Brooklyn Theme Review– Shopify’s Best Theme Revealed (2021)

Find out if the Brooklyn Shopify Theme is any good or not Below!

[featured-image]

A good Shopify theme can work wonders for your business. It helps your store stand out and attracts customers to your doorstep. There are many themes available free of cost, so what’s the problem?

Selecting a theme that suits your taste and blends with the store’s vibe becomes difficult when there are so many options to choose from. It is the first thing you must finalize before adding products to your store.

Why?

Because if you change the theme after making all the customizations all your efforts will be wasted as all the settings you made will be set back to default.

After going through hundreds of themes on Shopify, I finally found a winner. You’ll be surprised to know that I did not pay a dime to get this theme as it was free!

I know what you’re thinking, it’s impossible. But believe me, the Brooklyn Theme on Shopify gives your store a chic, minimalistic yet sophisticated makeover for free.

If you’re new to Shopify and need help finding the best theme and a 101 on Shopify’s free Brooklyn Theme, this is the place to be.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a software solution that allows businesses to create stores and sell their products online. Here’s how you can start using Shopify,

1. Sign up for a Shopify Account.
2. Register your store on Shopify.
3. Edit your shop settings and customize it.
4. Add a domain name.
5. Add products to sell.
6. Go live.

That’s all, in six simple steps your Shopify Store will be up and running. Hang on, this won’t drive customers to your store. The key here is to customize the store so it is user-friendly but at the same time good-looking. This is where you can use a Shopify Theme to your store’s strengths. Let’s learn more about Shopify Themes and how they can make or break your online shop.

What are Shopify Themes?

Themes are in simplest terms layouts of your online store that determine its ambiance. For example, for spa products, you’ll want to create a calm and relaxing environment for the customers. Whereas for electronic products, you must generate an energetic vibe.

You can create a shopper’s haven by choosing the right theme for your store. The theme does not necessarily have to be from the premium section. After extensive research I found the best theme to embellish my store and you’ll be surprised to hear that it was a free template. It didn’t cost me a fortune or need to hire a web designer. Sounds dreamy, right?

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Check out Shopify’s Brooklyn Theme and you’ll not be disappointed.

About Shopify’s Brooklyn Theme

Don’t have a huge budget for premium themes or web development?

No need to fret, this theme is free to use and gorgeous. This section will tell you all about the Brooklyn Theme and the following sections will help you get a detailed understanding of its features and functions.

The Brooklyn Theme by Shopify

This theme is most suitable for brands selling apparel, but the chic interface works well with any niche. You can select from two styles—Playful and Classic.

No matter what style you choose your customer is greeted with a homepage slider. This separates your website from the cliché white-bordered slider at the center of the homepage. Let me tell you a secret, this homepage slider at the center makes your store look unfinished. Which is why I love the Brooklyn Theme. It considers the likes and dislikes of customers and gives them a sophisticated and sleek design.

Large images for the background can help you captivate the customers with vivid pictures related to your store. The main difference between the two styles is you can add five collections in the Classic style homepage whereas only three in the Playful style. Both styles are visually appealing and depending on the number of collections or your best products you can pick one of the two styles.

Brooklyn Theme Frontend Features

We’ve covered the basics now let’s dive into the features that can benefit all types of stores, particularly food and clothing stores.

Allows Showing Pictures

Displaying products on their website is a vital aspect of any online store. This helps the customer decide which product to buy just by looking at the pictures. And even if the customer wasn’t at your store for buying some product but its image appeals to them, it may turn into a sale. For businesses such as clothing stores showcasing their products in pictures is a way to woo the customers. The viewer can imagine how the product will appear on them only when they see a model wearing the same apparel in the product’s images.

Slide Show

Classic and Playful both themes allow you to add slideshows to highlight products. If one image couldn’t get the customer’s attention, then a series of dynamic pictures surely will.

Video on the Homepage

Your store’s homepage sets the first impression in front of visitors. So, it must be amazing. You cannot put forth a dull or boring forefront for your store. Adding a video on the homepage can help you entice the customers and leave a lasting impression.

