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Best Shopify Themes for Health and Beauty Brands (and the Features to Look for)
According to industry reports, the majority of global sales in the health and beauty sector are forecast to move online owing to the pandemic in some areas, and to the general shift in consumer purchase behavior. WARC reports that the online share of sales made in the health and beauty sector rose to 16.5% globally by the end of 2021. It is said to be expected to increase to 23.3% by 2025.
Posted 3 years ago by Vanhishikha
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While this highlights a big opportunity for the health and beauty businesses, it also means a whole lot of competition. Taking into account franchisees and health and beauty product lines owned by even industry leaders, the competition for consumer attention as well as the ability to gain their trust is scaling beyond means.
To put things into perspective, Alibaba is expected to achieve the greatest share of health and beauty online sales this year, with sales of $43.2bn. This is obviously followed by Amazon, with the sales growing to $28.8bn.
You have the right products. You know your audience. You’re putting your best foot forward to promote your products to them.
What more can you do?
You win their trust.
About 61% of online shoppers revealed they are more cautious about the products they purchase because of misinformation related to health and beauty products.
While reviews, ratings and testimonials do act as proof of how good your products are, it’s also your Shopify store’s look and feel that factors into how reliable you seem as an online brand. And that’s exactly where the right Shopify theme for your health and beauty brand comes in.
With so many free and paid themes to choose from, we thought of making it easy for you by shortlisting some of the popular names. We have also included why we like these Shopify themes for health and beauty brands.
Best Shopify themes for health and beauty brands
1. Expanse by Archetype Themes
If you have a large inventory, you need a clean and versatile Shopify theme to let all your health and beauty products stand out. Expanse by Archetype Themes is one of the best Shopify themes that comes with two minimalist color palettes – Classic and Modern, to keep things clean and simple.
The theme comes with mobile-friendly design layouts along with customizable content sections on the home page. This lets you share important information about your health and beauty product ranges, including the making, constitution and more. It also comes with a feature called Custom Promotion Tiles that lets you promote sales, discounts and featured products with special promotion tiles across the store, letting you get more visibility on aall your collections.
Need help setting up the Expanse by Archetype Theme? Reach out to the Shopify theme experts at HeyCarson.
A lookbook-style theme designed for seamless browsing, Vogue by Pixel Union is a great choice for health and beauty brands that promote products using large images. The lookbook-dominant design layout improves overall discoverability with infinite scrolling time between product pages.
The theme also comes with a grid-style layout that lets you feature multiple products from the same collection – let’s say, facial beauty or weight loss health supplements, alongside one another, letting the visitor browse through the options they have. Vogue, too, comes with three color palettes – Elegant, Editorial and Organic; to help you easily brand your Shopify store.
Need help setting up the Vogue by Pixel Union theme? Reach out to the Shopify theme experts at HeyCarson.
3. Broadcast by Invisible Themes
A lot of health and beauty brands rely on visual storytelling to sell their products or highlight what’s good about them. This typically ends up with them leveraging large images or videos across their Shopify store. Broadcast by Invisible Themes is one of the best Shopify themes catering to both those needs.
The theme comes with a home page video feature that lets you set the tone for your brand values and mission. You can even set up an auto-playing background video to add more aesthetics to the design. It also includes the ability to tag images by dragging hotspots for easier in-context discovery of your health and beauty products, letting visitors also quickly add items to their cart without leaving their current page.
Need help setting up the Broadcast by Invisible Themes? Reach out to the Shopify theme experts at HeyCarson.
4. Responsive by Out of the Sandbox
If you want to make the most out of your large product imagery, Responsive by Out of the Sandbox comes with an optimized wide-layout. You can use this on your home page to promote your popular range of products or on each collection page to display the products that come under it with one visual.
The Shopify theme also comes with customizable content sections on the home page, a dedicated FAQ page with a mobile-optimized layout, and four styles to help you with your store’s branding – London, Paris, New York and San Francisco. It also includes a marketing popup to help you entice visitors to either subscribe to your store or promote ongoing deals.
