Not all themes are made equal. Some themes are built for technology, while some are built for toys. Choosing the wrong theme can have a bad effect on your store.
With so many themes out there, what should you use for your e-commerce website?
In this review, I’ll cover one of the most beautiful and functional themes in Shopify, the Prestige theme. It is best recommended for those whose stores are already making money, or those who have enough capital to launch an online business.
What Is the Shopify Prestige Theme?
The Shopify prestige theme is built for fashion. It will fit well with your store if you are selling bags or clothing. While you can use it for other niches like perfume and cologne, it is generally best for the beauty and fashion niche.
It has three styles. These are Allure, Couture, and Vogue.
The Allure Style
The Allure theme has a big landing page image that occupies the entire width of the screen. On that banner, you can put two buttons that your site visitors can click. The banner acts as a slider, and you can put as much as three sliders.
On each slider, you can add two buttons, which will take a customer to a collection page. Overall, you can add three sliders and a total of six collection buttons.
The menu for your shop will stay on the top left. These menu buttons can expand, depending on the categories you create for each.
Below the banner, you can immediately add a row of your best sellers. You can choose which ones to show, and each product box can contain two photos. The photo will change if a customer points his mouse on it.
Below that, you can add another slide to introduce a new collection, and you can repeat this several times on your landing page. Somewhere near the bottom, you can add section with up to five links. Each link displays a different photo and text on that particular section.
You also have the option to show featured product on the home pages, and the customer can immediately see the photo, the description, the variants available, and the Add to Cart button.
At the very bottom, you can add a blogroll, a footer section, and an email subscription box.
The Couture Style
This style has similarities with the first one. You can use up to four images for your sliders, and they also occupy the entire width of the screen. Like the Allure sliders, you can add up to two call to action buttons inside the slider.
The menu of this theme is on the top middle, not the top left. Right below the slider, you can add a series of up to four photos on one section. Each photo has an area for the product name and the price.
Like the Allure theme, you can add a section for your collection, a single product section with the price and Add to Cart button, a video section, a blog roll, and a footer menu with an email subscription box.
The Vogue Style
This is a little different from the two. The slider on the top of your page also functions as a background for your menu lane.
While the menu is also on the top middle, you can only use three slider images, and you can move the buttons inside the slider to the bottom left or the middle.
The rest of the theme capabilities for Vogue are the same with the other two styles.
Prestige Theme Main Features
The main theme features are those that make your store unique compared to others. While you may think that they are the same, there are these seemingly little things you do not notice that makes all the big differences.
Image Hotspot Linking
What is image hotspot linking? If you have ever posted a photo on Facebook, you know that you can tag the faces of your friends on a that photo, then select from your friends list who that person is. Once a person sees that photo live, a text will appear if he taps on that face.
Image hotspot linking works like that. The difference is that you are tagging parts of a product in a photo. If you are selling shoes, you can add a text on a hotspot, like the shoelace.
If a person clicks or points his mouse on the shoelace, a text will appear. On that text, you can probably say that it is made of high-grade woven fiber. What you type in there will be shown to the customer as he taps the shoelace or puts his mouse over it.
This is a great feature because the customer does not even have to go to the product page anymore. It makes the discovery much easier, you can put those highlights on each of your products.
Designed for High-Resolution Images
In many themes, your photos can get pixelated. This one does not do that. You can put a large photo and maintain the quality. The photos will be crisp and clear.
Photo clarity can make or break a sale. Blurry photos make a website look like it was done by an amateur, or that the photo was copied somewhere else. In any web store, photo clarity is top priority.
The thing is, not all themes can support large images. Some themes will automatically crop your photos. The Prestige theme was designed to show large photos, and you can see this from the banners and sliders of the demo.
Story Timeline
One thing that attracts people today is the history of a company. This theme allows you to create a timeline section.
On this timeline section, you can add special dates, and add short texts to tell customers what happened during these dates. For example, you can add the year 2016, then that section says your company was built.
Add another year like 2018, and say your company and products got featured in Vogue Magazine. Then maybe you can add another year, 2019, and then say that your new collection or product line was launched.
This timeline is a section that you can place on the landing page of your website. It somehow tells people how credible you are, what achievements you have, and how long you have been in business.
Full-width Instagram feed
The theme features a section where you can add your Instagram posts. In this section, you have to link your store’s Instagram page.
