e-Shopper Pro is the first eCommerce WordPress theme released by WordPress veterans CyberChimps.
It’s a functional design that has been optimised for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The theme has also been designed with search engine optimisation in mind.
In this article I would like to take a closer look at the design and show you what it can do.
Design and Features
Like the majority of WordPress themes, e-Shopper Pro is a versatile design that can be used a corporate website, portfolio website, or as a blog. However, e-Shopper Pro was designed as a template that will help you sell products online so that is obviously the area in which it shines.
It should be no surprise that e-Shopper Pro is compatible with the WordPress eCommerce plugin WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is active on over one million websites and is the solution most people turn to when looking to launch an online store or sell products and services through their website (though I do also encourage you to check out other WordPress eCommerce plugins as there are some great alternatives available).
A large slider dominates the home page design of e-Shopper Pro. The slider is powered by the slider WordPress plugin SlideDeck3 (which I reviewed last year).
SlideDeck3 allows you to easily insert slides into posts, pages, and even sidebar widgets. You can create slides using images and text and pull content from social media services such as YouTube, Flickr, and Pinterest. Three unique slider designs are available with the plugin.
e-Shopper Pro has widget areas in the left and right sidebars, on the home page, and in the footer. This helps you build the layout you want.
Bloggers will appreciate the fact that e-Shopper Pro supports WordPress post formats. All ten post formats are supported: Standard, aside, gallery, link, image, quote, status, video, audio, and chat.
WooCommerce is at the heart of e-Shopper Pro. Products and services are displayed beautifully and you can displayed related products underneath and in widget areas.
One of the greatest selling points of e-Shopper Pro is its drag and drop page builder. Let’s take a closer look at the backend of this design and see how you can use it to create a website.
The Settings Area
e-Shopper Pro has a functional options area that allows you to control many aspects of the design. It not the best looking theme settings area, but a theme settings area does not need to look good. A theme settings area has to be functional and the one in e-Shopper Pro does exactly what it needs to do.
The theme settings page does not take over your WordPress admin menu. Instead, it is linked directly under the Appearance menu. Most WordPress designs today annoyingly fill your admin menu with bloat so it is good to see a company place the options area where it should be placed. They do, however, add a page in the Appearance section promoting their other WordPress themes.
Many features can be enabled and disabled at the click of a button. In the design area you can modify styling, typography, and add custom CSS.
The header can be modified using a drag and drop interface. You can select options such as a banner, logo, description, search, and more. Social media icons and Google Analytics tracking code can be entered here too.
e-Shopper Pro allows you to customise your blog articles. You can enable and disable meta information such as author, categories, and comments, at the click of a button. You can also integrate Twitter.
The really cool thing is that e-Shopper Pro allows you to build your own blog page. Using a drag and drop interface you can add elements such as a callout section, a carousel, recent posts, widgets, Google Maps, and videos.
You can enable and disable the sidebars on pages, the blog index, blog posts, search pages, archives, and the 404 error page. Common settings for these areas can be modified in the template options section.
There are also a couple of footer options and an import and export option. Additional options for The Events Calendar and Easy Digital Downloads will be displayed if they are activated on your website.
Underneath your WordPress page editor you will see a drag and drop interface that allows you to customise the elements that are displayed on the page. You can place a slider, separator, boxes, recent posts, videos, and more.
You can also change the layout of the page and switch the page title on and off.
I was very pleased to see that a large number of the options from the theme options page are available directly through the WordPress theme customizer. This means that you can make many changes to your website and see those changes in real-time.
e-Shopper Pro does not come packaged with an advanced drag and drop page builder, however the settings area does give you good control over your website and help you modify things the way you want.
Pricing
e-Shopper Pro is priced at $39, however their pricing scheme is set up to push customers towards their CyberChimps Club membership.
For a price of $67 for the first year and $47 for renewals, a club membership grants you access to all CyberChimps products. Thirty three WordPress themes and five WordPress plugins are included in the membership.
There are some interesting designs included in the club membership such as the real estate design Acreage, the education design Edu Pro, the blogging theme Delight, and their popular Responsive Pro design.
Notable plugins include their exit popup WordPress plugin and their Legal Pages WordPress plugin.
A club membership provides high priority support and access to blogging tips and eBooks other useful resources. They will gain access to new themes and plugins that are released by CyberChimps during their membership too.
I sometimes wish WordPress theme stores would reduce the cost of buying a design on its own instead of pushing you towards a theme membership, but there is no denying that you get a lot of WordPress products for your $67 investment.
I recommend checking out all of the themes and plugins included with the club membership to see if it is worth paying an $28 for it.
Final Thoughts
e-Shopper Pro finds itself in a crowded marketplace of WooCommerce compatible eCommerce WordPress themes, however it has a good design and a lot of cool options that website owners will find useful.
I recommend checking the design out if you are in the lookout for an eCommerce WordPress theme to build an online store.
If you are looking for a good value membership that gives you lots of WordPress themes to use, check out the CyberChimps Club. At the current price of $67 it works out at around $2 per design and there are some great designs included with the membership.
Thanks for reading.
Kevin
