Your WordPress ecommerce themes choice is the single decision that touches every other part of your shop. It determines page speed, checkout flow, mobile experience, and how much time you’ll burn on maintenance over the next three years.
Most theme review pages just regurgitate feature lists from marketing copy, which is no help when you’re trying to figure out what actually holds up on a live WooCommerce build with real plugins and real customers.
Having spent years diagnosing why WooCommerce shops underperform, from PageSpeed failures to checkout drop-offs, I can tell you the theme is the culprit more often than people expect. These six are the ones I keep recommending, each for a different type of project.
Astra: Best for Shops Wanting Maximum Customisation
Astra is the theme I recommend most to shop owners who know what they want their site to look like but can’t write PHP. It ships with over 280 starter templates and enough customisation controls that most people never touch code at all.
Starter Templates That Actually Match Your Product Type
280 templates sounds like a vanity number, but the library is genuinely sorted by product category in ways that save real time. A fashion template positions large hero images above featured collections with a layout built for visual browsing. An electronics template puts specification comparison tools and detailed product information front and centre, because nobody shopping for a laptop cares about lifestyle imagery.
Food delivery templates push quick-add functionality and prominent checkout buttons. Pet supply templates foreground subscription options and reorder prompts. Each niche layout reflects how customers actually browse that product type rather than forcing every shop into the same grid-of-thumbnails approach.
Every template imports in minutes, bringing complete page layouts, colour schemes, and WooCommerce styling already configured for the product type. Configuring all of that from scratch in WooCommerce’s settings, getting the product grid spacing right, sorting out cart icon placement, tweaking the category page layout, can eat an entire afternoon. Starting from a niche-specific template cuts that setup from days to hours.
Works Properly with Whichever Page Builder You Already Use
Astra supports Elementor, Beaver Builder, and the native Gutenberg editor equally well. Sounds trivial until you’ve spent six months learning Elementor’s widget system, only to discover your new theme fights against it. Shop owners lose weeks switching builders because their old theme only played nicely with one option. I’ve seen it happen more times than I’d like.
Pro Is Where the WooCommerce Features Live
Astra’s free version is a proper theme in its own right, but Pro at £39/year is where things get interesting for ecommerce. Off-canvas mobile filtering is the standout. On desktop, product filters sit in a left sidebar. On mobile, standard responsive approaches either hide them completely or stack them above products, pushing the actual listings below the fold. Pro keeps a small ‘Filter’ button visible that slides a full panel in from the side. It’s the same pattern ASOS and Zalando use.
Quick view popups round out the Pro offering. Customers preview product images, descriptions, variations, and the add-to-cart button in a lightbox overlay without ever leaving the category page.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| 280+ starter templates covering most shop niches | Pro version needed for WooCommerce-specific features |
| Compatible with Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Gutenberg | Sheer number of options can overwhelm newcomers |
| Lightweight at around 50KB | Some starter templates need paid plugins to function fully |
| Customisable header and footer builders included | Support quality drops noticeably on the free tier |
Price: Free / Pro from £39/year
Flatsome: Best for Shops That Want Everything Under One Roof
When I’m setting up a WooCommerce shop for somebody without a developer on call, Flatsome is where I start. It bundles page builder, sliders, popups, countdown timers, and mega menus into one package from a single team. Most people don’t appreciate how much that matters until something breaks.
One Codebase Means One Place to Look When Things Go Wrong
A typical WooCommerce shop runs separate plugins for page building, sliders, popups, countdown timers, and mega menus, each from a different developer with different update schedules. When WooCommerce pushes a major update, shop owners sit refreshing plugin dashboards, waiting for each one to confirm compatibility. That process goes wrong often enough that I steer non-technical clients away from multi-plugin stacks wherever I can.
Flatsome’s built-in UX Builder handles all of those functions in one place. Product carousels, promotional banners with countdown timers, mega menus with category images. Same styling controls, same team maintaining everything. When a checkout bug turns up on a multi-plugin shop, you disable plugins one by one to isolate the culprit. With Flatsome, there’s one codebase to check.
