Shopify Pages - Everything You Need to Know in 2024

Shopify has solidified itself as the top ecommerce platform on the planet. This is largely due to its philosophy of keeping Shopify pages simple and effective, while supporting new merchants through extensive resources and opportunities to expand their skills and knowledge to grow their business.

Outlines

• What are Shopify Pages?
• How Do I Use Shopify Pages?
• Types of Shopify Pages
• How to Customize Shopify Pages
• PageFly Shopify Page Builder
• Best Approach to Shopify Page Customization

The key benefits of Shopify pages are that they come stock with the platform, meaning that if you are a Shopify merchant, you have instant access to predesigned, responsive and functional pages instantly through the Shopify admin. But what exactly do merchants get? And how can they use these pages to their fullest potential? First it’s a good idea to understand the range of Shopify pages:

• Shopify Homepage
• Shopify Collection Pages
• Shopify Product Pages
• Shopify About Us Pages
• Shopify Blog Pages
• Shopify Contact Us Pages
• Shopify Checkout Pages
• Shopify Password Pages

These Shopify pages, in no specific order, range in terms of significance to your store. That being said, they all serve a valuable function, so in this article we will examine each of them and discuss how to optimize and use them in the best possible way.

What are Shopify Pages?

Shopify pages are the webpages on which the content for your Shopify store is displayed, and through which visitors will navigate your storefront. They are designed to offer merchants a “complete package”, meaning that they have all the core pages available to build a website that doesn't feel like it’s missing anything important by modern standards. These Shopify pages can be customized using the Shopify theme editor, and all pages will automatically adapt to the current Shopify theme that is applied to your store, though full customization does have its limitations at this time.

Many Shopify themes are free, giving merchants the fantastic opportunity to experiment with the appearance of their Shopify pages easily. Shopify pages are also fully responsive and will automatically display well across any device or screen size. All of these factors were designed intentionally to help merchants learn how to use the platform, design their store, and launch their online business quickly and easily. Now that we’ve covered the basics, we can go into more detail on the distinctions between each Shopify page and understand their functions and effectiveness.

Read more:

• Shopify Abandoned Carts: Reasons, Hacks & Tips
• Powered by Shopify store badge - How To remove it with ease?

How Do I Use Shopify Pages?

Shopify Pages are easily accessed through your Shopify admin dashboard under the “Online Store” sales channel.

To add a new Shopify page, use the button at the top right. After clicking on it, you’ll be shown the add pages menu where you can input all the necessary information such as title, content and website SEO. Once finished, just press save to save the page.

After saving, the new page is immediately visible on our your site. Make sure to add it to menus in navigation so your visitors can access the page. If the page is unfinished or you don’t want it to appear yet, select “hidden” on the right.

Congrats, you now know how to add and use Shopify pages within your own store. Once you’ve created a page, you’ll want to know how to find it in the theme editor.

Just hit online store > themes > customize. Then use the dropdown menu within the editor to see all of the stock Shopify pages as well as any pages you have created and saved.

Clicking on each page will bring up the customization options on the left. The final option for using Shopify pages is by working directly with the code. Do this by navigating to online store > themes > action > edit code.

Here you will see all the page templates on the left. You can click on any of these and interact directly with the source code each page template. Be careful, if you are not knowledgeable on how to code, I would not suggest doing too much here as it’s possible to cause irreversible damage.

Best Approach to Shopify Page Customization

The key point that I hope you will take away from this article is that as they stand now, stock Shopify pages are simply too limited in terms of customization options to really hold their own against competition. The solution to this is to use the Pagefly app to build every page from the ground up and have total control over how your site displays. The built-in tools on Pagefly and intuitive drag and drop interface makes it the ideal app for beginners and beyond to build a site that’s worthy of being shown off. Let us know if we missed anything regarding Shopify pages, and for more detailed info for each page, check the links throughout the article.

Check out the video here on PageFly's Youtube Channel!

Types of Shopify Pages

You’re going to need to have a solid understanding of how to use each of these Shopify pages if you plan to build a web store that will convert. The good news is Shopify pages make even amateur web design look professional.

Read more: Step-by-step Tutorials for Creating A Winning Facebook Ads Landing Page

Shopify Homepage

This is the king of all Shopify pages. You can safely bet that if this page doesn’t look and perform well, your potential customers will run like the wind before navigating further into your site. For this reason, Shopify has granted the largest amount of customization through the theme editor for the Shopify homepage. All themes will have a varying degree of customization for each Shopify page, but the homepage gets the most love in terms of flexibility and personalization. Familiarize yourself with this page first, as it’s the gateway to consistent sales in the future!

