With so many free themes available, you may be wondering why you would ever pay for a premium theme. That is a reasonable question to ask, but there are in fact a multitude of reasons as to why you should choose a premium theme for your online store.
What is a Premium eCommerce Theme ?
By its most simple definition, a premium eCommerce theme costs money. If it isn’t free, it is premium.
Premium eCommerce themes are themes which have been professionally designed and coded, include advanced features, functionality and additional services, and are usually sold for a fixed price.
Why Buy a Premium eCommerce Theme ?
With that in mind, let’s take a look at 7 reasons why you should choose a premium theme :
1. Quality
The most obvious reason to use a premium eCommerce theme is the quality. Premium themes have been designed and coded by professionals.
You can expect compliance and responsive design. Web standards are always changing, as are the capabilities of the browsers we use. Premium themes are far more likely to be designed with current web standards in mind.
You can expect responsive design. In this day and age, people are accessing your site using a variety of different devices, and it is therefore important to ensure that it remains functional across multiple platforms. You can purchase premium themes that are designed specifically with responsive design in mind.
2. Uniqueness
The best free eCommerce themes are often downloaded and used by hundreds of thousands of people. Because of the small price tag, premium eCommerce themes however are used by far less people and as such are more unique.
Premium ecommerce themes often also include greater ability and ease of customization to ensure you end up with a truly unique looking website.
3. Functionality
You will find that premium eCommerce themes include a far greater array of functionality and features than free themes. Many of these functions will make it easy for users to perform otherwise arduous tasks in setting up, managing and customizing the website :
- Easy control theme such as skin changer, font-changer, modules …
- Support Add Custom Javascript, Css, Change Background
- Live Theme Edtior to create unlimited Theme Skins Without Coding
- Support Multiple Language, Google Map, …
- Easy install datasample, theme, modules on existed store …
- … … …
4. Support
Another great reason to purchase a premium eCommerce themes is the support you receive. All good premium eCommerce themes will include support from the developer usually in the form of a support forum or even email and ticket support where you can get help fixing problems or making minor modifications to your theme.
5. Updates
Premium eCommerce theme developers are continually receiving feedback on their themes from users allowing them to fix bugs and add new features. Unlike free themes and the developers of free themes, premium theme developers are in the business for the long term, it is in their best interest to really create quality products, listen to feedback, fix bugs, implement new features and ensure the theme works properly with new updates of shopping cart system.
Let’s say you install a free theme on your site, and spend a lot of time tweaking it to your liking. Then a new version of shopping cart system comes out, which the theme is incompatible with. What will you do ? Don’t upgrade or tweaking again.
6. Security
A huge proportion of available free themes are in fact packaged with malicious code. Unless you know what to look for in the theme files, using these free themes can negatively affect your website efficiency and search engine trust and rankings. When you purchase a premium eCommerce theme you can have peace of mind the theme is clean and optimized to make your website perform at its best.
7. Search Engine Optimized (SEO)
A lot of free eCommerce themes are created by amatures who often don’t really know or follow best coding practise, which can be detrimental to search engine optimization of your website. Premium eCommerce themes on the other hand have been coded following best current practise and are search engine optimized.
Where to Find the Best Premium eCommerce Themes ?
ThemeForest and Templatesmonster are two of the best marketplace. You would find a high quality premium theme for your online store with shopping cart systems : magento, opencart, prestashop, woocommerce, …
