Choosing a theme for your shop type, and the five things to change first

This is for anyone setting up an online shop who cannot tell which ecommerce theme fits their kind of shop, or what to do with it once installed. By the end you will know what a theme decides, how to read a listing, how to choose by catalogue size and photo quality rather than taste, and the five things to change first. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, a hosted platform with its own theme store, so weigh the Orbit parts accordingly. Every Orbit fact here was checked against the theme store and page builder on 9 November 2026.

What does a theme decide, and what does it not?

On Orbit a theme is a full set of designed pages made from the same blocks you edit in the page builder: home page, product and category pages, cart, search results and blog, plus the header and footer. Some add a services page or FAQ. It also carries its style settings: the colours, fonts and button styles every page follows.

That is all it decides. Your products, prices, stock, orders and customers live in the dashboard whichever theme is active, and search titles, the sitemap and redirects are the platform’s job. Nor is the checkout the theme’s: the card step runs on a Stripe-hosted page, and the checkout layout is designed in the builder on the Enterprise plan. A service, download, subscription or gift card product opens Orbit’s built-in page, which takes the theme’s colours and fonts and keeps its own layout.

So a theme is a starting point: every page in it is made of ordinary blocks you can edit. The photos, the words and the delivery promise decide more than the template, as the 25 UK shops we pulled apart show.

How do you read a theme listing?

Every listing in the Orbit theme store opens with a strip of facts. Price: Free, or a one-off amount before VAT. Made for: the industry it was designed around. Pages: how many it designs, each open in the demo. Catalogue, where a listing gives one: Small, Medium or Large, which the store describes as a focused range, a range of a few categories, or a large range. Updates: free for every new version. Below come three highlights under “What this theme does well”, the pages, the colours and type, and a “Built in” list of what it includes once installed. The one-line “Suits a …” sentence is the most useful on the page: it says who the theme was made for in plain words.

Then open the live demo. Every theme runs on its own demo shop, so you can click through the home page, a product, a category and the cart before you decide. Spend most of that time on the product and category pages: the home page is what you will change most, the product page what customers will see most. The browse page filters by Price, Industry, Features and Catalogue size.

Choose a theme by catalogue size and photo quality, not taste

Taste is a poor guide: the demo was styled with perfect photographs and a made-up range.

How many products, in how many categories. A theme marked Small shows a few products large; put 400 lines into it and the home page becomes an endless scroll. A theme marked Large expects a mega menu, search and filters, and looks empty with twelve products. Count your whole range, including this year’s additions, and match it to the catalogue size before you look at a colour.

How good your photos are. Full-width photography needs photographs that can fill a screen: consistent, well lit, at least 2,000 pixels on the long edge. Upload the original and let the media library do the sizing: it keeps a copy no wider than 2,560 pixels and makes seven WebP sizes. If your photos are good phone shots on a plain white background, pick a theme that uses tiles, colour blocks and product cards with space around them. Our £30 product photography set-up gets most products to that standard in an afternoon.

The table puts the two together by shop type.

Should you pay for a premium theme?

Free and premium themes in the Orbit store are made from the same page builder blocks and edited the same way, so a free theme is not a trial version. A premium theme buys more designed pages and a look drawn for your kind of shop, which saves the hours of restyling a general-purpose theme.

The terms are the same for every premium theme: a one-off charge shown before VAT, with VAT added at checkout; no monthly fee; free updates to every new version; a licence for one Orbit shop. You can own several themes and switch between them at no charge. Updating a theme to a new version returns its style settings to that version’s defaults, so note your colours and fonts first.

If you expect to redesign once the range settles, start on a free theme such as Starter and spend the money on photos. If the theme that fits your shop type is premium, buy it: it is the cheap part of a launch.

The five things to change first

Install the theme, then change these five things before anything else. None needs code, and saving is separate from publishing, so work on a draft and publish when it looks right.

1. Your logo and colours

The logo sits in the header template, a row of blocks the Header Builder lays out: logo, menu, search, account icon, cart. Upload yours as a PNG or WebP and it shows on every page, because the header is one template, not a copy on each page. Colours, fonts and button styles are set once in the theme’s style settings and every page follows. One shortcut: paste your current website’s address and Nebula, Orbit’s assistant, reads its colours and fonts and offers them for the theme. Keep to two colours and one accent.

2. The homepage hero and its one message

The demo’s hero, its first screen, is a designer’s photo and a made-up headline. Replace both. Say what you sell and who it is for in one sentence (“Wooden toys, tested by real families” beats “Welcome to our store”), with one button to your best-selling category. Delivery, returns and the sale belong in the announcement bar above the header, which can rotate messages, or the reassurance row many themes have under the hero. Check the headline at phone width; a laptop line often runs to four on a phone.

3. Navigation and categories

Write the top-level menu on paper first: five to seven items, in your customers’ words rather than your range names. Then build your categories before the menu, because a menu can only point at what you have filed. On Orbit the header and footer are page builder templates under Storefront, Templates, each with a Menu Builder; the lists under Storefront, Navigation feed Menu blocks on any page, three levels deep. The phone menu is the header menu folded behind the three-line hamburger button, so there is one menu to keep right. The navigation guide and navigation page cover the rest.