Need help setting up the Responsive by Out of the Sandbox theme? Reach out to the Shopify theme experts at HeyCarson.
Another one of the best Shopify themes for health and beauty brands is Vantage by Underground. The theme comes with a number of configuration options that let you create a unique style for your storefront, boosting the recall value of your brand.
Vantage includes interesting features like a built-in timeline tool that you can use to share your brand story, a product page gallery and video that lets you showcase your range in detail with zooming, video clips and high-resolution images. The mobile friendly design layouts also come with color swatches that you can display on product pages that have variants available.
Need help setting up the Vantage by Underground theme? Reach out to the Shopify theme experts at HeyCarson.
Another one of the best Shopify themes for health and beauty brands that believe storytelling is the way to go, Editorial by Switch Themes is a good choice. The theme is optimized for large images, lets you include multiple home page videos, display related blog posts and products to keep customers engaged and much more!
The theme also comes with three in-built presets – Agency, Amour and Adventure, each with distinct colors that go from neutrals to bold. This lets you easily customize the look of your storefront based on your branding to give it an exclusive look.
PS. The theme includes two collection page layouts – list and grid; so based on the size of your inventory, you can take your pick!
Need help setting up the Editorial by Switch theme? Reach out to the Shopify theme experts at HeyCarson.
Another one of the best Shopify themes for health and beauty brands is Blockshop by Troop Themes. The theme is highly optimized for large-size visuals and comes with features like a header slideshow, home page video, multiple slideshows and a wide layout. It features minimalist typography and edge-to-edge layouts to give a classic look to your store design.
The Shopify theme also includes four in-built presets – Beauty, Adorn, Summer and Deli, each with mild and pastel color tones. You can further customize the styles to match your storefront theme with your brand.
Need help setting up the Blockshop by Troop theme? Reach out to the Shopify theme experts at HeyCarson.
While these are some of the best Shopify themes for health and beauty brands, there are obviously a lot of other options available.
If you want to do a little bit of your own research on a Shopify theme for your brand, below are a few things you should absolutely look for.
Must-have features of a good Shopify theme for health and beauty brands
Homepage video
When you walk into a health and beauty brand’s physical store, the first thing that you’re most likely to be hit with is the smell of products. And that sensory touch is what then guides your in-store shopping journey.
Well, you can do the same on your Shopify store as well. Look for a Shopify theme that lets you include videos on the home page. These could be videos that you can embed in certain content sections or those that autoplay in the background, creating an immersive experience for your visitors.
Homepage slideshow
If your health and beauty brand has a range of products that fall under different categories, you want to make sure they are visible. Using a homepage slideshow is a great way to introduce a visitor to all that is available on your Shopify store.
The health and beauty Shopify theme you pick should let you showcase large, high-resolution images at the top of your home page. This is the space where you can also promote your ongoing deals, discounts and sales as well, letting visitors navigate to the page of their interest!
Product page tabs
When buying health and beauty products online, no amount of information is enough. We want to know the ingredients of the product, how to use it, when to use it, the benefits of using it and more before committing to the purchase.
But adding all this content on a product page, one under the other, may result in adding too much length to it – something that most online shoppers wouldn’t scroll through. This is where having product page tabs comes handy.
See if the Shopify theme you’re picking comes with product page tabs in the design layout or has the option to add them!
Product labels
Conscious buyers are always looking for indications and signs of your brand’s values. Health and beauty brands typically tend to see more such buyers who support certain causes like ‘no animal testing’ or follow lifestyles like ‘plant-based’.
If your health and beauty brand follows any of this, make sure your theme is able to put it to the forefront with product labels. If not, it should give you the ability to add custom sections to the home page so that you can display these with the help of apps.