Once the Instagram integration is completed, the store will now feed on that Instagram page. Your store will show up to four Instagram images. If a customer sees this, he can like your photo, and a “love” vote will be automatically added to your Instagram likes for that photo.
Below the section of the photos is a button where a customer can go and visit your Instagram account.
Home page menu lists
On your home page, you can create a menu bar. There is no limit to the sub-categories that you can put in here. If you have a big collection, you can add them in the menu. If a customer clicks on the top menu, it will automatically drop down.
For example, you may be selling sneakers and clothing. The top menu can be Sneakers, Men’s Tops, and Women’s Tops.
If you want to break down Sneakers category further, you can add sub-categories like Adidas, Nike, Reebok, and so much more.
A menu that is as flexible as this can give your customer a better navigation experience. It will not be too difficult to find your products.
Most themes cannot do this, as the customers have to click on each collection photo, and then go back to the home page, and then click another collection photo. This, however, provides a menu to the customer at every page.
Prestige Theme Functional Features
Functional features are those that you can use or program to make your website work harder for you. There are several features here that you need to look into, and compare with other themes if they have it.
Customizable content sections on home page
The home page is your landing page. Almost all the time, customers will come to this page. It is the most important part of a website because it is like a hotel lobby. The home page is where you convince the customer to stay and shoo for your goods.
With prestige, you can add and remove sections if you want. If you have no Instagram, page, then you can remove that section. If you want to add two video sections, you can do that, too.
Since the website home page is customizable, your store will not look like others that use the same theme. You can also interchange their positions. If you want the Instagram photo roll before the collections section, you can do it.
Mobile-friendly design
A mobile-friendly design means that your store will automatically change if the customer’s device is a tablet or a mobile phone. It is going to show the website vertically, not horizontally.
Why is this important? A person must be able to scroll and explore your website using only one hand. Your store is not like a game where the customer has to flip the phone sideways.
Also, your menu buttons will all hide under one button once the mobile site is displayed. If this does not happen, the small screen of the phone will look cluttered with menu options.
Search engine optimization
Whether you are dropshipping on Amazon or you have your own store, you must not forget about SEO. The problem with SEO is that you may know how to use it, but if your website’s theme does not allow you to make changes in specific areas, it will not work 100%.
The Prestige theme allows you to change the following things to make your post SEO friendly:
- Product title
- Meta description or excerpt
- Product content or details
- Names of the product variants
As you can see, not all themes are built to have this. While there are many themes that allow you to change the title, they do not have an area where you can add a meta-description, which is one of the most important things that Google crawls.
Social media icons
Marketing has never been better because of social media. Today you have a lot of options to target the right people on the social media platform of your choice.
The Shopify prestige theme makes it easy, as you can integrate your social media apps to your store. Apart from the Instagram section, you can add Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter.
At the bottom of your page, you can add these icons. If people click on that, they will be able to access your social media pages. If they do, it will be much easier for them to share your posts.
Drop-down navigation support
A drop-down navigation refers to the choices one customer can have under each menu. This has become pretty much a standard for a lot of themes, as it makes it easier for a customer to choose which areas of your store he wants to visit.
What’s wonderful about this theme is that you can build several sub-menus under the main one. These drop downs are completely within your control. Some themes do these automatically, and you cannot chose what to show on your drop-downs.
Here, you have the option to create sub-categories within a subcategory. These sub-menus will appear on every page, and the customer does not have to go back to your home page just to access other categories.
Built-in styles and color palettes
The theme has three styles, and all you have to do is to choose which one fits your business style. While you can manually add and remove sections to the theme, the three styles makes it a lot easier to build your store because they are already pre-made.
If you do not like the background, or the font style, you can make these changes in your dashboard.
Free stock photos by Burst
Burst is part of the Shopify company where you can get free photos to make your site look more professional. The photos are free, and they are all taken by professional photographers.
Here are some sample categories:
- Fashion
- Women
- Men
- Coffee
- Fitness
- Baby
- Jewelry
- Sunset
- Beaches
- Fun
- Technology
Photos are expensive. You have to hire a photographer or buy them from places like Shutterstock.
You would be lucky to find an affordable photo that costs only $10, but most websites that sell photos require that you subscribe monthly. With Burst, you can download as many photos as you want. All of them are free for commercial use.
