When you look at any online store, what is the first thing that attracts your attention? A stylish and orderly appearance will be pretty high up the list. In addition, a store must be inviting and usable; you must believe you can search the site and buy what you want without any difficulties. 

The key to those two all-important things in any Magento 2 store is the theme. Just like the storefront in a bricks and mortar shop, the theme is your primary point of contact with the customer.

This article will give you an overview of the different types of Magento 2 themes and outline the essential features of a good theme. We will also describe a few of our favorite themes and offer some examples of successful stores that use them effectively.

The Bare Essentials

Whatever the nature of your business or the products you sell, the theme you select must satisfy the following criteria:

• Superb performance
• A good match for your business and product
• SEO optimization
• Optimal user experience
• Code quality according to standards and security
• Customization options from the admin panel
• Cross browser compatibility
• High responsiveness
• Built-in features (like blog, mega menu, lookbook, layered navigation etc.)

There are basically two ways you can go with Magento 2 themes: ready made and custom designed, although in practice all themes are hybrids of these two options. 

Ready made themes can be purchased on Magento Marketplace and Themeforest, among other places. There are currently thousands of ready made themes available, with more being added every day. With such a massive variety, there is usually a theme to fit every type of business, functionality and product.

By contrast, a custom theme is designed completely from scratch incorporating market research, user needs and the brand itself. Although custom development typically starts with an existing theme - often a basic Magento Luma Theme by Adobe Commerce  - the finished result is far more complex and focused. Obviously, this takes a good deal of time and expertise. For this reason, custom themes are typically developed for companies that care a lot about scalability and security or that have unusual products or marketing needs. The distinct design of a custom site can also help your site stand out from your competitors.

Nearly all ready-made themes are customized in various ways during application, making them de facto hybrids. This option is probably the most popular because of its flexibility and because using the theme will speed up the development process. While some businesses require only minimal theme adjustment, others need a lot of complex customisations. An experienced Magento 2 development company like Luxinten can extensively modulate almost any theme to precisely match our clients’ needs.

A Few of Our Favorite themes

When we take on a new project, we usually refer our customers to our own theme: Luximo. This is because we have an intimate grasp of its high-quality code and applicability. We have also developed numerous Luximo extensions and optimisations, allowing us to spend less time on these features after the launch of the website. 

Further options for themes we consider cheap but effective are Porto, Fastest, and Infinit, the last two ready-made themes created by Codazon. They are used on a lot of websites, have many useful features, are regularly updated for Magneto versions, and offer a great variety of visual styles.

And another option that we also recommend is to use Hyva Theme. It is more expensive. You have to pay 1000 euros for the license, but it is especially valuable if you are focusing on performance.

Porto

An outstanding and versatile Magento theme that has garnered widespread popularity, 20+k websites use this theme. It's an excellent choice for those seeking a reliable and performance-oriented Magento theme to create a visually appealing and user-friendly online store. It proposes 40+ pre-built demos and layout options.

Main Features:

• Optimized for Speed Performance - 95% Google page speed score
• Compatible with major Magento extensions, also Magento extension providers do for Porto
• Customizable mega menu for intuitive navigation.
• Product page variations, including sliders and image zoom.
• AJAX add-to-cart for a smoother shopping process.
• SEO optimization for improved search engine rankings.

Price: $129 Link demo for Porto

Fastest

A versatile out-of-the-box theme with more than 20 layout options. Furthermore, Fastest allows developers to create fully responsive websites for mobile devices with its mobile optimization theme.

Main features:

• AJAX SEO multi select layered navigation, speeding up product searches
• Codazon megamenu drag & drop, offering many dropdown style tabs, lists and icons
• Advanced blog features, supporting images, video and audio on your blog site
• Lookbook professional extension.

Price: $129 Link demo for Fastest

Infinit

A highly versatile theme, Infinit is used by food, fashion, and technology retailers (to name but a few). Moreover, it offers many color and layout options to meet your commercial and marketing requirements. It has more than 45 layout options and a wide range lof  functionalities.

Main Features:

• Visual page builders
• One-click to import demos and designs
• Infinite scroll in category page
• One step checkout
• Shop by brand, search by category 
• Blog by Magefan.com
• Lookbook professional extension.
• Mega Menu Drag & Drop

Price: $129 Link demo for Infinit 

Hyvä

Let us move on to Hyva, a prominent custom theme. It offers a brand-new Magento frontend built from scratch, using the Magento templating system but written entirely from the ground up.

All layout.xml, .phtml files and all JavaScript have been discarded, resulting in a much leaner experience than the typical ready-made theme. Hyva is not merely a theme, since it has its own contributors, partners and community.

The Hyvä Theme was built with a focus on performance and reduced complexity, meaning you get a faster webshop while saving many development hours on customizations. It really is a perfect base from which to create your own design. While Hyvä is ultimately built on the basic Magento Luma theme, some people now consider it a viable alternative to advanced PWA solutions. As we develop many PWA projects, we know it requires a high level of expertise, time and money to build a truly great online PWA shop. Hyvä offers this exciting opportunity to more store owners for a fraction of the cost.

Main Features of interest:

• Unlimited updates included
• Over 400 agencies are currently working with Hyvä worldwide.
• Access to third-party compatibility modules
• Out of the box, Hyvä scores a 100/100 score in Google PageSpeed and it passes Core Web
• Vitals on all metrics (screenshot).

HYVÄ Themes License: €1,000 Link for demo Hyvä

Need help selecting your new theme?

With extensive experience of e-commerce development and maintenance, Luxinten can either use an established ready-made theme as a starting point or develop a new theme completely from scratch. 

Check out these custom websites we've produced using only the Magento 2 platform with a basic Luma theme from Adobe Commerce:

frenchbedroomcompany.co.uk/ Read about this case study here.

catwatches.com/ Read about this case study here.

metaltis.com/ Read about this case study here. 

litecraft.co.uk/ Read about this case study here.

merchoid.com/ Read about this case study here.

Equally, we can adjust one of the ready-made themes to craft exactly the right look for your brand and business. For example, we created https://jvp-shop.com/ ready- made theme. But as usual it involved applying corrections, changes and additional integrations to produce a store that precisely matched our customer’s needs. 

Here are a few more examples of our completed projects based on the hyghly customised hybrid option described in this article:

Vivamknetwork.co.uk/ Based on the Porto theme but totally rebuilt, you can read this case study here.

Leisner.dk/ Based on Porto theme but with many changes, customisations and added bespoke brand icons, you can read this case study here

Redlaser.bm/ Based on the Porto theme with minimal changes in colors, you can read this case study here  

Cabins.co.uk/ Based on a ready- made theme with customisations and bespoke unique icon.

Dembohouse.ua Read about this case study here

Zvaba.com.ua Read about this case study here

Generally, we recommend that our clients opt for adaptation of an existing ready-made theme rather than develop their own theme from scratch. Ready-made themes are well tested in the marketplace, are highly compatible, can be precisely adjusted to fit your needs and allow us to complete your site much faster. In short, ready-made themes save development time and keep costs down, leaving you more money to spend on your business.

Some Key Luxinten Statistics:

• 50+ projects with annual support
• 30+ successful full Magento 2 migrations
• 250+ solutions implemented on Magento
• 99% customer retention rate
• Adobe Certified Experts

If you want to know more about any of our services, please contact us.