By Rajendra Bhochalya
Throughout a decade-long career as a full-stack and Shopify app developer, I’ve seen plenty of web design and development trends come and go. However, modern, minimalistic, and clean templates have been extremely popular for some time now.
The Pipeline Shopify theme might not give you all the dynamic components or bells and whistles offered by some premium Shopify themes, but it’s ideal for giving your customers a sleek and streamlined experience on your store.
I meticulously evaluated this theme, to bring you this complete review, and help you decide whether Pipeline is right for your store.
Quick Verdict: Pros and Cons
The Pipeline Shopify theme isn’t the most feature-rich theme I’ve seen on Shopify’s marketplace. However, it does offer just enough basic and advanced features to ensure you can give visitors a great experience on your store. If you’re looking for modern minimalism, this could be the theme for you.
Pros:
- Sleek, simple, and modern design
- Excellent mobile responsiveness and performance
- Great customer support documents and guidance
- Lookbook and FAQ features
- Good range of marketing features
Cons:
- Not the fastest customer support
- No advanced options for cart customization
The Pipeline Shopify Theme: Overview and Pricing
The Shopify Pipeline theme is a sleek and simple theme intended for luxury brands. It was designed by Groupthought – the company also responsible for the popular “Story” theme.
This theme has a great reputation among Shopify sellers, with 97% positive reviews. Although some customers do complain that the developers offer very little hands-on support.
Like all approved themes on the Shopify marketplace, Pipeline comes with an unlimited free trial, so you can test all the functionality before you make a purchase. It’s also speed tested and approved by Shopify, compatible with the latest Online Store 2.0 features, and comes with free photos from Shopify Burst.
The price is about the average for a premium theme on Shopify, at $360. Although there are cheaper themes out there, Pipeline isn’t the most expensive option I’ve seen either. Plus, it’s worth noting that price is a one-off payment, with free theme updates for the life of your store.
The Pipeline Theme Styles
Like many Shopify premium themes, Pipeline comes with a selection of pre-set styles to choose from. All of these include access to the same features, and they all take a relatively minimalist approach to enhancing your store’s aesthetic.
Light
The Light style is exactly what you’d expect. It’s a sleek, simple, and neutral theme, with a lot of soft colors, and a large image section for the homepage of your store. You get a simple menu with drop-down options for the top of the page, as well as carousel options where you can showcase products.
I really like the font choices here. They feel modern and sophisticated at the same time, blending sans-serif, and serif options.
Bright
Though somewhat more colorful than the Light style, the Bright style is even simpler than its counterpart. You get the complete hero image included in the previous style, followed by sections for featured products and custom banners. You can also add custom info blocks to the bottom of your homepage, which is a nice touch.
Once again, the menu feels straightforward and modern here, and there’s the option to add a search bar, and a log-in option for your customers.
Dark
The Dark style is probably my favorite option in Pipeline’s collection, simply because it feels very up-to-date and trendy. You can create a video banner for the top of the page, which is great for grabbing the attention of your customers, and the header section is much bolder.
Notably, you will still get the clean and sophisticated layout, with modular content blocks to help you avoid clutter in your store’s appearance.
Clean
Pipeline’s Clean style is another excellent option for anyone in search of a contemporary, straightforward design. There’s a simple navigation bar with a logo that can blend into your hero image at the top of the page. The clean white background, and the simple Helvetica font creates a modern and luxurious appearance.
The Pipeline Shopify Theme: The Core Features
As mentioned above, the Pipeline theme misses some more advanced features I’ve seen on other premium Shopify themes, as well as some basics that I think would improve the experience. For instance, there’s no “sticky cart” option, to help customers out when navigating your store.
Still, there are a lot of useful features included, such as a fantastic multi-column menu, great for merchants, that offer a wide range of products and collections.
Cart and Checkout Features
Pipeline includes all the basic features you need for a decent cart experience, including a pre-order option, slide-out cart, in-store pickup feature, and quick-buy function. The biggest missing feature here is the lack of a sticky cart, which I do think would make this theme more impressive.
Marketing and Conversion
Again, you get all of the basic features you’d expect here, such as the ability to create blogs, and deliver instant EU translations to customers. However, I do think there are a lot of fantastic, advanced marketing features to choose from too.
Alongside promo banners, in-menu promos, and promo products, you can create recommended products sections, showcase trust badges, and enable cross-selling promotions. There’s a great “recently viewed” section, and a store locator for companies with local customers.
You also get the option to add a stock counter to your page, which can help increase buyer urgency.
Merchandising
From a merchandising perspective, Pipeline stands out with a great range of animation options, image hotspot and zoom tools, and customizable product options. You can add videos to product pages, create lookbooks, and design image galleries.
There’s also support for color swatches, size charts, and usage information. I particularly like the ability to create slideshows, which is ideal if you want to show a luxury product from multiple angles, or highlight user-generated content.
Product Discovery
Finally, I think the best thing about Pipeline’s product discovery features is it’s menu, which is perfect for companies that have large catalogs of products. You can easily create a mega menu, and even display products under menu items, making it easy to jump to products instantly.
There’s a great parallax effect for enhancing the scrolling experience, and you can take advantage of advanced product filtering options and content sections on the product pages. You’ll also get a sticky header, so customers can easily jump between sections in your store.
Pipeline Shopify Theme Review: The Verdict
Although I’ve definitely seen more advanced premium themes for Shopify, the Pipeline theme is a great option for merchants that love minimalistic, clean and modern designs. It’s also a good choice if you want eye-catching marketing features, the opportunity to showcase high-quality images across your website, and you have a large collection of products to sell.
Overall, I’d definitely recommend giving this theme a try if you want to keep your store simple. However, if you want more customization and dynamic features, you might need to look elsewhere.
