Loft Shopify Theme Review: Perfect for Promotion-Focused Brands

Over more than a decade as a Shopify developer, I’ve tested hundreds of different Shopify themes, from the simple, free options, to the more advanced premium themes.

The Loft theme – which I’m reviewing today, is one of the best options I’ve tried for promotion-focused brands.

It doesn’t just look fantastic, it comes packed with handy features that make it easy to attract the attention of buyers, and increase conversions.

Here, I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look at the pros and cons of this premium theme, to help you decide if it’s right for you.

Quick Verdict: Pros and Cons

Loft Theme Lawrence

The Loft Shopify theme is a modern, versatile theme, ideal for a wide range of brands selling all kinds of trending products.

It’s great for storytelling, and fantastic at highlighting the benefits of your products with promotional tools, upselling capabilities, and visually appealing elements.

Pros:

  • Sleek, modern design, ideal for countless brands
  • Lots of promotion-focused features
  • Easy to use and customize
  • Fast, efficient, and mobile responsive
  • Great navigation features
  • Excellent reputation among merchants

Cons:

  • Limitations on customer support
  • Missing some valuable features (like slide-out carts)

The Loft Shopify Theme: Overview and Pricing

The Loft Shopify theme, designed by Trailblaze Media (also known for their Shopify migration services), is a premium theme, with a one-off $280 price tag.

Like most premium themes on Shopify’s theme store, you can also access this theme with an unlimited free trial – which means you only pay when you actually publish your store.

It’s designed to be sleek, lightweight, and modern, with three attractive presets, and plenty of customization options.

What really makes it stand out, is it’s focus on “promotion”, with dozens of capabilities for highlighting sales, discounts, products, and more.

It even comess with built-in upselling tools, and a stock counter to increase urgency.

Notably, it does lack a few extra features I would have liked to see, such as lookbooks, slide-out carts, animation options, and size charts (for fashion companies).

Still, for the price, it’s a great all-around theme, with plenty of benefits to offer growing brands.

The Loft Shopify Theme: Example Presets

Like most premium Shopify themes, the Loft theme gives you a handful of “example” presets to choose from, saving you time on initially setting up your store.

All of these presets share the same features, and come with a great, dynamic aesthetic – fantastic for modern brands.

Nashville

Preview Nashville Theme

Nashville is an attractive, minimalist theme, with a large central space at the top of the page for your images, and plenty of white space.

It has a bold title bar, and a neutral color palette, which makes it a great option for furniture, jewelry, and fashion companies.

Kansas City

Preview Kansas City Theme

The Kansas City preset is a slightly more playful style in my opinion, with plenty of bright colors and bold font choices to grab attention.

It’s brilliant for making your store look youthful and dynamic – so I think it would work well on companies selling health products, accessories for younger buyers, pet products, and similar merchandise.

Lawrence

The Lawrence preset is similar in many ways to the Nashville option, with a slightly different layout for your menu, and more rectangular spaces for images.

You get a blend of neutral and bright colors to help you draw the eye to specific sections of your store, and the typography is crisp and modern.

I’d really recommend this preset to just about any brand, regardless of your niche.

The Loft Shopify Theme: The Standout Features

Although I’ve definitely seen more “feature-rich” themes on the Shopify theme store, Loft still has plenty to offer.

The biggest downside for me is that there aren’t a lot of “cart” features to explore – like sticky or slide-out carts, or options for in-store pick-ups.

However, it’s worth remembering that this theme is designed to be promotion first, and it’s great for elevating your marketing efforts.

Customization Options

First, although you only get three pre-set options to choose from – that’s still enough to give you plenty of variety with the Loft theme.

I’ve seen themes with more options – but there are also hundreds that have fewer.

With some alternatives, I also think the presets are very similar, whereas Loft gives you more “distinct” options to choose from.

It’s also easy to customize the Loft theme even further with a simple drag-and-drop editor.

You can adjust the layout of your theme, the colors, fonts, and other elements, making your store feel truly unique to you. Make sure you check out some of the example stores using Loft for inspiration.

Cart and Checkout Features

As I mentioned above, Loft is a bit lacking when it comes to cart and checkout features. In fact, the only thing you really get is cart notes.

There’s no sticky or slide-out cart option, no solution for in-store pickups, or helping customers to sign in with the “Shop” app.

You’re also missing a “quick buy” function – which I think would make this theme a lot more conversion-friendly.

Marketing and Conversion

Marketing and conversion features is where Loft really shines – even in comparison to many other premium themes.

You can experiment with in-menu promotions, highlighting your products while customers are navigating your store.

There are promo banners, that you can strategically display on your home page to drive conversions.

Theme-Loft-Demo

Plus, you get promo tiles, which are great for showcasing various deals, like limited time offers or seasonal sales.

I’m a big fan of the “stock counter” option – which is great for encouraging customers to place an order quickly, before you run out of products – leveraging that “FOMO” effect.

Plus, you can showcase product reviews to earn customer’s trust, and highlight recommended products on various pages.

The recommended products features is brilliant for upselling and cross-selling customers by introducing them to similar products they might like.

I would have liked to see a few other “standard” features baked in here, too, however – such as promotional pop-ups, trust badges, FAQ pages, and translations for global stores.

Merchandising

Merchandising is another thing that the Loft Shopify theme does quite well.

Although you don’t get things like image hotspots and animations, you can showcase color swatches, and allow customers to “zoom in” on products.

There’s also the image rollover feature, which means customers can see different images of your products when they hover over them with a cursor.

You also get slideshow features and image galleries, which are fantastic for giving your customers more of a comprehensive look at all the features of your products from different angles.

Again, though, this theme would definitely benefit from a few extra features, like lookbooks, size charts, and sections to showcase shipping or delivery information.

Product Discovery

Finally, the Loft theme come with all of the key product discovery features that I think are absolutely crucial for modern stores.

First, you get a mega menu for showing off all your top promotions, products, categories, and crucial information.

Kansas City Theme Loft Menu Demo

Next, there’s the enhanced search feature, which makes it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for with real-time intelligent suggestions.

The sticky header makes it incredibly easy for customers to navigate your Shopify store, and again, the recommended product options ensure you can draw attention to all of the items your buyers might like.

Plus, the product filtering and sorting options mean customers can easily browse through items based on factors like price, availability, color, and more.

Loft Shopify Theme Review: The Verdict

Overall, the Loft Shopify theme is a high-quality, relatively affordable theme, ideal for businesses who want to really draw attention to their top products and increase their chances of sales.

It’s attractive, customizable, and reasonably feature rich.

However, it is lacking a few advanced capabilities that I think would make it more appealing to larger merchants.

I’d probably recommend this theme to smaller companies looking to increase the impact of their promotions, without spending a fortune on a complex new theme.

I'm a highly motivated self-taught software developer with over a decade of experience. My journey in software development began when I left college to pursue my passion, and since then I have been working on a wide range of projects. I have extensive experience creating custom WordPress sites, mobile apps using React Native, web apps using React-based frameworks, and Shopify apps with Node.js. I have also played with numerous other technologies, tools, and frameworks over time, and have contributed to many open-source projects. I pride myself on creating clean, well-formatted, and properly documented code that is easy to maintain. My perfectionist approach ensures that every project I deliver meets the highest standards. I always ask myself, "If I were the client, would I be happy with this?" This mindset has helped me to deliver excellent projects for my clients and build a reputation for quality work.

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