll need. Since its options are available on a page-by-page basis, iFeature makes it simple to customize every page on your site, which is an added bonus.
9. Vantage
Vantage is a multipurpose theme that is designed specifically for integration with WooCommerce and other major plugins you’ll likely need for your ecommerce site. With this theme, setting up your store is quick and simple, so you can start selling as soon as possible. It is also fully responsive, and includes free support through its online forums.
10. Corporate Plus
Corporate Plus enables you to easily sell digital or physical products online, or any combination of the two. You can use this theme to create a fully functional one page storefront, or incorporate any number of its features across multiple pages if you’re building a larger shop. Finally, it offers a number of useful widgets so you can add vital functionality to your site with ease.
11. Storefront
Storefront was created by the developers of WooCommerce, which means it’s a great pick if you’re using that plugin. With this theme, you can easily set up an online store that is customized and full-featured. It will also be simple to make use of the wide variety of extensions available from WooCommerce, if you want to add features like subscriptions or a dynamic pricing table.
12. Boutique
If you liked the look of Storefront but want something designed for a smaller shop, Boutique has you covered. This is actually a child theme for Storefront, and is specifically designed for boutiques and similar operations. The design is simple and traditional, but can also be customized to suit your needs and reflect your branding.
13. OceanWP
OceanWP is another multipurpose theme, which at first glance may not seem the ideal ecommerce choice. However, this type of theme shines thanks to its flexibility. OceanWP enables you seamlessly incorporate product displays, highlight your offerings and services, and even promote featured blog posts, which is perfect if you want to include affiliate marketing in your ecommerce site.
14. Edge
Edge is a simple and elegant theme that is a smart choice for small to medium-sized commerce sites. It is WooCommerce-compatible, SEO-friendly, integrated with social media, and responsive. It also offers multiple layouts that make showcasing your products simple, and provides outstanding support for free.
15. Make
Make enables you to customize your online storefront to your exact needs, which is crucial if you want your site to stand out and reflect your business’ niche and branding. It features a drag and drop editor and unlimited customization options, giving you full control over every aspect of your store’s design. It also scales well, so you can start out small and grow your store over time.
16. Freesia Empire
Freesia Empire features a lightweight and fully-functional design that is perfect for ecommerce sites in a variety of industries. It’s fully customizable and integrates effortlessly with plugins like WooCommerce, bbPress, and Newsletter. This means you can easily connect with your customers as well as sell to them. What’s more, it includes special widgets and sidebars that you can use for specific niche stores.
17. FlatOn
FlatOn is a flexible design that is built to integrate with both WooCommerce and Jigoshop eCommerce. This theme features a flat design that makes it lightweight and speedy, and excellent grid functionality that simplifies product layout. It also enables custom CSS, so you can style your store in any way you see fit.
18. Accelerate
Accelerate is a multipurpose theme that can be used for business sites, ecommerce stores, and even blogs or portfolios. That makes it a solid choice if you’re building a store that will be attached to a company site or a blog. Its helpful support options and easy design tools make it a great choice for beginners, but it’s still plenty powerful enough for experienced developers.
19. TheShop
As its name implies, TheShop was built with ecommerce needs first and foremost. It works very well with WooCommerce, and features tons of customization options for your storefront. This theme is ideal if you are looking for a lightweight and flexible way to get your store up and running fast, while ensuring that it still looks professional.
20. Startup Blog
Startup Blog uses a minimalist design, and was initially created with a blogging focus. However, it actually makes an excellent base for a simple and stylish ecommerce site (especially if you intend to include a companion blog). In addition to being fully responsive, this theme includes over 50 social media icons, as well as plenty of custom color and branding options.
21. EightStore Lite
EightStore Lite was built for ecommerce, and it shows. In addition to enabling you to fully customize your storefront, this theme lets you easily add large banner ads to announce sales and promotions. The theme is fully responsive, and you can even integrate customer testimonials in order to drive more conversions.
22. AccessPress Store
AccessPress Store features a deceptively simple layout that works well for a wide variety of ecommerce niches. Its main power is found in its slider feature, which allows for high resolution product images and includes overlaying text and buttons. This enables you to create a sales funnel and convert at higher rates. It also features wish list functionality, enabling customers to save items and purchase them later.
23. Anima
Anima is a highly customizable WordPress theme that is perfect for smaller, more personal businesses. It features a clean and responsive design with support for ecommerce, translations, and social sharing, but keeps its look simple and straightforward. This theme also includes multiple layout and topography options that are well suited to professional storefronts.
