Shopify Empire Theme Review

What are the features of this theme that can help increase the revenue of your Shopify store?

Is it worth the money, or should you get a different alternative?

This honest Shopify Empire theme review will show you the pros and cons of this theme by Pixel Union, and will tell you whether it can be of benefit to you and worth the investment or not.

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Empire Theme Review Summary

• Name: Shopify Empire Theme
• Website: www.PixelUnion.net/collections/shopify-themes/products/empire
• Founders: Pixel Union / Out of the Sandbox (Shopify-owned company)
• Quality & Support: 9.5 of 10
• Features & Ease of Use: 9 of 10
• Design & Flexibility: 8.5 of 10
• Value for Money: 9.5 of 10
• Testimonials: 9 of 10
• Price: $180 One-time payment for free lifetime manual updates, and the first year of the auto-updater app.
• Recommended? Yes

Overall EcomCents.com Rating: 9.1 of 10

Summary: Empire is a good Shopify theme that is mainly designed for online stores with large catalogs, and it comes with many features that can be used to increase sales and revenue of your Shopify store.

Empire is developed by a company that is owned by Shopify itself, which ensures the highest quality and conformance to Shopify’s latest changes with regular updates.

What Makes Empire Different from Other Shopify Themes?

Three things make the Empire theme special when compared to other Shopify themes, especially the ones developed by third party developers:

Maintained by Pixel Union, a Shopify Company

Shopify now owns Pixel Union, the developer of Empire and other themes like Superstore, Startup, and other themes.

Why is this good?

It’s because Shopify keeps improving on their infrastructure, and that requires the themes to be updated on regular basis in order to keep your Shopify store running smoothly and securely.

ANd since Pixel Union (Out of the Sandbox) is owned by Shopify, this means that they will be aware of any new changes that require updating their themes, and they will do their best to do the necessary improvements as soon as they are required.

Empire Comes with Free Lifetime Updates

Like it is with other themes by Pixel Union and Out of the Sandbox, such as Parallax and Turbo, Empire theme comes with free lifetime updates, even though you pay for it only once.

This is different from most of the themes developed by third party developers like Booster and Shoptimized that will give you updates for the first year only, and then you have to pay in order to renew your license and get new updates for another year.

And for Pixel Union’s Empire theme updates, you can do the updates manually, or, you can use the auto updater app of Out of the Sandbox in order to do automatic updates for the theme whenever they are available.

This app is originally paid, but you get to use it for free for the first year of purchasing Empire theme.

After that, you either do manual updates for free, or you pay for the app to do auto updates for you and save you the time and hassle.

Saves You Money with Built-in Features That Can Boost Conversions

There are many ways to boost sales on your Shopify store, and many of theme require you to add a certain app that will give you a certain feature that helps in boosting sales.

And that comes with two issues:

1. Most of these apps are paid, and together, they will cost you a heavy bill every month or year.
2. Having lots of Shopify apps requires a lot of work to keep updating them, and they slow down your store and makes it vulnerable to security and functionality issues, which might make you lose potential sales.

But Empire solves this problem as it provides many of these sales-boosting functions through its built-in features.

You pay once for the Empire theme, you keep using these conversion-boosting features as long as you have the theme installed on your store, and you save money while keeping your store fast and secure, which is what we will be discussing next.

Sales Boosting Features of Empire Theme

Here are some of the useful Empire theme features that can help you increase your Shopify store’s conversions and revenue:

Buy it Now

It was found that every additional step on the customer’s purchasing journey decreases the number of buyers and lowers the conversion rate on online stores.

And that’s why Amazon has patented the “1-Click Buy” feature.

They know how important it is to make the customer’s journey faster and easier.

And Empire theme has this feature basically takes your customer from the product page directly to the checkout page without going through the cart page, through clicking the “Buy it Now” button.

Quick Shop

Another feature that makes the customer’s journey faster is the “Quick Shop” button, which shows up when your store’s visitor hovers over the product cart, and if they click this button, a pop-up window will open showing the details of the product without leaving the current page to the product page.

This is useful so that your customers can scan the different products of a certain category faster, and find what they are looking for without getting bored jumping from one page to another before getting tired and leaving your store.

Live Search (Predictive Search with Images)

This feature of Empire allows your Shopify store’s visitor to explore products while they are still typing in the search bar, like the predictive search on Amazon and Google.

However, Shopify’s Empire theme takes this to the next level by showing images of the products to the searcher, which makes it even easier to directly find the exact product they are looking for while still typing in the search bar.

Maps

If you have a physical store for your business, in addition to your Shopify store, then you need to show your potential customers where your store is located.

And Empire gives you this ability through the feature that allows you to add a map to your location on your Shopify store.

Related Products

This feature can help increase the average cart value by showing relevant or complementary products to what your store’s visitor is browsing.

This way, the customer can add more products to their cart during the same visit to your store, which means that you sell more with the same marketing efforts and advertising budget, in order to finally increase your profit.

Recently Viewed Products

Another feature that Amazon and big retailers use to keep their stores’ visitors engaged and remind them to make a purchase.

Empire theme shows your store’s visitor other products that they have recently viewed while visiting other products, in order to remind theme of those first products, making it easy to get back to them and add them to the cart to buy them.

Social Icons

Empire theme offers you to show buttons for social platforms in two places on your Shopify store, and for doing two things:

1. On product pages in order to allow your store’s visitors to share the products they like on their social media feed to recommend them to others. (free advertising)
2. And on the footer of your store in order to link back to your social media profiles for your customers to follow you their, so that you keep reaching out to them through an engaging content, or through giveaway contests, which finally leads you to getting free traffic to your Shopify store.

Currency and Language Selector

This feature from Empire allows your store’s visitors to change the language of browsing your store, or change the currency in which the prices are shown.