Email Subscription
The theme provides you with an email subscription platform. You can change the text and call to action buttons if you want to. This email subscription is placed at the bottom of your screen, somewhere in the footer.
An email subscription form is important in marketing. Once you have an email list, you can start sending promotional materials to your customers. You can also use this to send out newsletters. For example, you can tell people that you have Black Friday sale, or that you have a new collection of products.
The theme does you a huge favor for adding this because an email subscription software typically costs more than $10 per month. The one in the Prestige theme is completely free of charge.
Backend Shopify Theme Features
The backend features are those that you can change to make your website look different. For example, you may want to add some pages like the FAQ, or make the website show associated products, like recommendations. You can do all these with the Prestige theme.
FAQ Page
An FAQ page works best if the answers are collapsed. An FAQ page that has the questions and answers laid out like a word document is too confusing to look at.
With the Prestige theme, you can create a separate FAQ types the answers without formatting the content. From a customer’s point of view, all the questions are neatly laid out on the page.
Each question would have a drop-down arrow to show the answer. With this design, your FAQ pages will not look like a huge block of text. Also, each store can only have one FAQ page.
Here are the steps to create an FAQ page with this theme:
Step 1: Create a new page on Shopify
Step 2: At the bottom right of that page, look for an area that says Template. Click that drop-down and choose PAGE.FAQ
Step 3: Go to your Shopify theme editor, and then select the FAQ page.
Step 4: On the side bar editor, go to Sections, and then choose FAQ
Now, type the questions and answers that you want, and then click save.
Add Associated Products
If you have seen stores that recommend other products and say “Buy it With,” then you have seen an associated product. With the Prestige theme, you can do the same.
This is a great upsell technique, as some customers would never have known that you have a product that would be a great pair with what they are currently looking at. With an upsell feature like these, you can definitely increase your average order value per customer.
Here is how you do it from the backend:
Step 1: Go to the product page of the one you want to add as an associated product. For example, it is a red bag. Do this in your Shopify admin product page, like as if you are editing the product
Step 2: Go to the search engine part of that product page. Look for the URL, then copy the last part. The last part is the last characters after the last forward slash.
Example: https://bagsand dresses.com/red-bag-with-rose
The last part of this URL is: red-bag-with-rose
This last part is called the Handle.
Step 3: Go to the product where you want the red bag to be associated with. For example, a red dress.
In that product page, go to the TAG section. Now, type two underscores in the tag box, plus the word “with:”, then the handle.
Now, the tag will look like this: __with:red-bag-with-rose
There should be no spaces. Click the Save button. Now, every time a customer is viewing the red dress, your Shopify store will suggest the red bag.
Why You Should Use the Prestige Theme
You should use the Prestige theme because it saves you a lot of money. You no longer need to install an Instagram app, social media app, or other apps that costs money to improve your marketing.
Even if it costs a one-time payment of $180, you are saving in the long run because you do not have to buy the following apps:
- Email subscription
- Social media
- Upsell apps
- Page editors like FAQ apps
- Add to cart editors
All these apps can cost you at least $10 per month in subscription. The subscription you pay is on top of what you will pay Shopify for the monthly maintenance of your website.
In the long run, you will save hundreds of dollars per year, and still do a great marketing job because of the theme’s features.
Prestige Shopify Theme Customer Feedback
This theme has one of the highest feedback score in Shopify. With 246 reviews, it has a rating of 93%. Out of the 246 people who rated it, only 12 people are unhappy. Below are some of the common issues they had with the product.
Slow Theme
The theme loads slowly. This is understandable, as the theme was designed to carry high-photos. There are only two ways to fix this. The first one is to improve your hosting bandwidth, and the second one is to reduce the image size.
No Refund
The company that made this does not offer a refund.
Does not support currency converter
There was a customer who complained that the theme has no currency converter, and that third-[arty currency converter apps are not supported by the theme.
Prestige Theme Conclusion
Our rating for this product is 4.5.
No theme is perfect, and even the Prestige theme will have issues of its own. The wonderful thing about this theme is that the updates are free. What this means is that if the bugs are fixed, you do not have to pay extra for them.
It is packed with great features that will boost your marketing—from Instagram to email subscription to associated products. You do not have to spend a lot of money installing third-party apps. For the price of $180, this is surely worth the money!