Blog page
With online shoppers becoming more conscious about the purchases they make, especially health and beauty products, it’s important for brands to follow an education-first approach. Yes, we mean creating educational content like blogs, how-to guides, lookbooks and more.
So check if the Shopify theme developer has included a few layouts for your blog page set up. We ideally recommend one that lets you display images clearly and offers font formatting that makes your content readable.
About us page
Successful health and beauty brands are built on trust. About 70% of consumers feel related to a brand when they can see the people behind it. When you share your story, vision and mission, people find your brand easy to connect with. This is where an About Us page comes in.
Ask your Shopify theme developer if they have included a template or layout for an about us page. This doesn’t need to be too elaborate; just need to give you enough sections to share some pictures and add content.
Custom sections
The competition for consumer attention is increasing by the day in the health and beauty industry. This is why you need to find new ways to keep visitors engaged in your Shopify store, in order to drive them towards making a purchase.
This includes presenting them with things that are of their interest. Be it including frequently asked questions on product pages, setting up a poll on your upcoming sale page, or creating a survey that subtly guides the visitor towards products that may interest them, look for a Shopify theme that either comes with these custom sections or lets you add them easily in their liquid file.
Here’s an example of a health brand:
And here’s one from a beauty brand using quizzes as custom sections on the home page:
Product quick-view/ quick add-to-cart
If you have a number of products under the same category, a search on your store may result in the visitor being shown all of them. In this case, it should be easier for the shopper to quickly view information of those they like while scrolling or to add them to the cart; all without having to leave the search results or collection page.
Here’s what a quick-view button looks like, opening the product information in a popup so that the visitor doesn’t need to leave the page:
And here’s what a quick add-to-cart button looks like:
Optimized for large, high-resolution images
78% of online shoppers want online stores to share product images that bring them close to what they may look like in real life. In fact, 50% of online shoppers say it’s important for them to see the product images in order to make a purchase decision.
This means, depending on the products you sell, your health and beauty brand needs to use large, high-quality product images across the store. So make sure that the theme you choose is optimized for large images; it should not compress or compromise the quality of your images to fit them into design layouts.
Pickup availability
Owing to these unprecedented times, some of your buyers may want to be able to pick up orders on their own. To enable this, your Shopify theme should include a pickup availability feature that can be displayed on the product pages.
This lets you engage local shoppers by showing where items are available for pickup. This is an especially important feature for health brands.
Grid-style layout
As a health and beauty brand, you want to be able to feature multiple products, posts or promotions on the home page, collections page as well as the search results page. This is so that the visitor knows the range of products available on your store. So look for a Shopify theme that offers grid-style layouts for different pages.
Lookbooks
This one might seem more apt for a beauty brand, but health brands can experiment with this content format too. Showcase your products in a lookbook that displays collections in an editorial-style spread. You could even experiment turning your how-to guides into lookbooks to make them more enticing to flip through.
Social proof
About 87% of our buying decisions begin with research conducted online before making a purchase. This typically includes going through the brand’s overall reputation online, the reviews and ratings on the products, and of course, the testimonials from other customers.
The Shopify theme you pick for your health and beauty online store, should have a prominent section on the product pages to display social proof. While you can display these using an app as well, having this in the theme lets you make it aesthetically pleasing to look at with minimal customizations.
Continuous product scroll
When looking for health and beauty products, a typical online shopper tends to make specific product searches. This lands them on specific sales or product pages on your Shopify store. But when you have so much more to offer, why let them leave without discovering the other products similar to their search?
Improve discoverability with infinite scrolling between product pages and your home page. Make it easier for online shoppers to discover products they may not know of, but are high on value for their concern.
Swatches
Let’s assume your health or beauty products come in different variations, packaging (sizes) or colors. You want to make it easy for the visitor to discover them all without having to move back and forth between pages!
If your Shopify theme equips you with the ability to display swatches/ variants on your product pages, half the battle is won!
