Studio Shopify Theme Review: Is this the best free Shopify Theme?

studio-shopify-theme-review

For some Shopify merchants, a free theme can be the perfect starting point for all their big ideas.

It is the reason why Shopify Studio theme comes here, in this comprehensive and detailed review, to see whether it can help you start your new site off on the right foot. We will go really deeply into its key features, typical layouts, real-world examples, and pros & cons.

Maybe Studio theme is the “muse” for your creative and stylish online story, who knows? Let’s explore this inspiring theme with us!

1. Studio Shopify theme overview 

If you are a newbie in Shopify land, don’t start from scratch. The ready-to-import demo of Shopify Studio theme provides a comprehensive foundation for any website. It is at your fingertip to deploy and build a massive head start on your project, regardless of industry.

You can visually tweak every aspect of your website without touching a line of code (unless you really want to). With dynamic block elements, you have total design freedom to create whatever you need.

Let’s how Studio theme can help you beautifully showcase your photography, your content, and your products – while maintaining a functional and powerful website.

Created by
Shopify
Great for
Store owner who want to launch their store quickly
Price
Free
Unique features
✨ Cross-selling
✨ Recommended features
✨ Blog
✨ Product videos
✨ Shipping/delivery information
✨ Mega menu
✨ Enhanced search
Rating
24 reviews (50% positive)
Demo store

2. Studio Shopify theme review: Features & Functionality 

2.1. Design & Layout options

Studio Shopify theme combines a palette of beautiful colors and minimal design in a sleek, modern layout for artists and collections.

It can perfectly showcase your curations with stylish typography and colorful accents to frame products and collections.

studio-theme-design

The unique sense of calm and focus of Studio theme comes from white space and subtle elements. The muted color palette, clean typography, and subtle animations contribute to a sophisticated and refined feel.

Studio theme draws on a dominant dark blue background to provide a strong contrast to the colorful artwork, making them pop. The muted tones of the artwork, such as the soft pinks, yellows, and blues, complement the dark background and white space. Studio theme gets a kick out of this harmonious balance. Over and above that, the asymmetrical layout makes a significant contribution to visual interest and breaks the monotony of a symmetrical design.

Additionally, the theme developers add a touch of dynamism and guide the viewer’s eye without being overwhelming. The generous use of white space creates a sense of calm and allows the artwork to breathe.

If you give Studio Shopify theme demo store the once-over, you will realize that the artwork is the star of the show, with the design elements carefully chosen to complement it. By taking the most advantage of minimal distractions, Studio theme puts your exclusive products at the focal point.

Last but not least, Cormorant font is the jewel in the crown within the whole typographic picture of Studio theme. Cormorant, with its old-style serif characteristics, gives a practical exhibition of timeless elegance. The diagonal stress and bracketed serifs have a hand in building its refined aesthetic, blending perfectly with the minimalist design of this free theme.

Demonstrate your work, services, creativity, and more – Studio theme is perfect for your next breakthrough moment.

2.2. Key Features

Now, let’s dwell into Studios features, which are also the selling point of this theme.

2.2.1. Cross-selling

shopify-studio-theme-cross-selling

Cross-selling is a tried-and-true marketing strategy for Shopify merchants. It is the whys and wherefores of this built-in feature in Studio theme.

By suggesting relevant products at the right time, cross-selling can prompt customers to add more items to their cart, thus increasing the total value of their order. This feature helps merchants capitalize on existing customer interest and convert it into additional revenue. 

You can customize suggested products based on the different conditions, which oils the wheels of a more relevant and engaging shopping experience. By offering helpful suggestions, you can help customers discover products they might not have otherwise considered. It will bring you additional sales and improve the profitability of your company.

2.2.2. FAQ page

shopify-theme-studio-faq

If you are already fed up with fielding the same old questions day by day, then you can build an FAQ page to streamline customer service and boost sales. 

With Studio Theme’s intuitive FAQ page feature, you can give your customers the power to find answers instantly. It will reduce the burden on your support team by automating answers to common questions. 

By addressing common concerns upfront, your Shopify business takes a further step in easing the path to purchase and minimizing cart abandonment. No doubt that a well-organized and informative FAQ page demonstrates professionalism and commitment to customer service, streamlines customer interactions, and improves overall operational efficiency.

