Choosing the ideal Shopify theme is the key to creating an attractive, customer-focused storefront that drives consistent sales.
I know from personal experience as a long-term web developer how crucial the right theme can be, but choosing the best option isn’t easy.
Shopify gives companies endless freedom to choose from a range of free and premium themes, both offered by its own theme marketplace, and external vendors.
Unlike many of the other themes I’ve tried, which attempt to target many different store owners, the Layla theme is a highly niche-specific solution, focused exclusively on furniture stores.
I put this theme to the test with a demo store, to discover whether it can really help furniture sellers increase conversions and delight customers.
We conduct extensive tests on each Shopify theme we review, to ensure we can offer authentic insights to our readers.
Quick Verdict: Pros and Cons
The Layla theme is an affordable, feature-rich Shopify theme, designed specifically for furniture stores. It’s easy to use and customize, and comes with handy niche-specific capabilities, like product comparison modules, and customer accounts.
However, it does miss some premium features, such as “product suggestions” and recently viewed carousels.
Pros:
- Highly customizable components (including a custom checkout)
- Heavily focused on product promotion
- Designed by experts for furniture stores
- Global, multi-currency support
- Intuitive marketing capabilities
Cons:
- Missing some advanced conversion features
- May not be suitable for every niche
The Layla Shopify Theme Review: Overview and Pricing
The Layla theme is a sleek, grid-based Shopify theme, specifically designed for furniture merchants. It was created by the “DesignThemes” team, well-known for their niche-specific themes, such as the Salon, and Adventure themes.
This theme isn’t available on the Shopify theme marketplace, instead, you’ll need to purchase it from the popular third-party site: ThemeForest.
You’ll pay $59 for a regular license, or $1,500 for an extended license, with extra fees for “extended support” on both plans.
This makes the Layla theme one of the most affordable options I’ve reviewed. I think it would be an excellent option for budget-conscious, smaller brands, that want to extend beyond the functionality offered by free Shopify themes.
Although this theme isn’t as feature rich as some of the options I’ve tried, it’s still packed with great capabilities for furniture retailers, and offers plenty of customization options.
The Layla Theme Design Options
Unlike the themes you’ll find on Shopify’s marketplace, the Layla theme doesn’t come with various “presets” to choose from. However, it is highly customizable.
The grid-based theme makes it easy to create an attractive, minimalistic store, that perfectly represents your brand.
You can adapt various component’s of the theme’s design and layout with drag-and-drop modules. Plus, you’ll have access to endless options for changes fonts, colors, and background images, without any coding.
Users can create custom “About Us”, homepage, and product page sections. However, there are limited options for adjusting headers and footers.
The good news is that however you choose to customize your site’s design, the Layla theme is ultra-responsive, designed to work great on any device your customer uses.
The Layla Shopify Theme: The Top Features
Compared to some of the other premium themes I’ve reviewed in the past, the Layla theme is a little more basic. There aren’t hundreds of features to browse through, but you do get a lot of the capabilities you need to make your theme more attractive, and engaging for shoppers.
Product Display Features
One of the things I love most about the Layla theme is how well it showcases products. You can add a “slick slider” to any page, showcasing your latest trending items and collections.
Plus, for collection pages, it’s easy to adjust items in grid or list-based mode.
On product pages, you can add labels like “Sale” tags to your products, to attract customer attention, and create product tabs sharing information, such as material details for furniture products.
Companies can use carousels to showcase products from different angles, and add product sorting capabilities to collection pages.
Plus, I love the fact that there’s an integrated “product comparison” feature, which allows customers to view their preferred furniture items side-by-side alongside details on pricing, features, and more.
Navigation and Checkout Features
For navigation, the Layla theme unfortunately doesn’t offer a “mega menu” option, which could mean it’s less suited to larger companies with huge product catalogs.
However, you do get a highly customizable menu, as well as the product filtering options mentioned above.
You can add various custom pages to your website, as well as a custom “information” widget, which is great if you want to share specific details about your furniture, such as the dimensions of a certain item, or care instructions.
There’s an Ajax cart option, which allows customers to purchase items immediately without leaving the page they’re on.
Plus, you can allow buyers to pay for products in a variety of currencies. The best feature overall here is the “branded” checkout, which allows you to customize Shopify’s world-leading checkout easily with logos, colors, and headers.
Marketing and Conversion Features
Although the Layla theme misses some of my favorite marketing and conversion features, such as countdown timers, and “recommended products” sections, it can still help you boost conversions.
You can add customer reviews to product pages to earn buyer trust.
There’s also the option to allow customers to create accounts with your store, and add the products they like to a custom wish list.
The Layla theme features an integrated newsletter form builder, which you can connect to platforms like Mailchimp instantly.
Plus, you can add social sharing buttons to encourage customers to showcase their purchases across a range of social platforms.
This theme is also SEO-optimized, which means product data is formatted for Google’s rich snippet area, boosting your chances of attracting customer attention.
As an added benefit, this theme is extremely lightweight, helping to ensure each page loads quickly across every device.
Other Impressive Features
A few other impressive features to note within the Layla theme include:
- Featured products sliders
- Toggle menus
- Customizable blog sections
- Detailed documentation
- Font Awesome integration
- Animation capabilities
The Shopify Layla Theme: My Verdict
Overall, the Shopify Layla theme might not be the most advanced theme I’ve tried, but it’s definitely a good option for smaller furniture stores looking to boost their brand’s reputation and enhance the customer experience.
This easy-to-use and highly customizable theme is affordable, lightweight, and even includes a few great features to help increase your conversion rates.
Compared to other DesignThemes products, the Layla theme doesn’t have quite as many purchases or reviews – but that could be because it’s such a niche-specific offering.
If you’re running a smaller furniture store, or you’re dropshipping in the furniture niche, then this could be the ideal theme for your Shopify site.
Alternatively, if you’re looking for something a little more advanced, I’d recommend checking out my other Shopify theme reviews.
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