When building a new website, storytelling relates to how the sections of your page flow together, and the way in which your brand is conveyed. For example, you might think it’s important to lead with a sale on your home page, but it is much more effective to lead with a value proposition. To stand out, your brand needs to highlight why it’s different from your competitors. To do this, you need to tell your story.

If you don’t pick the right theme for your store, at some point you’ll run into limitations. While these can be tackled with an experienced dev team, it’s best to minimise them by choosing the right theme. 

No one theme in Shopify has everything. That’s why it’s important to find a theme that has what you need. It can seem like a daunting task, but don’t worry. We’re here to help you figure out what that is! These are our top 4 themes that are perfect for telling your story.

Impact

Impact is a feature rich theme, and while it doesn’t have every possible section, it certainly has configuration options to cover most business’ needs. This gives you the opportunity to mould this theme into something that truly captures the essence of your business, which is vital when it comes to storytelling.

Another way Impact supports storytelling is through the use of images and video. The theme’s homepage starts with a large media space taking up most of the screen, allowing you to introduce your brand visually. As you continue on through the home page, these large image spaces continue to dominate the page, allowing you not just to tell a story, but to show it.

The use of images in storytelling is not necessarily a revelation in Shopify themes. How Impact does stand out from the crowd, however, is the way in which it presents photos.

The use of a collage in presenting images allows not just your product and featured photos to stand out, but it also adds engaging motion to the theme.
Whether it’s to showcase progression your brand has gone through, or the difference your product can make, the use of Impact’s before/after image slider adds a sense of life and believability to what you’re advertising.

Another key feature is the visual timeline. This gives you an opportunity to highlight key dates in the history of your brand and express them in a linear and visually appealing way. It quite literally tells your story!

Showcase.

If you’re looking to put on a show, then Showcase is the theme for you. We mean, it’s literally in the name!

Designed to showcase your brand through images, this theme leans into the visual form of storytelling. The homepage is about 75% image to 25% text, allowing customers to truly visualise your brand. This theme really pushes your product to the front, allowing it to tell its own story.

As you scroll through the page, the transition from one section to the next is smooth and seamless, as if moving from room to room in a house. It truly takes your customer on a tour of your brand, highlighting all the aspects you want to feature in a beautiful, fluid way.

Another element we like is the feature of press coverage, which allows you to include an outside perspective on what your brand represents. You can tell your story all you want, but sometimes the voice of an outsider is the most convincing.

Portland.

Portland is a theme that delivers immediate impact. It achieves this with a striking header image which is incredibly unique, utilising a dynamic collage style that moves in tandem with your mouse, or scrolls by itself. Adding this movement captures the browser’s eye, but also the casual layout of the photos adds an element of life to the theme. The unique photo layout continues throughout the theme, where we repeatedly see dynamic movement and the use of collage style images.

With such bold features, it’s more limited on customisation than other themes. What Portland lacks in wide ranging customiser options, though, it makes up for in originality.

Another feature, which we have previously seen in Impact, is the use of a before and after image slider. It’s a powerful visual tool which is worth mentioning again as it can have a number of uses for brands of all different types.

Portland's most unique storytelling feature, however, is the way in which it highlights social media. For a brand that wants to tell a story, social media is key. This theme allows you to highlight your Instagram in a unique and visually appealing way with the use of parallax images, and it can also showcase the amount of followers your brand has. Presentation of your content rich social media pages in this way isn't just for visual effect, it’s also incredibly useful for storytelling, and for creating valuable social proof. 

Combine.

Combine once again perfectly captures a brand's story through the use of dynamic images, but with its own unique approach. In particular, we’re a big fan of the Restaurant theme style!

The homepage is introduced with large parallax images. It’s a creative way of featuring most products, but can work particularly well when advertising food - appearing almost as if the product is arriving at your table. 

The page is also dominated with large image spaces. This could be an excellent way to showcase your venue, your product, or anything else you want to highlight. It gives your potential customer a larger insight into your brand, and adds a sense of reality.

As if that’s not enough, there are options to feature videos, adding even more eye-catching movement and insight into your business.

While there are many features that lend themselves to storytelling, like trust badges, slide shows, and our beloved before and after image slider, Combine really shines through in the art of visual storytelling, due to its unique presentation and image-heavy format.

‍

Storytelling is a powerful tool for any business wanting to promote their brand. If you utilise one of these themes, you’re on the right track when looking to project your voice in a busy market.

If you want even more insight into how to convey a sense of storytelling on your website, then just get in touch! We’re more than happy to help you on your journey to eCommerce excellence. We can’t wait to help you tell your story.