Live Search That Shows Products Before Customers Finish Typing
Standard WooCommerce search is rubbish, if I’m being honest. Type a query, press enter, wait for a page reload, scan text-only results. Flatsome replaces that with a live dropdown appearing after two or three characters, complete with image, name, price, and a quick-add button.
A customer searching for ‘blue wool’ sees matching scarves, jumpers, and blankets instantly, compares prices, and adds to cart without ever leaving the dropdown. Seconds rather than the minute-plus drilling through categories normally takes. For shops carrying hundreds of SKUs, the difference in browsing speed is night and day.
Colour and Size Swatches Instead of Clunky Dropdowns
WooCommerce’s default variation dropdowns are painful on mobile. Tap the field, scroll through a tiny window, tap your selection, hope you hit the right one. Flatsome swaps these for visual swatches: colours as clickable circles, sizes as labelled buttons. One tap selects and the product image updates straight away.
Think about how someone actually buys a t-shirt online. With dropdowns, they read ‘Heather Grey’, guess what it looks like, select it, wait for the page to update, then go back if they guessed wrong. Swatches show the actual colour as a filled circle. One glance answers the question. On mobile especially, where touchscreen interactions favour large tap targets over precise selections in tiny windows, this is a proper conversion booster.
$59 Once, Then Nothing
Unlike themes charging annually and holding updates hostage if you don’t renew, Flatsome costs $59 once. Lifetime updates and support included. That pricing model is one reason it’s shifted over 200,000 copies on ThemeForest.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| All-in-one package cuts plugin dependency headaches | Steeper learning curve than simpler themes |
| One-time payment with lifetime updates | You need to learn the UX Builder specifically |
| Live search and variation swatches built in | Less modular than picking your own plugin stack |
| 200,000+ sales on ThemeForest | ThemeForest’s support model can be slower than direct |
Price: $59 one-time (ThemeForest)
Botiga: Best for Shops Where the Photography Does the Selling
Handcrafted jewellery, designer furniture, artisan homewares. Products like these need visual breathing room, and the Botiga theme gives it to them with clean backgrounds, generous whitespace, and restrained typography that stays out of the way.
Minimalism That Serves a Purpose
Feature-heavy themes crowd product pages with promotional badges, related product carousels, review summaries, and social sharing buttons. Every element fights for attention, and the product itself gets lost. If you’re selling on craftsmanship and visual quality, that noise actively harms conversions. Botiga strips it all back and lets the images do the talking.
Performance backs up that design philosophy. Google’s own research shows conversion probability drops 7% for every additional second of load time, and Botiga consistently produces PageSpeed scores above 90 even with image-heavy catalogues. What’s impressed me is how those scores hold up after adding WooCommerce extensions that would tank performance on heavier themes.
Three Checkout Layouts Including a Shopify-Style Option
Botiga Pro gives you three checkout approaches. Multi-step breaks the process into distinct phases with a progress indicator, which suits shops with complex shipping requirements. A Shopify-style layout mirrors what millions of customers already recognise, reducing the cognitive load of an unfamiliar checkout. Single-page puts everything on one scrollable screen, which I’ve found works particularly well for impulse purchase categories.
Worth mentioning the header builder too. It creates separate designs for desktop and mobile rather than forcing one layout to serve both contexts. Desktop visitors get a full mega menu with category images whilst mobile visitors get simplified navigation with large touch targets. Trying to make one header serve both well usually pleases neither audience.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Minimalist design puts product photography first | Fewer built-in features than all-in-one alternatives |
| PageSpeed scores consistently above 90 | Pro version needed for the checkout layouts |
| Separate mobile and desktop header builders | Less suited to shops with large, complex catalogues |
| Three checkout layout options in Pro | Smaller community than the established names |
Price: Free / Pro from £50/year
OceanWP: Best for Shops Watching Every Quid
New ecommerce businesses face a miserable trade-off: pay for a paid theme before you’ve made a single sale, or accept a free one missing half the features you need. OceanWP breaks that by shipping a free version with WooCommerce features other themes lock behind paywalls.
