As you know, it can take less than a second for a visitor to decide whether to stay and buy from you. Therefore, you must focus on making a strong, positive first impression on your visitors through an attractive website design and a smooth, easy-to-use user experience.
In this article, we will provide you with a wealth of useful information about the best WordPress themes for online stores, so much so that you won't need to read any other articles on the subject.
We will discuss the most important WordPress themes for online stores, both free and paid, and those that support the Arabic language, as well as the most important criteria for choosing the right theme for you.
The Best WordPress Themes for Online Stores
WordPress themes, like any other digital product, come in several versions: free, premium, and paid.
Although the free versions have fewer features and lack updates or customer support, they may be suitable for beginners or those without a large capital base.
If you want to start e-commerce and launch your first online store, you can use free WordPress themes without any worries.
Just because a template is free doesn't mean it's bad or of poor quality. Quite the opposite, as some of them are among the most important, popular, and sought-after templates.
In short, the advantages of these templates are as follows:
1. Completely free: They don't require any costs to obtain, unlike paid templates, making them an affordable option for WordPress users who need a simple, limited store.
2. Ease of use: Free templates are often easier and simpler to use than some paid templates, and they also come with good, simple user interfaces.
3. Wide variety: There's a wide range of free templates available within the WordPress platform, available for various purposes and niches.
4. Compatibility with WordPress plugins: Free templates usually work well with basic WordPress plugins.
This means they support and integrate well with other features you can add to enhance your site's functionality or improve the user experience.
However, these WordPress e-commerce themes come with a number of drawbacks, most notably:
1. Less unique designs: Free themes lack the aesthetics and luxurious designs of paid themes. Also, due to the popularity of these free themes, your store may look similar to other stores using the same theme.
2. Limited support: Technical support is limited or completely unavailable for some free themes. For some free WordPress themes, technical support is limited to the FAQ section or the WordPress forum.
3. No guarantees in case of a malfunction: If you're using a paid WordPress e-commerce theme and a malfunction occurs in the future due to a bug in the theme, the responsibility for fixing the malfunction and repairing the website falls on the theme developer.
But imagine using a free theme and it causes a malfunction in your e-commerce site. Who would be responsible for fixing the malfunction? You, without a doubt!
Now that you know the pros and cons of free WordPress e-commerce templates, here's a list of the best:
1. Astra
Any list of the best free WordPress themes for e-commerce stores should include the free Astra theme.
The theme has been downloaded over 1.5 million times and receives thousands of downloads daily. Although it's a general theme and not an e-commerce theme, it's widely used in e-commerce stores.
Among the most important features of the Astra theme are:
1. It supports many important tools, such as Elementor, Visual Composer, and others.
2. The theme includes many interfaces suitable for various types of e-commerce, with more than 240 ready-to-use interfaces.
3. The theme's performance is excellent, as it's lightweight and loads in less than 0.5 seconds on average. It's also extremely fast, with its file size not exceeding 50 KB.
4. The theme is compatible with WooCommerce, which provides optimal store performance.
5. The Astra theme is multilingual, allowing store content to be translated into multiple languages and allowing users to change the site language to suit their preferred language.
6. You can adjust all elements of your store through an easy-to-use control panel, requiring no programming experience.
7. The Astra template is compatible with all web browsers and responsively adapts to various screen sizes.
You can upgrade from the free version to a paid version at any time for a minimum of $59 per year, after you start generating revenue.
Here's a link to the Astra template if you'd like to purchase the paid, professional version.
2. Storefront Template
The second theme on our list of the best WordPress e-commerce themes is Storefront, which is one of the most compatible with the WooCommerce plugin.
That's why we ranked it so highly on our list, especially since the theme's developers are the same ones who code WooCommerce.
The theme is extremely popular, with over 100,000 users on WordPress.org. Its key features include:
1. The store is compatible with the latest versions of WordPress, with regular updates.
2. The store's layout can be flexibly modified to suit mobile devices and other screen sizes.
3. The pages are lightweight, despite the large number of elements, weighing in at approximately 590 KB.
4. The theme supports Arabic, making it easy to make edits.
Although the theme is free, there are some plugins that improve its performance, costing no more than $70.
3. Botiga Theme
Another free WordPress template for e-commerce stores, it's ideal for small stores and beginners thanks to its simple design.
Although it doesn't offer extensive customization options, it still offers the essential features and tools for stores.
The template was developed by Athemes, a company with extensive experience in WordPress template development. Key features of the template include:
1. The control panel allows you to change colors, fonts, and many other interface options, allowing you to preview changes as they occur.
2. You can control the display of products, product details, images, and other customization options.
3. The page size does not exceed 450 KB, making it lightweight and fast-loading.
There is also a paid version of the Botiga template, starting at $59, which offers several additional features.
4. OceanWP
The OceanWP theme is one of the most widely used WordPress themes for e-commerce stores, with over 700,000 downloads.
The theme has several features that make it highly attractive:
1. The theme's fast speed.
2. The theme's compatibility with SEO best practices.
3. The theme's compatibility with many tools, such as Elementor and other page builders and plugins.
4. The theme's compatibility with WooCommerce and Arabic language support.
The free version of the theme has the basic features that beginners need, but you can get the premium version later, starting at $39.
5. Woostify Theme
We conclude our list of the best free WordPress themes for e-commerce stores with Woostify. Although not as popular as the others, it's still a very good theme.
This theme boasts a lightweight page size, typically no more than 30 KB, which makes it extremely fast.
The theme was also specifically designed for WooCommerce, thanks to its convenient interface layout for displaying products, catalogs, and the shopping cart.
You can also edit pages using the Gutenberg or Elementor editor to add images and product descriptions.