By Rajendra BhochalyaAs an experienced website developer myself, I know how impactful the right theme can be on an ecommerce site’s performance, and conversion rates. Though Shopify offers plenty of great free and premium themes on its Theme marketplace, sometimes merchants want something different.
The Kalles Shopify theme, available on the ThemeForest website, is a versatile option for companies looking for dozens of built-in solutions for boosting customer engagement and sales.
However, it won’t be the right option for every Shopify store owner. I put this theme to the test to help you decide if it’s the best choice for you.
We conduct meticulous hands-on evaluations of all Shopify themes we review.
Quick Verdict: Pros and Cons
I consider the Kalles theme to be an exceptional option for Shopify store owners searching for exceptional customization, and powerful features in an affordable package. It’s a reliable choice for small businesses and startups ready to boost their conversion rates.
Pros:
- Straightforward and convenient customization options
- Huge selection of conversion and marketing features
- Great search and discovery
- User-friendly design with fast loading times
- Compatible with plenty of Shopify apps
Cons:
- None of the benefits of a theme on the Shopify theme marketplace
- Extra fees for long-term support.
The Kalles Shopify Theme: Overview and Pricing
Designed by “Th3e4”, the Kalles Shopify theme is a highly rated premium theme, packed with features perfect for boosting your conversion rates. It supports 16 different languages, and comes with dozens of different layout and design options. Plus, it’s compatible with plenty of great Shopify apps, like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and more.
I think plenty of different Shopify merchants would benefit from this theme, as it’s very easy to use, even if you don’t have developer or design knowledge. The design options are sleek and minimalistic, perfect for a modern store. Plus, the theme comes packed with features that can enhance sales in all kinds of industries, from product filtering to stock countdown options.
However, this theme is best overall for smaller companies and startups, as it’s tailored to beginners who want to quickly optimize store performance with minimal effort.
The price for the Kalles theme starts at $89 for a Regular license with 6 months support, or you can upgrade to 12 months of support for $166.75. The “Extended” license is somewhat more expensive, starting at $4750 with 6 months of support, or $6250 with 12 months of support.
The Kalles Theme Design Options
Though I typically recommend themes on the Shopify Theme store to beginners in the ecommerce world, external options like the Kalles theme do have some benefits from a design perspective. The Kalles theme features more than 50 prebuilt homepage demo options, as well as 15 single product page layouts, 10 shop page layouts, and over 800 Google fonts.
You can experiment with unlimited colors and components, without compromising on responsive design or page loading speeds. Plus, there are unlimited headers and footers to choose from, and even options for creating elegant animations.
The flat design style ensures whichever components you choose for your store, you’ll end up with a modern, minimalistic website, great for beginners. Plus, if you do have coding knowledge, you can experiment with HTML5 and CSS3 tableless designs. You even get 50+ HTML files built-in packed with graphics and unique images.
All you need to do is import your desired layout into your store, and you can quickly establish a stunning looking website, without any expert guidance.
The Kalles Shopify Theme: The Top Features
There are literally dozens of great features included with the Kalles theme – plus, it integrates seamlessly with plenty of other tools to enhance your store’s functionality. For instance, you can use the EcomRise theme for recent sales popups, frequently bought together showcases, and volume discount options. The developers also regularly update this theme with new features.
For instance, recently, they introduced a new “exit intent popup” option, which can include recommended products and discount coupon codes, to boost conversions.
Here are some of my favorite features included with this theme.
Merchandising Features
The Kalles theme is fantastic at giving companies unique ways to showcase their products. The product swatches, for instance, allow customers to preview different style and color options directly in the product listing page. You also get gallery and image swatch features, so customers can visualize product variations and make intelligent purchasing decisions quickly.
One particularly impressive feature is the 360-degree product viewer, which enables customers to interact with products, viewing them from every available angle.
The Instagram lookbook feature is another fantastic option – particularly for fashion companies. You can connect directly to Instagram and showcase other customers and influencers wearing your items in a variety of ways.
Plus, you’ll have access to image focal points, to draw attention to specific features within your products. You can also customize various aspects of product pages, without diving into custom meta fields, highlighting specific details like sizing information or ingredients.
I also love the ability to add product badges or “virtual stickers” to your product images, so you can show customer’s what’s trending, what’s on sale, and so on.
Marketing and Conversion Features
As I mentioned above, this theme is brimming with excellent capabilities to help businesses boost their conversion rates. Not only can you sell in multiple currencies automatically – expanding your store’s reach, but you can create a sticky “add-to-cart” function to simplify the purchasing process.
There’s a tool for calculating free shipping thresholds, which can be a great way to increase your chances of customers making a purchase. I love the product upsell features too. When customers add a product to their cart, the Kalles theme can intelligently suggest relevant products they might also be interested in.
You can showcase stock numbers and add countdown timers to increase urgency in your shoppers, and even give customers wish lists so they can pin their favorite products to purchase them later. Plus, you can customize pop-ups, smart bar, and slide-in promotional notifications with different colors, text, and animations. This gives you a great way to collect emails, and share offers.
On top of that, you also get frequently bought together carousels, great for cross-selling, as well as tools that allow customers to quickly compare similar products. There’s even an option to encourage customers to share their purchases on social media, which can help attract new shoppers to your store.
Product Discovery
The Kalles theme does an excellent job at making store navigation simple and intuitive for your customers. You can implement comprehensive storefront filtering options, and even allow customers to view products in category pages in a range of different formats, such as vertical and horizontal.
Customers can choose whether they want to sort through products based on price, color, size, or various other factors. There’s also support for advanced search, so customers can look for the items they want using keywords, tags, or categories. You can even enable suggestions to help customers find what they’re looking for a lot faster.
Like most of my favorite Shopify themes, the Kalles theme also comes with an advanced mega menu, with multiple levels of features products, categories, and promotional banners. You can make that menu sticky, to minimize the need for scrolling, too.
Other Stand-Out Features
A few other stand-out features I noticed when I was reviewing the Kalles Shopify theme include:
- Support for Google’s rich product snippets (to boost your search rankings)
- Product grouping – ideal for selling bundles and cross-selling
- Unlimited variant images for every product page
- Elegant animations and scroll-over options
- Image zoom and zoom magnify support
- Quick view support for customers who want to rapidly review product details
Page Speed and Customer Support Tests
The Kalles theme developers say that the theme’s average loading time is less than 3 seconds – but I wanted to put this to the test. After creating a couple of demo pages, I ran them through the PageSpeed Insights test and got an average loading speed of around 1.7 seconds.
Still, it’s worth remembering your loading times could vary depending on how many images you’re using on your pages, and the extra plug-ins and apps you use on Shopify.
From a customer support perspective, you do get a lot of guidance and excellent documentation from the “The4” team. In fact, many of the dozens of positive reviews shared on ThemeForest mention how quick the company are at responding to queries.
However, keep in mind that you will need to pay a little extra if you want to access long-term support from the 24/7 technical team.
Merchant Reviews and My Expert Verdict
Overall, the Kalles theme has an excellent reputation among merchants. More than 18,000 merchants have purchased this theme, and the overall rating is an almost consistent five stars. In my opinion, that makes sense, as this theme is definitely a great choice for a lot of companies.
While it might not be as scalable as some Shopify themes, it’s a brilliant pick for Shopify store owners who are just starting out on their ecommerce journey. The Kalles theme is feature-rich, affordable, and regularly updated with new capabilities.