This creates more convenience and trust in your store, and makes its visitors associate more with it, thus, making it easier to convert them into buyers.

Mega Menu

This is a dropdown menu that shows in the header of your Shopify store.

The mega menu on Empire allows you to show your Shopify store’s visitors all the categories and subcategories of your products, for easier and faster navigation, which helps theme find what they need faster.

Product Filtering

With Empire, you can allow your store’s visitors to filter products based on certain tags like color, size, type, material, brand, …etc., which helps in getting them faster to what they want.

Customer Testimonials

You can allow your existing customers to leave reviews for the products they purchased form your store with Empire theme, which helps remove the doubts from new visitors when they come to your store for the first time, and helps in converting them into buyers.

Newsletter Signup

The money is in the list they say, and that’s true!

Email marketing has a very high ROI compared to other marketing methods, and allows you to keep reaching out to your existing customers or store visitors who signed up to your list, in order to tell them about the new products added to your store, current discounts and seasonal or occasional promotions, availability of certain products, …etc.

And Empire theme allows you to easily create a signup form in order to give your store’s visitors to signup for your list.

Note that you still need an autoresponder software like GetResponse and the Shopify Email app that has a free credit for up to 2,500 emails sent per month.

Shipping Calculator at Cart Page

Most Shopify themes only show the shipping cost on the checkout page and not on the cart page, which sometimes pisses off some potential customers after they find out that they still have to pay more than what they expected.

But Empire theme solves this problem by allowing your potential customer to calculate the shipping cost while still on the cart page, which creates a better user experience that makes the customer journey easier.

Shopify Empire Theme Templates

Empire theme comes with three done-for-you styles that you can choose from in order to get your store ready with less work.

You pay once and get the three styles and you can switch between them anytime you want.

These styles are:

1. Supply: Customized for selling different home and garden items and gifts.
2. Graphic: Customized for stores that sell home furniture.
3. Industrial: Customized for selling electronics and gadgets.

Empire Theme Shopify Store Examples

There are many successful Shopify stores that use Empire as their theme, such as: Muji, InStyle Furniture, Amped Electric Scooters, The Modern Shop, and others.

Empire Theme Demo Stores

If you want to explore Shopify stores with the different templates of Empire theme, then you can do that from the sales page of the theme, by selecting the template first, and then clicking the “View Demo” button.

Empire Shopify Theme Reviews by Real Users

There are many positive reviews for the Empire theme from real Shopify store owners, praising the many useful features, the quality of the theme, and the amazing support of Pixel Union, the theme developer.

Empire Theme Price

The price of the Empire Shopify theme is a one-time payment of $ 180.

You pay this price once, get the three built-in templates, and get a lifetime free manual updates.

Also, you get a one-year license for the auto-updater app of the Pixel Union / Out of the Sandbox themes, for free.

After that one-year, you either pay to keep using the auto updater app and save yourself the time and hassle, or you remove it and keep doing the free manual updates.

Empire Theme Free Download

Empire theme is not available to download for free, and even if you find a free version, it will be illegally distributed, and might get your store in trouble if the developer finds out about it.

And in any case, the free version would mostly be outdated, which might cause security and functionality issues to your Shopify store.

The cost of the Empire theme is really affordable, especially with the lifetime free updates.

Where to Buy Empire Theme for Shopify?

The Empire theme is available in two theme marketplaces:

1. The Shopify theme marketplace.
2. The Pixel Union Website (Best).

I recommend that you go directly to the second option in order to get it directly from the developing company.

>>> Click Here to Download Empire Theme for Shopify <<<

Affordable Empire Theme Alternatives

If you still can’t afford to buy the Empire theme, but you want to use some of the features that can increase sales on your store, then here are two alternatives to Empire:

1. Free: Debutify theme, which gives some premium features in the free plan, and you can upgrade later to the paid plan to get all premium features. (Read my Debutify theme review!)
2. eCom Turbo theme by Franklin, which is a paid one, but you can get it at less than half the price of Empire, and it comes with free lifetime updates. (Read my eCom Turbo review!)

Pro’s & Con’s of Pixel Union’s Empire Theme

Pros:

• Developed and maintained by a Shopify-owned company, which means regular updates to keep it compatible with Shopify’s infrastructure and keep your store clean of bugs.
• Great for stores with large catalog.
• High quality theme.
• Different built-in styles to choose from and save the time and effort.
• Pay once and get all three styles, lifetime free manual updates, and one-year free auto updates.
• Many features that can help increase revenue, while saving money instead of paying for apps.
• Great support from Pixel Union and positive feedback from real Empire theme users.

Cons:

• No free plan is available.
• No money back guarantee.

Who Is Empire Theme for?

Empire theme can be good for Shopify store owners who run stores with a large catalog of products, and want a professional theme that is inspired by online stores of big online retailers.

Empire Support

The support of Empire theme is provided by the developer, Pixel Union / Out of the Sandbox, which is owned by Shopify.

The reviews from current users of the Empire theme, and other themes by the same company, are highly positive on the support, as well as on the theme quality and features.

You can submit a support request on the PixelUnion.net website, and it is expected to get a response within 1-2 business days at max.

Conclusion – Is Shopify Empire Theme Worth it?

Sure, Empire theme is a high quality, clean theme for Shopify stores with large catalogs, and the features that come with it can save you money on the long run compared to getting paid apps to use them.

The theme comes with lifetime free updates, and it is maintained by a Shopify-owned company, which will make it always reliable and compliant to Shopify’s requirements, and thus, making your store easier to manage.

This is my conclusion of this Empire theme review.

If you still need any help on Empire, or if you have any question about anything I mentioned here, then please, feel free to ask me in the comments’ section below, and I will do my best to help you asap 🙂

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