Auto-adjusts Photos

The last thing you want is oversized images or empty image fields in your store. It makes the page and your store look unfinished. The visitor may wait thinking there’s an image that hasn’t loaded but will be disappointed when there’s no outcome. The Brooklyn theme works in your favor to adjust its design according to the number of products you have in stock.

Slide Out Shopping Cart

Imagine this, you’re shopping online and when you add a product the shop takes you directly to the cart. You want to add many products to the cart or perhaps increase the quantity of a product you wish to buy. You cannot go back and forth between the cart and the product’s page every time you want to change the quantity. A slide-out cart solves this problem once and for all.

All these features combined can work wonders for your website and the best part is you can get hold of them very easily and free of cost. That’s right, no need to spend hundreds of dollars to pay web designers.

Brooklyn Theme Functionality

The features discussed above are have nothing to do with the seller’s end of the website. Themes also make it easy for you to manage the backend of your website. But why should you use the Brooklyn theme specifically?

Here’s why. The Brooklyn theme makes managing your online store a breeze with numerous functionalities. Some of them are given below:

High-Quality Stock Images

When you think of starting a store you aren’t always stocked with high-quality pictures related to your business and products. So, if you want unlimited access to professionally clicked royalty-free images. All these images free to use and allow you to effectively advertise your products without any copyright issues.

Search Engine Optimization

For the tech freaks (or not) this feature lets you drive more traffic to your store with minimal efforts. You don’t have to be an SEO expert to use this Shopify feature. You can add meta titles and descriptions for your products that help boost your ranking on the search engine pages.

Easy Organization

Messy stores are difficult for customers to comprehend and you to manage. This theme lets users organize their stores into categories using dropdown menus. For example, you can make a category labeled “Cakes” and then add sub-categories like “Small Cakes”, “Party/Wedding Cakes”, and “Big Cakes” to make your store look more organized. Organizing the content makes it simple for the customers to navigate through your store and gives it a more professional look.

Social Media Tab

Social media has become an important part of everyone’s life. It is in the interest of your business to have active pages on social media. Keep the customers in loop and update product information and interesting content on the pages to keep them interested. The Brooklyn theme shows icons of popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter once you add the links to your admin panel. 

Sidebar and Footer

To organize your content, use the Brooklyn theme’s sidebar. This way you can focus better on the pictures at the top of your page as the navigation menu appears on the side. Besides the sidebar feature, the theme also includes a footer feature where you can enter important links. Generally, this is where website owners prefer placing links to pages like Contact Us, About Us, and Terms and Conditions.

Email Subscription

The Shopify Brooklyn theme allows you to toggle content of the footer and add personalized content instead. If you want to add an email subscription campaign at the bottom of your page, you can do so. Simply place a bar where users can enter their email address and subscribe to receive your newsletters or updates.

Mobile Compatibility

Have you ever visited a website on your PC and then tried to do the same on your smartphone? Most of the times some of the features are unresponsive when you open the same website on your phone. This can highly affect the customer’s viewing experience. The Brooklyn theme detects the device your customers use to change the display to a compatible format.

Brooklyn Theme Backend Features and Design

Any theme would be incomplete without granting you complete access to customize your store. So does the Brooklyn theme. Don’t like its default color? Change it. Here are the phenomenal backend features you can take advantage of with this theme.

Customized Color Schemes

If you don’t like the default color palette of the Brooklyn theme or it does not work well with your product, change it to a color scheme of your choice. Yes, it’s that easy. You can change the background colors, link colors, and so many other components on the page. There is no need to forcefully make do of the colors that are allotted to different areas on the page. Stir things up, add an oomph factor to your page.

Change the Font

Like changing the color palette, you can change the typography of your website if the current font does not appeal to you. However, you cannot select any random font and must select one from the options provided to you. To change the font, follow these simple steps:

1. Log into your online store.
2. Go to Themes.
3. Select Brooklyn and then click on Customize.
4. Select Theme settings –>Typography.
5. Choose the font you want from the list.

