New theme in town alert! There’s a new theme developer on Shopify Themes Store called SalesHunterThemes and they have released 2 themes in total: Blum and Colo. As your trusted CRO and Shopify information source, there’s no doubt that we have to experience them. In this post, Blum theme will be put to the test.
Advertised as a theme “made for fashion brands with high page speed and stunning mobile design”, it’s clear that Blum is directly targeted at merchants in the fashion segment. Whether you’re currently happy with your current Shopify theme or still on the hunt for the perfect theme, this article is for you as we will provide you with our in depth review of this newly introduced Blum theme.
💡 We meticulously evaluate Shopify themes and apps based on our hands-on experience. Read more about our comprehensive review process and methodology.
What does Blum theme offer? Is Blum’s price point worth the money? How to build a store using Blum Theme? What are Blum’s theme pros and cons? Should I purchase Blum theme? Following questions will be answered in our blog.
Blum Shopify Theme Review: Should You Purchase This Theme for Your Fashion Brand Store?
Outline
- What is the Blum theme?
- Who should use the Blum theme?
- Let's look at the price
- What does Blum theme offer
- What we think of Blum theme
- Summary
What is the Blum theme?
Blum’s theme origin
Blum theme was created by SalesHunterThemes - a new name in the Shopify themes market. However, this developer is not a rookie in E-commerce and website development since they have spent the last 2 years working with us - PageFly to develop themes.
As their team is made of CRO experts with more than 10 years of experience, SalesHunterThemes products, including Blum theme has following strengths:
- 24/7 Live Chat Customer Support for every theme
- Niche focus CRO features
- Best performance on mobile devices on the market
As described by SalesHunterTheme, Blum is the niche focused theme for fashion, health and beauty businesses. This is explained by their richness in image display options, which is a crucial factor in converting sales for respective industries.
How to find Blum theme?
To gain access to Blum theme, you can click here to try it out yourself. Just like any theme on Shopify Themes Store, you can spend as much time building your store using the theme as you want and only have to pay once you hit Publish.
How many styles are there in Blum theme?
There are 3 styles to choose from in Blum themes: Solie, Mondo and Celia.
Solie style
“Clean, energetic, dazzling, and feminine vibe” - these are adjectives SalesHunterThemese use to describe the Solie style. In the demo store, this style is used for an active wear brand targeting young women.
With sans serif fonts and a bright color palette, Solie represents the carefree and youthful energy of expressive youngsters. This aligns with the urban youth audience’s persona. We suggest using the Solie theme for brands with active, energetic and young positioning.
Mondo style
Dedicated to merchants who place their store as “stylish, wild, creative with a minimalism vibe”, SalesHunterThemes set up a demo store for an unisex clothing brand using this style.
Celia style
“Young, happy, soothing vibe” are words used to describe the Celia style by SalesHunterThemes. The demo store for this style is for a sustainable clothing brand for young women.
If you’re looking for a sensual and calming style, Celia might be the right fit for you. We suggest trying out this style for a jewelry store or a health and fitness products store.
Who should use the Blum theme?
As highlighted by the developer and designer, Blum theme is dedicated to fashion and beauty businesses. The ideal store for Blum theme can be an apparel store, accessories boutique or health and beauty products store.
There are 3 main reasons why Blum is your go-to choice when it comes to building a fashion store:
- Visual storytelling elements
As the fashion industry is a highly competitive field with the increasing need for products sold quickly and at a relatively low cost, merchants need to sell as fast as they can before items go out of season or the fashion trend dies out.
In the fast fashion and Ecommerce landscape, investing in product photography is extremely important to promote your store. Not only images act as a demonstration of how items look and feel, they also help build credibility and professionalism for merchants who sell clothing and accessories.
- Mobile first design
Online shopping has become a highly addictive hobby for consumers. As they spend most of their time using their phone for all information needs, making your store mobile responsive is the key factor in securing the conversion rate.
With the mobile first mindset
- Unrivaled page speed
After testing, we found out that all pages generated by Blum theme have 8x Google Pagespeed score on mobile. This is extremely crucial for both buyer’s experience and Google ranking, which will result in higher conversion rate and sales growth.
Let's look at the price
Blum theme is currently listed on Shopify Theme store as $290USD. In general, this price point is in the mid-end tier of listed themes as the cheapest paid ones start at $200USD and the most expensive ones are $350USD.