Customizable menu
Based on the size of your inventory, your menu items need to be segmented, categorized and expanded to make it easier for visitors to discover your products. Look for a health and beauty Shopify theme that lets you display menu lists on your store’s home page as well as gives you the option to make it sticky even on scroll.
The more categorically your products are presented, the easier it gets for the visitor to find what they’re looking for.
FAQ page
Health and beauty product consumers will always have a number of questions that they seek answers to before making a purchase. Some of them are repetitive in nature. While you’re doing your best to create product descriptions, we recommend adding a FAQ page as well on your Shopify store to put together the answers to these questions.
Seek a Shopify theme that lets you create a clear FAQ page, where you can group questions based on their topic. Alternatively, you can also ask the Shopify theme developer if they have premade templates for it, if the documentation does not include an FAQ page.
Policy pages
Health and beauty products obviously come with expiry dates, usage instructions and more. In case of returns, refunds, cancellations or exchange, you will need to be very straightforward with your customers. This means displaying these policies on your health and beauty Shopify store is of utmost importance.
Look for a Shopify theme that comes with simple page layouts that let you showcase your policies. You want this page to be text-heavy, neatly detailing out every little thing!
Mobile-friendly design
mCommerce in eCommerce is expected to rise to 72% by the end of 2021, owing to our need to make most of our purchases on the go. Studies show that most of our health and beauty purchases are made on mobile devices, owing to our increasing amount of content consumption throughout the day.
So while you’re putting your best foot forward on channels like Facebook and Instagram to drive traffic to your store, also ensure you offer them as promising an on-site experience. Ensure that the Shopfy theme you choose for your health and beauty brand, is 1000% mobile-friendly. From the smallest of elements like the ‘quick view’, ‘buy now’ buttons to the one for wishlisting products, the experience needs to be seamless for mobile shoppers!
Light-weight
The thing with health and beauty brands is that they need to use a lot of visuals like product images and videos to help their audience make informed purchases. This might end up loading the website and increasing the overall load time, leading to higher drop-offs and lower conversion rates. Yes, you risk losing conversions for every second you take beyond the first three!
When reading through the documentation of the Shopify theme, ensure that the developer has included details about the page load time. It is important to make sure that all the design layouts for pages included in the theme are optimized and light weight.
If the details are not included, you can also check this for yourself. Simply run the live store URLs using the Shopify theme you like, through PageSpeed Insights.
Search engine optimization
About 60% of shoppers begin their research on a search engine with very specific queries – especially when it comes to health and beauty products. They do so to be able to explore the options they have and the deals they can avail. But more importantly, to gather information about the product and what others are saying about it.
This is where it becomes important for your Shopify theme to be SEO-friendly. From content formatting on a product page to the testimonials and more, make sure every element is easily crawlable. If the theme documentation does not include these details, reach out to the developer.
Recommended addition to your storefront
While we’re here to tell you all about the features you should be looking for in a Shopify theme, another important aspect that you should not miss out on, is an add-on: Live chat.
Health and beauty product buyers tend to face pre-purchase anxiety, resulting in them coming up with a number of questions and concerns around products. They want someone to answer those questions before they make a purchase or just be there to reassure them that it is what they’re looking for.
You can do this easily by using a Shopify app for live chat. The app should let you customize your storefront widget, automate the welcome message and send you notifications whenever a visitor reaches out for purchase assistance.
The more you’re available and the more contextual or relevant your answer is, the more reliable your brand looks.
Getting the right Shopify theme for your health and beauty brand
Just as we always say, there is no one size fits all approach to choosing a Shopify theme for your health and beauty brand.
But the one thing we do encourage health and beauty brands to keep in mind is that their storefront needs to exude reliability. If the shopper cannot feel your brand is trustworthy from the looks of it, they’re never even going to get around to reading or learning more about your products – no matter how good they are!
Not sure which Shopify theme you should choose?
Get in touch with the Shopify experts at HeyCarson today.
