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With a crazy large number of layouts and skins, the Ella Shopify theme is the best-selling Shopify theme of all time on Themeforest.
Shopify Theme Store is definitely not a good place to find a multi-purpose theme at an affordable price. With the lowest cost of around $150 for a premium theme, it can be out of budget for many online businesses. That’s why many merchants who need advanced features but don’t want to spend too much on a theme, usually go and find an “external” theme for their store. Among all the options outside of the Shopify Theme Store, the Ella theme is the most popular.
These are the reasons for its popularity.
A brief introduction to Ella theme
Ella theme is developed by the Halothemes team. They are a Power Elite Author on Envato market aka Themeforest. As shown on the website, this theme has been purchased by more than 23,000 customers and has an overall rating of 4.82/5.0.
Since its launch in 2014, the Ella theme has been regularly updated to catch up with the latest release of Shopify. Following up on the Online Store 2.0 with the Section Everywhere structure, dedicated developers of Ella theme also make it “Section available” on every page.
Not only that, but it also releases new layouts and new skins frequently so users can enjoy tons of professional and creative design options as well as advanced features. Ella theme now offers 22+ Homepage and Skin layouts, 09+ stunning Shopping pages, 12+ Layout Options Product pages, Multiple Headers + Footers. Such an amazing number! All at the cost of $89, only half of the price of a premium theme on the Shopify Theme Store.
This is the full list of all Elle theme's features. (Source: Ella theme preview)
Let’s dive into more details to see if it fits your needs.
What features can you find on Ella Shopify Theme?
Child themes for specific industries
There are more than 16 stunning child themes for you to choose from. All are included in the Ella package at just $89. These child themes are like different theme styles to fit the particular items or products you are selling. After installation, you can customize it according to your needs and preferences.
Gorgeous child themes of Ella Shopify theme cover a wide range of businesses from fashion and accessories, to food and beverages. (Source: Halothemes)
Read more: How much cost to open a Shopify Store in 2022?
Impressive header and footer design
If you have a lot of collections, mega menu navigation is an excellent choice. Ella gives that option without the help of a third-party app. There is also other basic and simple design in case you are starting with a small number of products.
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Various layouts for header and footer with Ella Shopify theme. (Source: Ella theme preview on Themeforest)
The backend settings for the header and footer using the Ella theme are diverse. After installation, you can go to Theme > Customize > Theme settings > Multiple layouts. All the available designs for the header and footer will be there for you to choose from.
Incredible customization on all pages
Ella allows you to choose from 22+ Homepage layouts. In each option, you can freely customize the page to your liking with multiple premade blocks and custom blocks. You can have a big and full-width slideshow with headings, CTAs, About Us section, FAQs, Instagram gallery, featured collections, featured items, Quick view & Add-to-cart buttons, etc. All these things can be conveniently set up in the editor board. Besides, you can add multiple custom blocks like product reviews, blog posts, etc to enhance the shopping experience on the homepage or any other pages.
Changing the text size, the image size, and quality is also a piece of cake with an auto-resize or crop checkbox in the theme settings.
Multiple layout options with numerous settings are also available for collection pages and product pages.
The coolest thing about collections on the Ella theme is the sidebar filtering. As you may know already, Shopify Online Store 2.0 lets users create 5 basic filter options (Availability, Price, Product type, Vendor (Brand), Product options). Ella theme displays these filters pretty nicely with a swatch for the filter by color. However, if you need more complicated filters like by tags or by metafields, we highly recommend using a 3rd-party app that integrates with the Ella theme like Product Filter & Search by Boost Commerce.
Related read:
Product pages have some awesome built-in features like a countdown timer or the product size chart. The former helps you with flash sales or other promotional campaigns while the latter lets you create and display size charts on all or just selected product pages. You don't need a 3rd party app for these features anymore while using the Ella theme.
Another great thing about this theme's product page is the product custom tab. With this feature, content on this selling page is sorted reasonably with tabs. You can add multiple details like Customer reviews, Payment methods, Return policy, Shipping info, etc without lengthening the product page.
Outstanding cart features to boost sales
To leverage sales for online stores, easy and convenient checkout is a must to avoid cart abandonment. Therefore, the Elle theme puts the prime focus on its cart features.
With this theme, you have a super cool sticky and pop-up AJAX cart. It's a time-saving option for shoppers as they can edit the product number, variant, etc, and add it to the shopping cart without refreshing the page or visiting the cart page. What's more, merchants can enable an upselling section with the “You may also like" block for this pop-up AJAX cart. When customers click on the bag icon or the wishlist icon, you can also choose to display a drop-down cart. Using this, they can glance at their cart and checkout right away.
Related read:
How is our experience with this theme?
The Good
Overall, we had a nice experience with the Ella theme. Compared to premium and expensive themes on the Shopify Theme Store, Ella can handle all features at half the price.
The installation is not that difficult, although you have to download the theme files then upload them to the Theme library. The instructions are well documented so non-tech-savvy users can install the Ella theme within a few minutes.
Guidelines for installation are clear enough. (Source: Ella Theme on Themeforest)
When using a theme outside the theme store, Shopify merchants usually worry about the integration. However, it comes as a surprise that this theme has integrated with many Shopify apps including Yotpo, Klaviyo, Avada, Pagefly, Product Filter and Search by Boost Commerce, and more.
(Source: Ella theme preview on Themeforest)
Furthermore, it is very responsive. Using GTMetrix, the quickest fully loaded time of page details is only 3.3s with a 90% (A) page speed score.
Multiple layouts and skins mean that you can do A/B testing with the design to see which one fits your target audience best. This is useful for your conversion rate optimization strategy.
The Not-so-good
As there are various options and settings, it's easy to get overwhelmed when you first encounter the Ella theme. Sometimes, the choice paralysis makes it time-consuming to finish the set-up of one single element like the navigation bar. And it takes even more time when you want to create a page.
Another minor issue we found when using the Ella theme is sometimes the changes are not instantly reflected on the editor board. You need to save to the live view to see the changes, which is a bit annoying.
The downside of all “external" themes is the lack of support. The regular support period from Halothemes is only 6 months and won't embrace:
- Customization, Setting up store & Installation (Contact us if you need these services, we are available)
- 3rd party apps
- The theme is customized without our permission and caused bugs
- Teaching you HTML & CSS etc.
Who should use the Ella theme?
With all the analysis above, we would recommend the Ella theme for new businesses that require a lot of advanced features but don't have the budget for a premium Shopify theme. If you are already accustomed to coding, the Ella theme is a perfect choice. Tech dummies can still use it but it may take you a little longer.
Some real stores that are based on the Ella theme:
In conclusion
This is the end of our in-depth review of the Ella Shopify theme. Hope that you find it helpful. Check out more theme reviews for Shopify here. See you next time!