Cart Customization

As a business, you want to enhance the user experience as much as you can. This includes adding features to your shopping cart. The Brooklyn theme lets you customize the shopping cart by adding some creative features that customers will love. For example, you can create a section where the customers can add special instructions. This improves your brand’s reputation in the eyes of customers.

Add a Favicon

Before you ask, a favicon is a tiny icon that appears above your store’s URL. It may seem small but makes a lot of difference in establishing your brand’s identity. A favicon helps your site look professional and is great for branding. You can add your business’s logo here to make your store appear more refined and sleeker.

7 Reasons to Use the Shopify Brooklyn Theme

Other than the surplus of features I just mentioned above, the Brooklyn theme has many more advantages that you can benefit from. You will find answers to the following questions in this section:

• What’s so special about this theme?
• What sets it apart from the thousands of Shopify themes?

Without further ado, these are the reasons that show you why you need the Brooklyn theme to support your Shopify store now.

1. Cost-Effective

Such exquisite themes cost business owners around $100 and the cost does not include customer support. So, believe me when I say this–the Brooklyn theme saves you a fortune as it is completely free of cost. Want to hire a web designer to get a custom website? Feel free to do so. But let me warn you, they will be invested in the development process only till you make the payment. After that, get ready to never see or hear from them.

And for updates, the paid themes will be a torment. First, you must buy the theme and then pay for an update every time a new update is aired.

2. Display NINE Collections

Most themes support displaying a maximum of five collections. But the Brooklyn theme lets users showcase nine collections. This is by far the greatest number of collections that a theme permits you to display on your store that I have found. You can create more than nine collections but only showcase nine of them to your customers. This theme was made with apparel stores in mind and therefore it lets you display nine collections at once.

3. Homepage Video

Most themes don’t focus much on the homepage but that’s not the case with Shopify’s Brooklyn theme. Instead of focusing on the bandwidth, this theme focuses more on appealing to the customers. To do so, people can add videos to their homepage to get the customer’s attention. For a free theme, this is one of the best features you could ask for. The only condition is that you must upload the video on YouTube or Vimeo to add them to your homepage.

4. Highlight Collections

These collections are featured collections that appear below your store’s sliders. Add the best-selling collections to this section and watch them sell at lightning speed. Choose any collection that you wish to highlight in this section. These featured collections get more exposure than other collections that you have created.

You can customize which collection you wish to display in the featured collection section and how many products will appear from it. The layout makes the page seem welcoming and not tacky. You can also play with the collection’s layout and appearance using the Brooklyn theme.

5. Email Subscriptions

As mentioned earlier, you can add additional space at the bottom of your page for people to enter their email addresses. This space is to help you set up a customer email collection campaign without violating their privacy. By entering their email addresses in the bar, the customers permit you to send them updates on products and your newsletters. 

You don’t need to download extra software to do this as the Brooklyn theme has this feature integrated. You can change the wordings to make the default text more inviting if you want to convince the customers to enter their email addresses in the bar.

6. Slider Button

Having images is not enough if the consumer has no idea where they can find the product in your store. To direct them to the collection or product in your store add an in-slide button to the sliders. A lot of premium themes are not prepared to serve you and your store like this theme.

For example, you create a slider about cupcakes. Now, add an in-slide button and the customer will be directed to the cupcakes collection when they click the button. This makes the design sophisticated and uncomplicated for the customers to navigate through.

7. Shows Blog Entries

If you do not already have a blog for your store and its products, it’s about time you did. Blogging is one of the most powerful marketing tactics adopted by businesses around the world. Shopify knows this and therefore the Brooklyn theme lets you post blog entries. Why is it important? Because this can greatly educate and assist the customers about your business and products included in the collections.

Each blog post that you publish can be shared in this section and the customers will be able to connect with your store better.

If you look closely, most businesses (even top brands) make use of Shopify’s free Brooklyn theme. It shows us that the paid alternatives are not necessarily better options. Don’t take my word for it, go and try it yourself. If you don’t like it then you can always spend hundreds of dollars to get a paid theme.