This is the Shopify theme editor. The Customization options on the left will appear in the live preview on the right, and all changes must be saved before publishing to the live page.The options to customize each section are different for each theme, so the trick is to determine which theme matches your branding and then spending a good amount of time on your Shopify homepage to make sure it really looks great and gets your message across.

Learn more: Everything You Need To Know About Shopify Landing Page

Shopify Collection Pages

Shopify collection pages are the place to organize your categories of products. For new merchants, it may be confusing to use these at first, because they require you to input “real products” into your Shopify admin then add these products into collection. Fear not, below is a quick guide on how to create collections and make sure they display on your Shopify Collection page:

To create a collection just go Product > Collections > Create collection then fill in the necessary fields. For more detailed information, check out our Shopify collection pages article where we go into more detail on how to make them. Shopify collection pages are also reactive to themes. Aside from the appearance of the collection page itself, some additional options may be available such as presenting your products in basic grid or collage format, and adjusting the spacing and organization of collections.

Shopify Product Pages

As you create various Shopify pages, from product displays to blog sections, keeping an eye on your site's performance is key. Integrating a page size checker into your routine can help ensure that each page is optimized for speed, enhancing the overall shopping experience for your customers.

Gone are the days that the product page simply displayed the product information and price. Shopify product pages allow you to show off your products with great images, variants, prices, predetermined shipping weights/costs, descriptions, and more. We have written extensively on the value and importance of using the product page most effectively, because there is so much overlooked potential.

Remember that the product page is typically the final place your customers will be before making a decision to buy, so if you make it that far then flop, it can be devastating to your business. As with other pages, certain themes will offer additional customization through the theme editor. Check out the Brooklyn theme below for an idea of what kind of choices you might have for your Shopify product page.

It’s obvious how limited the design features are on the stock theme pages. 

Shopify About Us Pages

Shopify about us pages always get me talking because I can’t stress enough the importance of sharing your personal story with your visitors. So many merchants believe that the about us page is just something that conventional site must have, but don’t necessarily contribute to conversion rate or brand loyalty.

This is of course completely wrong. In this day and age, people want to feel connected with the brand they buy from, and align their values with them as well. For this reason, the Shopify about us page is the best way to convey to your valuable customers exactly who you are and why you do what you do. Check out our article on the importance of the Shopify about us page, and if you’re still not convinced, take a look at the data that proves how important it actually is:

Shopify Blog Pages

Content marketing is a fundamental way to drive organic traffic to a website. The best way to execute this is by writing consistent, relevant blog posts that add value to your business and relieve their pain points.

The Shopify blog page is a great way to organize this type of marketing effort. Blog posts are easily organized in chronological order and can be displayed in a variety of ways on the page itself. Building and publishing blog posts using Shopify is great also, as there are a number of tools and features to help you optimize your articles for SEO and have them looking great.

Shopify Contact Us Pages

Support is another key facet of eCommerce today. But how can you support your customers if they can’t get ahold of you? The Shopify contact us page is your solution. As with other Shopify pages, the contact us page shouldn’t be limited to simply contact info and location. You can actually use this page as an opportunity to further reinforce your brand story, offer FAQs, or collect email subscriptions. These are all addressed in detail in our Shopify contact us page article.

Customization of these Shopify pages are typically quite limited, but there are ways around this (keep reading!). For now let’s just say that you shouldn’t be discouraged if the stock Shopify collection page is not everything you dreamed it could be.

Shopify Password Pages a.k.a. Shopify Coming Soon Page

This page doesn’t need an extensive explanation, but it can be frustrating to new merchants. See, whenever a new Shopify store is created, it is automatically password-protected, meaning when someone accesses your store URL, they will be greeted with something like the following:

This is to protect stores that are still under development from anyone accessing content that might not be complete yet and in turn avoiding any misinterpretations of the quality of your store. To remove the password protection, follow these easy steps:

Just hit online store > preferences > disable password. To do the opposite, scroll down on the same page and check “enable password” then choose what you wish the password to be using the field below.

The same rule applies with other Shopify pages, where the password page shouldn’t limit itself to just one function. You can include an email subscription form, offer incentives to get in touch, and put things like countdown elements to create urgency and excitement for when your store finally opens.