2.2.3. Promo banners

Banners can be said to be the spokesperson of your online store, where you can highlight your latest offers, discounts, or new products. It will guide your customers to specific products or pages with clear and concise calls to action.

Shopify theme Studio provides you with user-friendly tools to create visually appealing banners that will grab your visitors’ eyes from the first moment they land on your website. In addition, when consistent designing and messaging across your promo banners are put in the right place, you can build brand recognition and strengthen your brand identity.

2.2.4. Blogs

A well-maintained blog channel will give you a thumbs up in connecting with your audience, establishing your brand as an authority, and driving organic traffic to your store. 

Blog feature of Studio theme makes it easier than ever to create engaging content and attract the attention of your readers.

Shopify Studio theme offers built-in SEO tools like sharing buttons and meta tag optimization to help your website take steps forward to better search engine rankings. You can easily integrate your blog into your Shopify store in no time. It makes certain that your blogs are automatically tailored to match your brand’s aesthetic when it comes to the layouts, typography, and color scheme of each post. In other words, Studio theme sets the seal on a cohesive and professional look.

2.2.5. Product videos

videos-embed-studio-theme

By adding captivating videos to your product pages, you can easily hold the interest and attention of your customers and keep them hooked with visually stunning videos. Studio theme helps you put your product under the spotlight, where your customers can see the features and benefits of these products in action. It will sow the seeds of impulse purchases in their mind. 

You can seamlessly embed high-quality videos directly from popular video hosting platforms like YouTube and Vimeo into your product pages. In addition, Studio theme ensures that your videos load quickly and play smoothly on all devices. It lays the foundations of a professional and polished brand image with high-quality video content.

2.2.6. Shipping/delivery information

shipping-information-studio-theme

Studio theme’s shipping and delivery features are designed to streamline your customers’ shopping experience and get more users to convert. Important details like shipping rates, delivery times, and return policies are prominently shown on the product pages.

Clear and transparent shipping information can help reduce cart abandonment by addressing potential concerns. Offering competitive shipping rates and convenient delivery options can encourage customers to complete their purchases.

The shipping and return information of Studio theme is presented in a clean and professional manner, enhancing the overall look of the product page.

2.2.7. Mega menu & Sticky header

mega-menu-studio-shopify

With Studio theme, you can easily create a powerful and intuitive navigation system that helps customers find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. It is supposed to be a clear and intuitive way for customers to browse your products and categories. Not only that, a well-designed mega menu can help you build a polished and sophisticated look. 

Additionally, Studio theme allows you to set up a sticky header. This navigation bar will stay fixed at the top of the screen as a user scrolls down the page. It can reduce the amount of scrolling required to access key information and encourage customers to focus on the most essential navigation links.

2.2.8. Enhanced search

enhanced-search-shopify-studio

The next feature to optimize the navigation of your website we would like to shout out in this Studio theme Shopify review is the enhanced search feature. It is designed to make it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for. 

As a visitor type their search query, the search bar will immediately show them real-time suggestions and results. It plays an essential role in helping them narrow down their search and find relevant products faster. It gives thought to various factors like product titles, descriptions, and tags to provide the most accurate results. 

Furthermore, it can sweep your customers off their feet with a visually appealing display, which puts clear product images and titles on the focal point. Customers can further refine their search results by using filters like price range, color, size, and material. They can also sort results by best-selling items, featured products, or newest arrivals.

2.3. Performance & Speed

To collect deeper insights into the performance of this free theme, we randomly choose 4 different Shopify Studio theme examples and put them through their paces. When getting the results, we can jump to a general conclusion. 

Both 4 websites have a good speed score on desktop, which can be regarded as the touchstone of desktop performance with around 90 – 100 scores. 

However, the mobile performance is not ideal as that much when 3 out of 4 websites only reach 50 – 60 points. 

speed-shopify-theme-studio

Although the speed performance of a Shopify website can be affected by many external factors, including third-party apps or your content elements (images, videos, animations, etc.), we suppose there is still room for improvement in the mobile performance of Studio theme Shopify.

📚 Check out list of free Shopify themes if you want more free, popular theme suggestion made by Shopify !