As usual, Blum theme has unlimited trial to allow merchants customize and experiment the theme on their store as much as they wish. Purchase is only made when merchants decide to publish pages.
From our viewpoint, Blum theme is a fairly reasonable priced theme as its price is not too high and offer a bunch of premium features such as:
- Store locator
- Color swatches
- Stock counter
Compared to a few premium themes with similar supported features such as Prestige ($320USD) and Impact ($350USD), it’s safe to say Blum is the choice to help merchants make the most bang of their bucks due to its lower price point
What does Blum theme offer
Smooth and stunning story telling layout
Collapsible content
With the aim to shed spotlight on images, collapsible content is the way to provide information in a logical way without taking too much space on the page. Clear, precise headings of each item in the collapsible content allow users to browse to the exact information that they want without having to scroll too much, hence improving the browsing experience.
Along with the text, we can also add images to the list as well. There are 2 options to choose from: Text first and Image first. Based on each merchant’s preference, the image or the text will be shown first.
Image banner with separate background image settings for all devices and mobiles
This feature truly caters to the mobile viewing experience as it has 2 separate options for background images: Background image (for all devices) and Mobile background image. By having 2 options, the section will be responsive on all devices, even mobile.
There’s a key thing to remember while using this feature is that mobile background image works separately from large screen’s background images so if we set the background image only for the mobile screen, the large screen will not inherit the image of the mobile screen.
Design for promotions
Pop–up
If you want to gather attention of site visitors and direct them to a defined call to action, pop-up will be a useful element for you. Pop-ups can be customized with images, texts and your choice of how to display the pop-up.
Timing of the pop-up could either be Reaching the footer or After closing cart notification. You can also choose to display the pop-up with 2 options - Show only on the home page and Show only for non-login visitors as well.
Featured product carousel
Blum theme provides us with the option to showcase feature products in the form of a carousel, by this merchants can highlight products for a campaign and direct site visitors to purchase specific products (example: hot deals for a holiday sale, best selling items)
What we think of Blum theme
What we like about Blum theme
This theme is responsive for mobile devices, which is a niche that not many themes have covered yet while this is closely linked to modern shopper behaviors. Blum is also image focused, providing plenty of space and customization when it comes to images display, which is a winning factor in the fashion industry.
Fast page speed
Solie style’s demo store speed test
Mondo style’s demo store speed test
Celia style’s demo store speed test
After testing page speed on Google’s PageSpeed Insights, it’s safe to say these pages have very high speed with the Mondo style’s demo store as the fastest page at 91 performance score. Solie and Celia are a slightly slower, scoring 89 and 82
24/7 Chat Support
As a new theme, it’s normal for users to find pop-up issues or find answers in the documentation. Blum is one of those rare themes that offer 24/7 Support, which we find extremely useful. Alongside the theme documentation, Chat Support also helps customers clarify any pop-up question related to the theme faster.
Cheaper price point
Compared to other themes on the market, Blum is a fairly priced theme as it’s not as expensive as the one on the high-end range yet still equipped with similar features. With $290USD, Blum has the best of both worlds: price of a cheap theme and features of a premium theme.
Fully compatible Online Store 2.0 features
Blum is fully compatible with Online Store 2.0’s newly updated features, meaning its sections can be used everywhere like the standard Shopify theme. By this, Blum can work with:
- Homepage
- Product page
- Collections
- Blogs
- Cart page
- Search page
- etc
What we don’t like about Blum theme
Too many features can make users feel overwhelmed
Since Blum theme is fashion niche focus with the aim to maximize product exposure, it’s mandatory for the theme to have various sections. For merchants who are new to the game, this long list of elements and settings can make them feel lost and overwhelmed.
Indistictintion between 3 provided styles
It’s true that Blum came with 3 styles: Solie, Mondo and Celia but we haven’t found the unique trait of each style, hence users can feel confused when choosing the right style for their store. We suggest SalesHunterThemes to improve them in future versions so that they can be more distinctive from each other.
Summary
To sum up, Blum theme is a theme fashion merchants can’t miss out on. Despite some cons, Blum is still a powerful theme with various customization options. You can try Blum theme here, make any necessary edits to your store to visualize it and only pay once you choose to publish.
From our CRO expertise, Blum had passed Shopify’s strict reviews rounds to be published on Shopify Themes Store so it’s undeniable that it can fulfill Shopify’s high standards. Not to mention, Blum has only been on the market for a short period of time so we believe that it can be further improved after collecting reviews from customers and more rounds of testing.