4. The product page order, and the delivery and returns block

The product template is set once for every physical product, so an hour here fixes every product page. Put the gallery, price, variants, stock, delivery estimate, reviews and sticky buy bar in the order customers need them, then add the block most demos leave out: your delivery promise and returns terms, two or three lines under the buy button. A delivery estimate set per shipping method shows at checkout too, with promised dates on the order emails. Reviews come from the free Product Reviews plugin and wait for your approval before they show. Services, downloads, subscriptions and gift cards use Orbit’s built-in product pages, so this step is for physical goods.

5. The footer and your policies

Footer columns are menus too: edit the theme’s columns in the page builder, or drop in a Menu block showing one of your lists, with social icons and a newsletter sign-up beside them. Give the footer a job: delivery, returns, contact and about are the four links a hesitant buyer looks for. Behind them you need real pages: delivery times and charges, a returns and refunds policy (UK law sets what it must say; our post on returns law walks through it), a privacy policy, a cookie policy for the consent banner to link to, your terms, and your business name and address.

Test your shop on a phone before you tell anyone

By StatCounter’s measure, phones accounted for about 52% of UK web page views in October 2026, desktops about 44% and tablets about 4% (StatCounter Global Stats, a vendor’s figure from sites that use its tracking, checked 9 November 2026). Your shop’s split will differ, but expect the phone version to be the one most visitors see.

The page builder previews desktop, tablet and phone, most settings can differ on each, and any block can be hidden on one of them. But a preview is not a phone. Open the shop on your own phone and run a shopper’s route: hamburger menu, category, product, cart drawer, card step. Look for buttons too small to tap and headlines that run to four lines; what makes a storefront feel instant covers speed.

When should you switch themes, and what carries over?

Switch when the shop has outgrown the theme: forty products that became four hundred, a move from products to services, or a rebrand that calls for a different look. Do it in a quiet week, never during a sale.

Your products, prices, stock, orders and customers are not part of a theme, so nothing happens to them. Every page you have edited is listed before anything changes, and you decide per page: overwrite it (a revision is kept to roll back to), create the new version alongside it, or skip it. Untouched pages are swapped over, with the earlier version saved as a revision. Your Navigation lists stay; the new header and footer come with the theme and the old ones are kept in your templates. The previous theme stays installed, and the History tab keeps the last 25 versions of each page for 30 days.

When is it worth paying for custom design?

Most shops never need it: the page builder covers the pages a shop changes week to week. Pay for custom work when you want something beyond the blocks: a new interactive element, a storefront that must match a brand book exactly, or an integration with a system you already run. Orbit’s in-house team replies with a scope, a timeline and a fixed price agreed in writing before any code, and says so when a setting or a plugin would do the job. Budget bands start under £5,000. When an online shop needs custom development sets out what it should cost; the custom development page has the brief form.

Where Orbit fits

Every Orbit plan, from Solo at £25 a month (£19 a month billed yearly, ex VAT), includes the page builder, the free themes, the media library and the header, footer and menus. Premium themes are a one-off charge in the theme store, and the Enterprise plan adds the checkout’s design to the builder. Four of the store’s themes each fit one kind of shop. Pip, the kids and toys theme, is drawn for parents who shop by age and need a present by Saturday. Vital, for supplements and wellness, leads with doses and proof rather than lifestyle shots. Terra, under Home and living, is for a shop that wants a warm, natural feel rather than a stark white catalogue. Boutique Soft, under Beauty and wellness, is for a label that wants a soft, premium feel rather than a clinical one. Start with the page builder guide; the 14-day trial has the builder and the themes in it.

Read next: rewriting your shop’s emails in your own voice and popups and banners that do not cost you customers.

Questions people ask about choosing a theme

What does an ecommerce theme actually change?

A theme changes the layout and look of your pages, the header and footer, and the colours, fonts and buttons. It does not change your products, prices, stock, orders, customers, search titles, redirects or the checkout’s card step.

Should I choose a theme by industry or by catalogue size?

Catalogue size first, then industry. A theme built for a focused range becomes an endless scroll with hundreds of products, and one built for a large range looks empty with a dozen. Once the size fits, the industry filter and each listing’s “Suits a …” line narrow the rest.

Is a free theme good enough to launch with?

Yes. Free and premium themes in the Orbit store are built from the same blocks and edited the same way, so a free theme such as Starter is a complete shop, not a trial. A premium theme adds more designed pages and a look drawn for your kind of shop.

What happens to my pages if I switch themes later?

Every edited page is listed first, and you choose per page: overwrite it with a revision kept to roll back to, create the new theme’s version alongside it, or skip it. Untouched pages are swapped over, with the earlier version saved as a revision. Your Navigation lists stay, and the previous theme stays installed.

Do I need a separate mobile theme?

No. Every theme in the Orbit store adapts to phones and tablets, the page builder previews desktop, tablet and phone, and any block can be hidden on one of them. The phone menu is your header menu folded behind the three-line hamburger button. Still test on a real phone before you launch.

If you are choosing a theme this week, start the 14-day free trial, no card required, install a free theme and make the five changes before you look at a second one.