By Rajendra Bhochalya
We all know how important the right Shopify theme is to your store’s performance. In fact, website visitors form an opinion about your brand within about 50 milliseconds, based on its appearance.
However, as a long-term website developer myself, I’ve noticed that while there are a lot of attractive themes out there, they don’t all deliver in terms of performance. Since you only have seconds to grab a customer’s attention, a performance-first theme is a must.
That’s where the Shopify Turbo Theme really shines. This premium theme promises lightning fast loading speeds, various customization options and some excellent tools to boost conversion rates.
So is it right for you? I put the Turbo theme to the test, to help you decide.
Quick Verdict: Pros and Cons
Based on my experience, the Shopify Turbo theme is a feature-rich, powerful theme, with a range of styles to choose from. It’s ideal for larger companies with a lot of products to sell, and it performs far better than many of the other, cheaper themes I’ve tried in terms of loading speeds.
The biggest downside? It’s a lot more expensive than some of its competitors.
Pros:
- Incredible performance: The Turbo theme prioritizes ultra-fast loading times.
- Flexibility: There are plenty of high-quality, professional styles to choose from.
- Feature rich: You’ll have access to great features like mega menus and predictive search.
- Responsivity: The Turbo theme performs consistently on every device.
- Excellent navigation: Customers will have no problem exploring your store.
Cons:
- The cost: The Turbo theme has a pretty high price tag.
- Complexity: Lots of features means a higher learning curve.
- Limitations: You may need to dive into code to make granular changes to layouts.
The Shopify Turbo Theme Review: Overview and Pricing
The Turbo theme, designed by “Out of the Sandbox”, is a high-quality premium theme, that focuses on performance, style, and boosting conversion rates.
While it’s not listed on the official Shopify Theme Store (usually my first stop for Shopify themes), that doesn’t mean it’s unsafe or less effective than other well-known themes.
This theme has earned hundreds of five-star reviews from customers, who praise it’s user-friendly design, performance, and clean, minimalist styles. You even get amazing support from the developer, which can’t be said for all Shopify themes.
Although anyone can definitely benefit from the Turbo theme, I think it will appeal most to larger Shopify merchants, and even companies using Shopify Plus.
It’s ideal for brands with extensive product catalogs (more than 200 products), and ensures you can run a huge website without compromising on loading speed. However, what really makes this theme less appealing to smaller businesses, is it’s pricing.
Turbo costs $425 to purchase, and you’ll need to pay even more for priority customer service. Plus, while the theme is highly customizable, actually making changes to things like the mega menu and setting up predictive search can be tough for those with limited design knowledge.
The Turbo Theme Design Options
Like most premium Shopify themes, Turbo gives you a selection of “styles” and layouts to choose from. There are six styles in total (a lot more than you get from some alternatives).
Portland
Sleek and minimalistic, the Portland theme would be my go-to pick for health and fitness, beauty, or fashion companies. It’s a great theme all-around, with classic colors, eye-catching fonts, and multiple speed modes, as well as quick navigation between pages.
You also get plenty of great bonus features built-in, such as infinite scrolling, product sliders, and testimonial carousels, to help enhance customer experiences.
Chicago
Next, we have Chicago, a bright, eye-catching theme with plenty of white space and bold pops of color. It’s great if you want to showcase your brand personality with some more dramatic design elements, without harming the user experience.
I love how crisp this theme looks, and think it would be a great choice for companies selling food, supplements, technology equipment, and more.
Dubai
The Dubai style is all about luxury and elegance. If you’re selling high-quality, premium products, like custom fashion, expensive accessories or jewelry, this is the theme for you. The Dubai theme is strong, elegant, and excellent at keeping your products in focus.
Like the other styles mentioned here, the Dubai template is also packed with great features that can increase sales for luxury companies, like cross-selling options.
Florence
Like the Dubai theme, the Florence theme is luxurious and sophisticated, however it’s a little more subtle, ideal for companies that want a fresh, modern look. I’d see this theme working well for high-end stores selling beauty and jewelry products.
The attractive and spacious design, as well as the integrated components for showcasing large images, make it easy to shine a spotlight on whatever you sell.
