By Rajendra Bhochalya
Finding the perfect Shopify theme isn’t easy. Most ecommerce merchants know that the right theme is crucial to earning consumer trust (and boosting conversions).
But there are so many different options to choose from, it’s often difficult to know where to get started.
As a website developer (with over ten years of experience), I’ve had an opportunity to experiment with countless theme options over the years.
The Kagami theme is one I’ve heard about from a lot of clients, who rave about its customization features, and fantastic navigation capabilities.
I put this theme to test on a Shopify test store, to find out exactly what makes it so appealing to Shopify merchants, and where it might fall short for certain store owners.
We conduct hands-on evaluations of each Shopify theme we review to deliver authentic, and objective insights to our audience.
Quick Verdict: Pros and Cons
The Kagami theme is a straightforward and highly customizable theme, with a lot of great features, such as a built-in newsletter module, enhanced search functionality, and support for embedded Instagram carousels.
It’s a great choice for companies that want to showcase their products with high-quality images, and streamline the navigation process for users.
However, I think it could benefit from some extra conversion-boosting features, like “recently viewed” or “recommended products” sections.
Pros:
- Versatile and responsive design
- SEO optimization built-in
- Newsletter and Instagram carousel modules
- Flexible, modular home pages
- Great documentation and customer support
Cons:
- Limited conversion features
- Fewer template and design options than competitors
- High pricing for the features you get
The Kagami Shopify Theme: Overview and Pricing
The Kagami theme is a premium theme designed for Shopify and Vend stores by the popular development company “Maestroo”.
I’ve actually tried quite a few of Maestroo’s themes in the past, including their extremely popular “Prestige” and “Impact” themes.
This company has an excellent reputation for developing high-performing, clean, and attractive themes for store owners.
Oddly, however, the Kagami theme isn’t one of the options listed on Maestrooo’s profile on the Shopify Theme marketplace.
You’ll need to purchase this theme either directly from Maestrooo, or from a third-party agency. The good news is that Kagami is a lot cheaper than the developer’s other themes on the Shopify marketplace.
It only costs $180 ($200 less than options like Impact).
However, while the Kagami theme is a little cheaper, it also features fewer capabilities than some other Maestroo themes.
There aren’t as many templates and design options to explore, and you don’t get a host of built-in conversion optimizing tools either.
I’ve definitely seen other low-cost themes that offer a lot more functionality than this one.
The Kagami Theme: Designs and Customization
The Kagami theme is available in two preset styles, both of which are pretty similar on the surface – giving you a flexible “grid-style” layout for your Shopify store.
Both templates include a large “hero” section, where you can add images and CTA buttons to help drive conversions on your store.
They also both include a customizable menu bar, although the second style organizes all of your menu segments into a single button that can “slide” into the side of your page.
Both of these template options are highly customizable, and responsive, designed to work well on any screen size, or browser.
Plus, they both support high-resolution images.
What I really like about the design capabilities of this theme, however, is how modular the sections are.
Every block of content you add to your pages will be implemented into its own separate module, making it easy to reorganize everything on your site without having to dive into code.
The Kagami Shopify Theme: The Top Features
Compared to many of the other Shopify themes I’ve reviewed, the Kagami theme isn’t as feature rich.
It’s worth noting this theme is primarily designed for Vend stores, but it can be customized to suit your Shopify needs, which might be why it’s lacking certain functions.
The most significant features I noticed when experimenting with the theme include:
Navigation Features
One thing the Kagami theme does very well is navigation. You can easily organize mega menus to help guide your customers through different product categories to the right item for their needs.
You also get the option to choose between horizontal and vertical navigation layouts.
Since the header and footer sections of the theme are extremely customizable, you can also add all of the extra navigation elements you want here, such as links to FAQ and About pages, or social media icons.
The best feature overall is the intelligent search module.
This basically means that the Kagami theme will automatically suggest products and pages for your customers to visit when they enter a couple of letters into the search bar.
This definitely saves your customers time searching for the products they want.
Conversion and Promotional Features
The conversion-focused features on the Kagami theme are a little lacking. I couldn’t find any options for things like “recommended products” or “recently viewed product” sections on this theme.
That’s unusual, considering these features are standard with most of the other Maestrooo themes on the Shopify store.
You can experiment with things like product badges and tiles, as well as high-resolution images and videos, or size charts and shipping information.
However, the advanced features are pretty limited.
One of the best tools is the built-in Instagram module, which makes it easy to showcase user-generated content on your site, based on a specific account or hashtag.
The other top conversion-focused theme is the built-in newsletter module, which allows you to create popups and custom forms to collect contact details from your target audience.
SEO Optimization Features
Maestrooo advertises the Kagami theme as a search engine optimized option for online retailers. It supports things like Google Rich Snippets, for enhanced product search listings, and allows you to add reviews and star ratings to products.
It also features relatively clean code, and promises fast loading times, which is great for SEO. However, based on the research I did, the loading times for this theme can vary.
According to Rvere’s theme ranking website, for instance, the Kagami theme ranked as number 41 out of the 83 themes they analyzed for performance metrics.
Kagami does appear to be a little faster than the average theme in terms of things like “time to first byte”, and it comes with minimized CSS, JS, and Lazyloaded images, for an extra performance boost. However, I’ve seen faster theme options out there.
Merchant Reviews and Customer Support
While Maestrooo says it’s never had a negative review for the Kagami theme, I’m not sure how trustworthy that claim is.
I couldn’t find a lot of reviews about this theme (at least from Shopify vendors), since it generally requires users to work with a developer to customize the solution according to their specific needs.
Although Maestrooo does have a good reputation on the Shopify Theme Marketplace, it has earned some negative reviews in the past, from customers who complain about bugs and the complexity of making granular changes to theme designs.
On the plus side, Maestrooo does promise decent customer support. They offer plenty of documentation to users, and you can reach the team with any questions you might have via email.
Although there’s no live chat function, the company is pretty quick at getting back in touch with customers about technical issues.
My Expert Verdict
Overall, if you’re looking for a Vend store theme, then Kagami might be a great choice. For Shopify storeowners, however, the theme is somewhat lacking in various areas.
It doesn’t have the best selection of layout options to choose from, and it’s missing a range of conversion-boosting features.
Although the theme is attractive enough, and does come with a handful of useful capabilities to help you promote your products, you’ll probably need to work with a developer or design expert to get the most out of Kagami.
I’d probably recommend considering other alternatives before settling for this option – as there are plenty of better-value themes out there.
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