A Free Version That Punches Well Above Its Weight
Product quick views, floating add-to-cart bars, and distraction-free checkout all come included at no cost. Those three alone would run you £75-125 as standalone plugins, and that’s before factoring in compatibility headaches from mixing different developers’ code. OceanWP bundles them together, tested and maintained as one package.
I’ve recommended it to a fair few shop owners just starting out who needed to keep costs tight. The pattern is always the same: they start with the free version, buy the sticky header extension six months later when traffic picks up, then add the popup builder for email capture once turnover justifies it. Investment scales with the business rather than front-loading the cost.
Extensions Priced Individually from £30 to £130
Rather than all-or-nothing bundles, OceanWP sells extensions individually. A shop needing only sticky headers and a popup login pays far less than one wanting the complete suite.
Elementor Integration That Goes Beyond ‘Compatible’
Plenty of themes technically support Elementor but don’t properly account for it. Headers clash with theme styles. WooCommerce widgets render inconsistently. OceanWP goes further with custom WooCommerce widgets built specifically for Elementor, letting you construct product grids, carousels, and category displays with full styling control.
The shop page builder redesigns your main layout entirely through visual tools, which means non-developers can reshape their browse-and-buy experience without touching code. If Elementor is your builder of choice, this is the ecommerce web design foundation that works with it rather than against it.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Proper WooCommerce features in the free version | Extension costs add up if you need several |
| Spot-on Elementor compatibility | Less cohesive than a single all-in-one package |
| Pay only for what you need, when you need it | Some features require buying multiple extensions |
| Large, active community for troubleshooting | Visual polish can feel rougher than paid themes |
Price: Free / Extensions £30-130
Storefront: Best for Shops That Need Bulletproof Reliability
Plugin conflicts that break checkout. Theme updates that tank product pages. Compatibility issues with new WooCommerce versions. Anyone who’s run WooCommerce shops for any length of time has lived through all of these. Storefront is what I reach for when a project needs to be rock-solid rather than pretty.
Maintained by the WooCommerce Team Themselves
WooCommerce’s own team builds and maintains Storefront. When a new WooCommerce version drops, the theme updates at the same time. Sounds obvious, but the reality for third-party themes is a nerve-wracking wait between WooCommerce releasing and the theme developer issuing a compatibility patch. I’ve seen shops lose days of revenue during that gap. Storefront removes it entirely.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce, funds its maintenance as part of their broader ecosystem. Their model differs from themes that dangle a limited free version to push paid upgrades.
Automattic profits when WooCommerce shops succeed through hosting, payment processing, and extension sales. That alignment means the theme isn’t going to suddenly introduce a paywall or get abandoned. It’s one of the few themes where the developer’s financial incentives genuinely point in the same direction as yours.
Developer-Friendly Foundations and Niche Child Themes
Built on the Underscores starter theme, Storefront follows WordPress conventions throughout. Hook names behave as expected, file organisation matches standards, and any competent developer can modify it efficiently. Predictability like that is half the battle when you’re integrating caching plugins, CDN services, or security tools.
Visual polish comes through official child themes for specific niches: toy shops, pharmacies, bookshops, electronics retailers. Child themes inherit all parent theme updates automatically, so security patches and WooCommerce compatibility fixes apply immediately. You get niche-appropriate styling without sacrificing the maintenance reliability that makes Storefront worth choosing.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Guaranteed WooCommerce compatibility on day one | Basic visual design out of the box |
| Completely free with no hidden paid tier | Fewer customisation options than most competitors |
| Backed by Automattic’s resources long-term | Child themes needed for any real visual polish |
| Clean, standards-compliant codebase | Not the pick if you want a distinctive look |
Price: Completely free
GeneratePress: Best for Shops That Want Full Template Control
Standard theme customisation only goes so far. Adjust colours, swap fonts, maybe rearrange a sidebar. GeneratePress goes properly further with its Block Elements and hook system, giving technically-minded shop owners the ability to rebuild page templates from scratch without writing a plugin.