Seoul
The Seoul style somehow manages to deliver a great blend of relaxed, gentle vibes, and dynamic potential. It feels ultra-modern and crisp, making it a fantastic choice for companies in the music, technology, or electronics industry.
While there aren’t many bold colors in this theme, the ability to show off your product images in a range of different ways makes it easy to grab attention.
Tennessee
Finally, the Tennessee style is simple and impactful. It’s a great choice for companies selling home décor products, barware accessories, alcoholic beverages, and more. Despite it’s relatively minimalist design, this style feels wonderfully bright and optimistic.
I really appreciate how much white space you get, ensuring your theme looks neat and uncluttered on any device.
The Shopify Turbo Theme: The Top Features
As I mentioned above, the Turbo theme is packed with great features. Some you’ll find on most premium Shopify themes, like EU translations, blogs, promo banners and FAQ pages. Others are a little more unique. Here are some of the top features I discovered when using this theme.
Predictive Search and Premium Navigation
Want to make it easier for customers to find the products they want quickly? Turbo’s built-in predictive search widget is ideal. It immediately suggests products in your catalog as customers type in letters, helping them to track down items faster (and make quicker purchases).
That’s not the only thing that makes the Turbo theme so impressive from a navigation perspective though. It also includes a “recently viewed” section, and a sticky header.
Powerful Product Page Components
With the upgraded “product layouts” feature in Turbo, you can really make your product pages stand out. There are endless ways to showcase your offerings in the best light. You can create lookbooks, image galleries, and product slideshows.
Turbo also supports video embedding, custom sections for product options, image hotspot and zoom options, and product tabs. Plus, you can even add animations to make your page more dynamic.
Quick Shop and Interactive Mini Cart
I personally think “Quick Shop” should be a standard feature on every Shopify theme. It makes the purchasing process so much easier for your customers. With it, you can empower customers to swiftly view product details without opening a separate page.
Plus, there’s an integrated interactive mini cart included, which showcases all the information customers need about their in-cart products, from pricing, to images in seconds.
Mega Menu and Multi-Column Sub Menus
The Mega Menu is another must-have for many ecommerce companies, particularly larger stores. Turbo comes with this feature as standard, allowing you to combine images, text, and drop-down menus that enhance navigation.
You can promote collections and featured items in your menu. You’ll also be able to create various “multi-column” sub menus (up to five for each mega menu). That’s great if you’ve got an extensive inventory with lots of product options.
Marketing and Conversion Features
I had a hard time choosing which marketing and conversion features I love most in the Turbo theme – there are a lot. Alongside product badges, promo pop-ups, and stock counters, you can showcase recently viewed products and product reviews.
Merchants can also create newsletter pop-ups, to collect contact details, showcase “recommended” products for upselling and cross-selling purposes, and offer customers back-in-stock alerts.
Other Impressive Features
Alongside the top features I identified above, some of my other favorite components of the Shopify Turbo theme include:
- An integrated age verifier
- CSS customization support
- Infinite scrolling for larger sites
- Comprehensive product filtering
- Gallery pages with high-resolution images
Page Speed and Customer Support Tests
While there’s a lot to love about the Turbo Shopify theme, what really sets it apart is its performance. The developers themselves remind us that 40% of online shoppers will abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load – which is why they focused on speed.
Turbo is equipped with clever preloading functions to help speed up access to your website. Plus, you have two speed settings to choose from. In “Ludicrous” mode, you gain access to more performance-enhancing features, but you might notice issues with some third-party apps and custom code.
The Sport mode improves app compatibility, but gives removes “page preloading” options. On average, customers say Turbo can deliver an up to 13-point increase in page speed score. So if speed is crucial to you, Turbo is a great choice.
Turbo is also pretty impressive in terms of customer support too. There’s a fantastic help center on the site, and plenty of documentation for beginners. You can also request “priority” support from the app developers – but that will cost you another $96 per year.
The Shopify Turbo Theme: My Verdict
Overall, I was extremely impressed by the design, features, and performance of the Shopify Turbo theme. It’s a great, versatile option – particularly for larger merchants and those selling high-end products. However it might be a little too expensive (and complex to customize) for smaller brands.
If you’re willing to pay a little extra for advanced capabilities and amazing speed, the Turbo theme is a great choice. Otherwise, I’d recommend checking out my other reviews for some more affordable recommendations.