Read more: How To Edit Shopify Password Pages in 03 Steps

Shopify Cart Page

This page is where customers can review their orders before proceeding to payment. It’s essentially just a transitory page to the checkout.

Shopify Checkout Page

The final Shopify page. The coup de grace. The most important moment of your entire life has come down to this very page. Not really, but this is your customers last opportunity to back out before following through with a purchase. 

Read more: Shopify One-Page Checkout: What You Need To Know

For this reason, the most important thing here is functionality. If there are issues with the checkout, say goodbye to your sales. It;s also for this reason that Shopify has made the checkout page the only page that has no options for customization either through the theme editor OR through coding. Why have they done this? Well, they are of course worried that eager users will “break” the checkout, leading to disastrous consequences. Shopify Plus merchants are able to customize their checkout page, but all other subscriptions cannot. So just be thankful that Shopify has ensured a smooth checkout process and accept that, for now, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it!

Read more: How to customize and edit your Shopify Thank You Page

How to Customize Shopify Pages

You may have heard or read somewhere that Shopify pages are very restrictive in the ability to customize them. Traditionally this has been to make sure that performance is not compromised and to simplify the store building process. That being said, over the years there have been huge advances in the ability to control the design and experience of your store.

With the advent of third party integrations, the potential for fully customized storefronts has sky-rocketed. Let’s look at the two main options for customizing Shopify pages.

Read more: How To Build Your Own Shopify Shipping Policy Page

Shopify Themes

We’ve already taken a short look into the theme editor and how to customize Shopify Pages. But it’s important to also know where to shop for new themes and install them on your store. Just access the Shopify theme store to browse.

Now let’s go more in depth into the Shopify themes that I kept mentioning in previous sections. Basically, these are templates available to Shopify merchants both paid and free, that are applied to a Shopify store to change the appearance and functionality. These themes are all responsive across all devices and offer different experiences for customers. You’ll now have some filter or search options available to you. My suggestion is to first sort by free and demo some themes that might be suitable for your store.

Now all you’ve got to do is click on the theme you like, demo it if you wish, then choose “start with this theme”. From there just follow the steps and fill in the fields to add the theme to your store.

Now, as shown above just access your Shopify admin (online store > themes > choose the theme from the options on the right). In the image below you can see all the themes that are currently available to apply to the store.

It’s great to experiment with the free themes to figure out exactly how they’ll affect your store and which will be most suitable. For paid themes, usually they’ll offer a greater amount of options and can sometimes be geared toward specific industries and or goals.

Shopify Apps

The next, and far superior option is to use apps from the Shopify app store. These are a merchants most valuable tool for harnessing control of their site without limitation. I’ve mentioned the restrictions in customizing Shopify pages several times throughout this article, so I think it’s about time I provided you with a solution, right? OK! Here it is.

PageFly Shopify Page Builder

Pagefly was designed to solve exactly the issue addressed earlier, where merchants had too few options for customization of Shopify pages. This app gives full control over every Shopify page and integrates with Shopify seamlessly. It’s difficult to describe the full potential in just words, so below are some examples of Shopify pages built using Pagefly.

p.s. PageFly has been selected one of the best Shopify Apps by PluginHive.

How to Install PageFly Shopify Page Builder

Just search for PageFly on the Shopify app store or click on one of the links above. From here just click on “add app” and input your domain. Once the app is installed, all you need to do to navigate to apps on your Shopify admin.

From there it’s just a matter of making new pages and learning how to use the app. For more information, check out our video on how to install the Pagefly app, and to go even more in-depth, our Udemy course on how to build each type of Shopify page using the app. In the short video included with this article, I’ll give you a quick rundown of how exactly the features differ between the Shopify theme editor and Pagefly. Once you see the enormous difference in potential, I’m sure you’ll agree that Shopify pages need more than just the native theme editor to truly shine.

Shopify Experts & Other Resources

The final option for customizing your Shopify pages is to hire a Shopify expert. These are agencies and/or freelancers that are familiar with Shopify infrastructure and can deliver a high degree of personalization to your Shopify pages, especially using custom code to add functions unavailable through the stock system. The drawback of using Shopify experts is that it can get expensive, which goes against Shopify’s spirit of making affordable, easy-to-launch stores for its merchants. For this reason I recommend using s Shopify expert only when you’ve had some experience in ecommerce and are able to dictate precisely what you need and expect. This will allow you to use the Shopify experts service most efficiently to maximize your Shopify pages.