24. Base WP
While Base WP is technically a blogging theme, it’s one of those options that is flexible enough to work well for integrated blogs and storefronts. It offers multilingual options, in case if plan to cater to an international clientele, is fully responsive, and is very customizable. This simple, tightly coded theme is perfect for anyone who wants to add a store to their existing blog, or develop both elements in parallel.
25. MaxStore
MaxStore is a WooCommerce theme, which means it’s fully optimized for ecommerce. Your product offerings will show up in visually appealing galleries on the home page, and the checkout functionality is unparalleled. Wish list technology is also incorporated, meaning that your customers can save items for later purchase. This is a relatively rare option in free themes, so MaxStore is definitely worth consideration.
26. MesoColumn
MesoColumn is unique in that it uses a magazine-style layout that works just as well in an ecommerce application. It includes a boxed image slider and large featured images you can use to differentiate product categories. The sheer number of widgets available for this theme is impressive, and includes social sharing buttons, featured posts, latest comments, and custom sidebars. If you’re looking to integrate your store with a blog or news site and to keep in communication with your customers, this is a solid choice.
27. Seller
Seller employs a minimal design, while incorporating a large number of images so the focus remains clearly on your products. You can easily add a full-width image gallery to your storefront, and display a variety of featured images. Thanks to this theme’s flexible nature, you can include multiple columns in your layouts, and fully customize your product pages to suit you and your brand.
28. Responsive
Responsive was designed with calls to action in mind, a crucial element of any ecommerce store. This enables you to maximize your conversion rates for marketing and selling your products. The theme is fully responsive, as its name implies, and includes a wide variety of layout options. It also offers nine different page templates with multiple layout options for each, so your store will look unique.
29. i-transform
i-transform is a responsive and flexible theme variation on the popular ‘Twenty Thirteen’ WordPress theme. It includes multiple color schemes, numerous layouts, and plays well with WooCommerce and similar platforms. Since it is based on a native WordPress theme, i-transform is perfect for anyone just getting started. At the same time, it’s powerful enough for building large ecommerce sites.
30. Fruitful
Fruitful is a deceptively simple theme that offers you a lot. While it is visually minimal, keeping the focus on what your site has to offer, this theme is also extremely powerful. It also includes a host of features like custom backgrounds (images and colors), menu styling, built-in social sharing buttons, and multiple Google fonts. This theme is perfect if you are looking to build an ecommerce store with a lot of strong branding elements.
31. OnePress
OnePress puts the focus on design, enabling you to show off your products in an elegant and professional way. It works smoothly with popular ecommerce tools, and is ideal for smaller businesses and agencies looking to get into online sales for the first time. The theme is responsive, and design is made easy thanks to its custom content blocks and flexible editor.
32. FreeStore
FreeStore is designed to offer you a premium-level e-commerce theme experience, without costing you a dime. It comes packed with tons of customizable settings and options, so you can build your store to your exact specifications. It’s also easy to create professional and user-friendly layouts for your product pages, thanks to the handy drag and drop page builder.
33. Alpha Store
If you’re looking for a strong, general-purpose e-commerce theme, Alpha Store is a great place to start. It’s flexible enough to work for small and large stores, in a wide variety of niches. It includes plenty of layout options, and enables you to customize elements such as menus, sidebars, footers and more easily. There are a ton of storefront-specific features on offer, and the process of actually designing your shop is a breeze.
34. StoreVilla
StoreVilla is powered by WooCommerce, and has everything you’ll need to build your first online store. It packs a variety of appealing designs, plenty of customization options, and useful e-commerce features such as advanced product search functionality. While applicable to a variety of niches, you’ll especially want to check this theme out if your store focuses on fashion, jewelry, or similar products.
35. Clean Commerce
Minimalist themes are surprisingly effective for e-commerce, since they put all the focus on what you have to sell. Clean Commerce ensures that your store is uncluttered, easy to navigate, and presents your products in the best light possible. There are also plenty of useful features for e-commerce, enabling users to easily browse products and make their purchases.
Conclusion
When choosing the correct WordPress ecommerce theme for your online business, you’ll want to look at several factors. Elements such as cost, functionality, and customization options should all be a part of your decision. The great news is that WordPress offers a wide variety of free ecommerce themes to choose from.
In this piece, we discussed what to look for in WordPress ecommerce themes, and explained how to choose one based on your needs. Then we took a look at 35 awesome themes, and outlined their features to help you narrow down your selection. Each of the above themes is free, so you may want to try out several until you find the one that’s just right for your store.
Do you have any questions about how to choose free WordPress ecommerce themes? Let us know in the comments section below!
