I’ve reviewed quite a few free and premium themes for Shopify over the years, but the Ella Shopify theme is by far, one of my favorites. Not only is it extremely versatile, and feature-rich, but it excelled in all of the performance tests we run on themes here at Ecomm.Design.
On top of that, the Ella theme is a lot more affordable than most other premium themes. If you want to upgrade your site’s appearance and performance for less than $100, this could be the theme for you. Here’s everything you need to know if you’re considering using this theme for your store.
Quick Verdict
In my opinion, the Ella theme is a great choice for anyone who wants to take their Shopify store to the next level. It’s robust, feature-rich, and highly customizable, plus it can adapt to suit virtually any kind of company, whether you’re focusing on fashion, technology or dropshipping.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Numerous skins and layout options to suit any aesthetic
- Highly responsive, with fast page loading times on any device
- Tons of premium sales features (such as cart options and countdown timers)
- Regularly updated feature set
- Integrated search engine optimization
- Support for multiple languages and currencies
Cons:
- Slight initial learning curve for beginners
- Optimization is essential to maintain fast loading times
What is the Ella Theme?
The Ella Shopify theme is a premium theme, designed for Shopify Online Store 2.0, by HaloThemes. Like all of the top Shopify themes, it promises blazing fast loading speed, and access to free lifetime updates, so as new features emerge, you can easily add new functionality to your store.
Ella is a multipurpose theme, ideal for virtually any type of company. It’s also one of the most popular premium themes out there today, earning more than 1,209 reviews, and a 4.8 out of 5 star rating on Theme Forest.
Notably, HaloThemes says Ella is the “#1 best-selling Shopify theme of all time”, although I’d recommend taking that claim with a pinch of salt.
Still, it’s definitely one of the more affordable premium themes I’ve reviewed, with an $89 one-time purchase price. This pricing includes a lot of features you might have to pay extra for with other themes, like bundling and discount tools, product filtering tools, upsell options, and lookbooks.
Ella Theme Features: Design Options
One of the things I love about the Ella Shopify theme is how versatile it is. There are a lot of themes out there specifically designed for certain industries (check out our template gallery if you want some inspiration), but Ella is a great option for just about any type of store.
When you install the theme, you’ll get immediate access to a range of niche-specific layouts you can customize to suit your specific needs. For instance, you get:
- 28-pre-built home-page layouts
- 6 category page layouts
- 9 product page layout options
- 6 blog layouts
- 7 collection layout options
- Multiple headers and footers (including mobile optimized options)
- 8 advanced mega menu layouts
Ella Shopify Theme – Classic Design Layout
All of the design components included in the theme are mobile optimized and responsive, plus, you get access to Google Web Fonts, and Shopify’s font picture, to help you enhance your store’s appearance. Notably, you don’t have to stick with the pre-made templates either.
There are tons of ways to adjust your site with extra components, like hover effects for product images, a fixed header for easy navigation, and enhanced instant search. You can even add FAQ sections, Instagram feeds, and color swatches to your pages.
I did find navigating all the options a little confusing at first, but overall, editing the Ella theme is pretty straightforward.
You’ll get the same intuitive experience you would with any premium theme compatible with Shopify Online Store 2.0. The only difference is you’ll have a lot more options for each block and section of your website.
Ecommerce and Selling Features
One thing that really impressed me about the Ella theme, is how many built-in features you get to boost your conversion rates. Most premium Shopify themes will charge you a lot more for advanced options like upselling and product bundling tools.
This theme, however, is packed with virtually everything you need to deliver an excellent customer experience, and increase sales. Alongside a one-click checkout, you can also access an express order module, a sticky “add-to-cart” feature, and custom product tabs.
For fashion companies, there are advanced size charts, and lookbook modules, as well as advanced product swatches. You can even allow your customers to create wish lists, or showcase frequently-bought-together products in a carousel.
Plus, you can enhance your product pages with video sliders, showcase reviews with a Loox integration, and create custom out-of-stock notifications for pages. I particularly like the slide-in popups, and the “recent sales notifications”, which are ideal for encouraging conversions and earning customer trust.
The Ajax navigation features are fantastic too, ensuring you can deliver a streamlined and convenient shopping experience for customers on any device. Plus, the theme can automatically adapt to different languages and currencies, making it ideal for global sellers.
Some of the other great ecommerce features include:
- Advanced product filtering and search options
- Sale buttons and promotional banners
- High-definition image galleries
- Newsletter signup popups
- Cart upsell banners
- Hot stock features (For popular products)
- Hover effects for product images
- Quick edit options (For your shopping cart)
- Ask an expert customer service form
Performance, Compatibility, and SEO
As I mentioned above, one of the biggest benefits of the Ella theme is its excellent performance. While it’s not the fastest Shopify theme I’ve ever tried, the huge number of features included with the theme don’t seem to slow loading times much.
I’d still recommend ensuring your site is optimized with a few page speed best-practices of course. Using a CDN, compressing your images, and being selective with the number of apps you add to your site will help to mitigate performance issues.
The good news is that you won’t have to worry about responsivity with the Ella theme. I tried launching a demo store using this theme on a desktop, mobile phone, and tablet, and the pages loaded almost instantly on all devices, without any major issues.
Ella also supports lazy image loading, and instant image resizing, for an enhanced mobile user experience.
When it comes to compatibility with other apps and plugins, Ella seems to work with virtually anything you can access on the Shopify app store. You shouldn’t have any problem using tools like Loox to showcase product reviews, or PageFly to build landing pages.
One point worth noting, however, is that while Ella supports multiple languages and currencies, it won’t support all languages and currencies automatically. That being said, HaloThemes does regularly update Ella with new features, so it’s worth double-checking the latest release notes from time to time.
If you’re worried about SEO, Ella could help to boost your rankings. It offers the option to include Google’s rich product snippets in your store. Plus, you can create numerous custom pages, from FAQs, to “About Us” pages to give the search engines more to index.
Customer Support Options
One issue I often have with Shopify themes, is that they rarely come with a lot of customer support options. You can usually find basic FAQs and self-help resources on a theme designer’s website, but actually getting in touch with the team can be complicated.
Based on the reviews I’ve read from other customers using Ella, HaloThemes is pretty reliable when it comes to customer support. Although you can only request technical assistance via email, the team is pretty prompt at addressing issues.
They aim to respond to most queries within about 24 hours, but you might find yourself waiting a little longer from time to time, depending on where you’re based.
Still, you should be able to troubleshoot most issues yourself, as HaloThemes provides extensive documentation for all of it’s themes.
If you need advanced assistance, you can consider purchasing HaloThemes’ extended support package. This currently costs $27.75 (although it’s usually priced at $64.75), on top of the $89 you’ll pay for your premium theme.
Read more:
Ella Theme Review: Final Verdict
Ultimately, the Ella Shopify theme seems to be an excellent option for any business owner looking to upgrade the appearance and functionality of their ecommerce store.
Despite it’s extremely affordable price tag, it comes packed with plenty of features and numerous layout options, great for elevating your brand’s reputation and increasing conversion rates.
Plus, like most of the top Shopify themes, Ella is constantly evolving with new features and capabilities. All new updates are included in your one-time purchase price, so there won’t be any unexpected extra fees to pay later on.
Of course, Ella might not be the ideal theme for every Shopify store owner. If you’re not convinced that this multifunctional theme is right for you, check out our other reviews.
Alternatively, take a look at our template gallery, for a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most impressive Shopify themes in action.