Block Elements Rebuild Product Pages in the Native Editor
Most WooCommerce themes lock you into a fixed product page layout: image left, title and price right, description below, related products at the bottom. GeneratePress’s Block Elements feature tears that apart entirely. Rebuild the whole layout using Gutenberg. Move the product gallery below the description. Place trust badges directly beside the add-to-cart button. Add custom sections for sizing guides or brand storytelling.
That flexibility extends to category pages, cart pages, search results, and checkout flows. I’ve used it on projects where the ecommerce UX brief called for something no standard WooCommerce template could deliver, and it handled the job without needing a custom plugin.
Hooks and Conditionals for Proper Personalisation
Insertion points run throughout the theme: before headers, after navigation, above content, below products, beside checkout buttons. Combine those with conditional display rules and you get surprisingly capable personalisation from a theme rather than a dedicated plugin.
A ‘Free shipping on orders over £50’ message can display only in categories where that threshold applies. If a customer adds a camera to their cart, a sidebar suggestion for memory cards appears. Trust badges position beside checkout buttons on the payment page but nowhere else. That kind of conditional content normally requires a separate plugin costing £100+ per year. Having it in the theme’s hook system is cracking value.
7.5KB of Theme Weight and a Lifetime Pricing Option
At 7.5KB gzipped, GeneratePress contributes almost nothing to page weight. A single product image typically runs 50-200KB; the theme itself is a rounding error. The efficiency comes from vanilla JavaScript rather than jQuery, eliminating a 90KB dependency most themes still carry. With WordPress now powering 43.4% of all websites, the gap between lightweight and bloated themes shows up in every Core Web Vitals report you pull, and Google pays attention to those numbers when ranking product pages.
Pricing comes in two flavours: £45/year or £190 lifetime. By year five, the annual path has cost £225 whilst the lifetime purchaser sits at £190. Any shop planning to run on WordPress long-term saves money going lifetime.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Block Elements let you rebuild any page template | Steeper learning curve to get the full benefit |
| Hook system with conditional display rules | You need to be technically comfortable for the advanced bits |
| Lightest theme on this list at 7.5KB | Not the right choice for non-technical shop owners |
| Lifetime pricing option available at £190 | WooCommerce features sit behind the Pro module |
Price: Free / Pro £45/year or £190 lifetime
Making Your Decision: All 6 WordPress Themes Compared
| Theme | Price | Speed | WooCommerce Features | Learning Curve | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astra | Free / £39+ year | Excellent | Extensive with Pro | Low | Maximum customisation |
| Flatsome | $59 one-time | Good | Full suite built in | Medium | All-in-one solution |
| Botiga | Free / £50+ year | Excellent | Good with Pro | Low | Product photography |
| OceanWP | Free / £30-130 | Good | Extensive free | Medium | Startup budgets |
| Storefront | Free | Good | Guaranteed compatible | Very Low | Long-term stability |
| GeneratePress | Free / £45+ year | Fastest | Via Pro module | Medium-High | Template control |
Which one fits depends entirely on where you are and what you need.
- Astra if you want maximum customisation flexibility and your page builder skills are already sorted.
- Flatsome if you’d rather have everything bundled by one team and never worry about plugin compatibility again.
- Botiga if your products sell on photography and you want a theme that gets out of the images’ way.
- OceanWP if the budget is tight but you still need proper WooCommerce functionality from day one.
- Storefront if long-term stability and guaranteed WooCommerce compatibility matter more than visual flair.
- GeneratePress if you want full control over page templates and you’re comfortable building custom layouts.
If you need help matching a theme to your shop’s setup, our WordPress SEO service can audit your current configuration and recommend the option most likely to convert your target customers. Or if you’re after broader strategy work, our ecommerce SEO consulting service covers the full picture.
Whichever direction you go, test thoroughly before committing. Switching themes later means redesigning your entire shop, migrating content, and risking SEO value during the transition. Getting it right first time saves a world of faff.