2.4. Pricing

Studio theme, like all other official themes from Shopify, is free.

No hidden fees, no additional costs, and no monthly subscriptions – it is free download. With this free theme, you also can get the latest theme features and fixes from the Shopify team (once again, like other themes). The support service is available via Live chat (but with bots) and email.

However, keep in mind that free is not always good. For this free Shopify theme, you have to accept several drawbacks, which we will discuss later on.

2.5. User review & rating

Currently, Shopify Studio theme has only 24 reviews with a 50% positive rate. To be honest, this metric is not good enough in the competitive Shopify theme market. 

The positive reviews love the user-friendly and intuitive interface of this theme. It allows Shopify merchants to set up their stores within a few clicks, even when they are not tech-savvy. In addition, they have a soft spot for the well-optimized longer-form text sections of Studio theme to support brand storytelling.

shopify-theme-studio-review

However, although Shopify team provides documentation for Studio theme, they are not detailed and comprehensive enough. This leads to that sometimes, merchants do not know how to make the most use of Studio features. Besides, the limited customization also stands in the way of getting more positive feedback from merchants. 

And as we mentioned before, the response time of Shopify customer support team is a bit delayed.

2.6. Pros & cons

Pros
  • Free
  • Easy to use
  • Well-optimized editorial content
  • Stylish and creative layouts
  • Fundamental features
  • Good performance on desktop
Cons
  • Limited customization
  • Slow response from the support team
  • Tutorial not detailed enough 
  • Might require additional costs for third-party apps

3.  Shopify brands using Studio theme 

3.1. ArtfulTea

The first Shopify store using Studio theme we would like to introduce here is ArtfulTea, a brand of loose-leaf tea and fine teaware & accessories.

When setting foot on this website, you can feast your eyes on well-lit and professionally shot images of well-packed tea leaves. In addition, the pop-up banner of Studio theme with a visually appealing image and clear call-to-action will effectively grab your attention to enjoy the attractive 10% discount offer for the first order. At the same time, as an important piece of this business, it is responsible to capture email addresses and build an email list for future marketing campaigns.

3.2. Ashland Gallery Association

store-using-studio-theme

Another real-world example of Shopify Studio theme is Ashland Gallery Association, a collection of galleries and artists.

With Studio theme, this brand puts its name and its message at the forefront with a dynamic slideshow hero section. This theme helps Ashland Gallery Association establish its unique personal brand with these smooth layouts throughout the webpage.

This generous and stylish playground is really successful in giving a warm welcome to site visitors, driving them to the most desired content in the store, and keeping them engaged with diverse and high-quality works of art.

3.3. Buddha Blossom Jewels

shopify-studio-theme-websites

Buddha Blossom Jewels website takes the fullest of Shopify Studio theme to build an engaging online presence. It cuts through the haze with bright colors, subtle images, and versatile layouts to steer the webpage to success.

In addition, the single post template is well-optimized to keep visitors on the informative blog posts while converting them into followers. Studio theme gives a boost to these articles with high-quality featured images, an interactive comment section, and an attractive sharing button. Not only that, an effective blog channel is a powerful tool for Buddha Blossom Jewels to achieve a better ranking on Google.

4. Our verdict 

After an all-inclusive analysis, this section will set the seal on Shopify Studio theme.

If it’s early in your journey toward building expertise and trust, this carefully constructed theme will be a big push. The setup steps are minimal by Shopify to allow for a quick launch. Furthermore, it is packed with options for customization and makes it easy for you to communicate your story in both words and pictures. 

This free theme can fit like a glove for:

  • New Shopify businesses with a limited budget
  • Online stores looking for editorial content support
  • Shopify websites of visual brand storytelling

5. The last words

And so, our Shopify Studio theme review comes to an end. But your Shopify journey continues on. If you love these minimal layouts with a modern and sleek vibe of Studio theme, just feel free to give it a try. 

And remember to click the Subscription button to get access to the newest information in eCommerce and valuable insights in the Shopify world by eComStart!

6. FAQs

Author:
Finn Nguyen is an eCommerce Expert specializing in Shopify, with a passion for guiding new business owners. With over 5 years of experience in the eCommerce industry, Finn has helped many new business owners from launching their first online store to achieving thriving sale. See his LinkedIn here

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