Storefront, the official WooCommerce theme that will blow up your store

As you can read in the post where I show the best themes for WooCommerce that I have tried, Storefront is one of my favorites to use in online stores, and today I am going to tell you a little about it.

In case you didn't know, Storefront is the official WooCommerce theme. That is, it is developed by the creators of the famous plugin that turns your WordPress into a virtual store.

What advantages does that mean for your store?

Well, among other things, its code is well optimized, so the loading speed of your website will be good (as long as you don't hit it with unnecessary plugins ), it won't give you incompatibility problems with WooCommerce, and one of the best things: it is a lightweight template that includes what is strictly necessary.

If you are one of those who needs lots of functionalities and effects, with Storefront as standard you will not be able to add them, but all is not lost for you yet 😉

 

As I said, the template comes with just what you need to customize your store a bit, but you can purchase extensions, both free and paid, also developed by the creators of Storefront, to increase functionality and customization (I'll talk about they).

 

Also, you can use your favorite WordPress visual layout designer to design the different pages of the web, so it shouldn't be a big problem that the template is basic since you can get great results thanks to this.

 

And as always, if you control some CSS you can leave it to your liking by adding your custom styles, and that you save on extra extensions and plugins.

The storefront can be installed like any other WordPress theme from the "Appearance - Themes" tab, either by searching for it by name in the official repository or downloading it from the official WooCommerce page.

 

Here's a demo to see Storefront working with WooCommerce. Of course, this demo has some of the paid extensions installed.

For example, the cover video could not be inserted with Storefront stripped, and neither could the mega menu.

 

Another thing that I would like to tell you is that even if it is the official WooCommerce theme and it goes perfectly with it, its use does not necessarily have to be in an online store.

 

Thanks to its great optimization and its loading speed, it is great to use on any other website or blog, even if WooCommerce is not going to be installed.

 

 Storefront theme options

All Storefront customization options are in the WordPress customizer.

Unlike other themes, you don't have any options in the WordPress admin panel. In "Appearance - Storefront" you will only find recommendations to install its extensions.

Let's see the available options:

• Site identity: as in all WordPress templates, from here you can upload your logo and write the title of your site along with a short description.

• Header: you can upload an image (recommended a size of 1950 x 500 pixels) or choose a color as the background of the header, in addition to choosing the colors of the text and links.

• Footer: similar to the previous one, but without the possibility of adding a background image. You can choose the colors of the background, the header, the text, and the links.

• Background: for the general background of the web you can choose an image or a custom color. If you go for the image, you can choose from a few options for its position.

• Typography: from here you choose the main colors for the headers, the text, and the links on your website. With Storefront as standard, you cannot choose the font family. 

• Buttons: this section is to choose the colors of the store buttons (add to cart, apply the coupon, etc).

• Layout: you have two options for the layout of the theme: with the sidebar on the left or the right.

• Menus : As always, from here you can choose the menu locations. With Storefront, you can have the main menu and a secondary menu, which is located in the upper right part, more or less centered with the logo of your store. Besides, it has a mobile menu.

• Widgets: With Storefront, you can add widgets in the sidebar, below the header, and four columns of the footer.

 

Besides, there are also the typical "Static Cover" and "Additional CSS".

As you can see, Storefront's customization options are nothing spectacular, hence the simplicity of the theme and its good loading speed, but we are going to review its extensions to see how you can improve it.

Storefront extensions:

As I said at the beginning, Storefront has free and paid extensions, so I'm going to give you the free ones so that you can see at a glance all the ones you can buy without going through the box 😉

Free extensions

Footer bar

Add a widget area just above the footer, ideal if you want to make the most of the bottom of your online store pages. You can customize it by adding an image or background color and choosing the colors for the headers, text, and links.

 

 

Hamburger menu

This extension modifies the way the menu is displayed from the smartphone. With it installed, a slider appears from the left with the menu options, instead of the typical dropdown.

 

Homepage Contact Section

With this extension you can add a contact section on the main page of your store, putting your address, telephone, email, a Google map, and a form.

However, to add the form it is necessary to have the Jetpack plugin installed, which I do not recommend that you do because of its enormous size. Much better to create a specific contact page and add a form with any other plugin dedicated to it.

 

Product pagination

When you activate this interesting extension, in a product window a tab is displayed on each side with the previous and next product, so that the user can navigate between them.

When the user hovers the mouse over these tabs, the title and main image of the product are displayed and displayed.

 

 

 

Product sharing

Add buttons so that users can share the products on their social networks or by email. The social networks available are Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Sticky add to cart

This original extension makes that when a user scrolls down within a product page, the add to cart button is displayed in a fixed column at the top of the screen, along with the title and price.

To understand it better, you can watch the following demonstrative video (it's very short).

 

 

conclusion:

Well, as you can see, Storefront is a good option to use on your website made with WordPress, especially if it is an online store.

It is a basic but very useful template if you want a lightweight site, and above all, free.

To start an online store you should visit here.