Your website is your business's storefront on the internet, and its appearance and presentation matter just as much as any location, physical or otherwise. A well-organized, attractive eCommerce website will help your brand stand out in the minds of your customers, helping you build a long-term audience and increase your brand authority. A bad website will have just the opposite effect, driving customers away and costing you conversions.
While web design conventions have changed over the years, modern standards have become clearly defined. A great website is visually appealing, easy to navigate, appropriate for your brand identity, and completely mobile friendly. Mobile friendliness has standards of its own, with the preferred method today being responsive design, meaning the website's layout automatically alters itself to fit every screen size and works just as well when tapped by a finger as clicked with a mouse. Loading speed is also critical, as visitors are easily frustrated with slow websites, and even more so on mobile devices.
Fortunately for eCommerce entrepreneurs everywhere, building a great website no longer requires coding knowledge. Most of today's eCommerce platforms have a selection of available themes or templates that can be installed to instantly provide a design for your site. Many templates are listed as premium or paid, but an assortment of free themes is also usually available. Some business owners prefer to start with a free theme while deciding if they want to commit to the software and plan to choose a premium or custom theme later, but some of the best free eCommerce templates can be used throughout the lifetime of a business.
Zen Cart and Shift4Shop both offer free themes for eCommerce websites. Let's analyze both.
