Shopify Homepage Customization — The Complete Guide [2025]

Your website homepage is a holistic view of everything your brand has to offer.

Most of your website visitors land on your homepage first — and after exploring the homepage, they might decide whether your website is worth spending time on.

As an eCommerce business owner, you need to keep up with the trends and events. So, you need to customize your homepage at regular intervals for better engagement and conversions.

In this blog post, we’ll share a detailed guide on Shopify homepage customization with practical demos. Whether you want to customize an existing homepage, build one from scratch, or use a pre-built template — we’ve got it all for you.

Let’s get started!

Why is Homepage Customization Important?

If you’re new to the eCommerce game, you may have questions like: Why does the homepage customization matter? Is it worth it? When should I customize the homepage design?

Here are the key reasons or benefits of homepage customization:

• Boost Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO):

If you’re looking to increase your conversion rate, you must optimize your homepage for conversions. Right from the header section to the footer section, there are many opportunities for you to optimize your homepage design for a higher conversion rate.

• Prepare for Special Occasions:

To keep up with your customers’ vibes, you must keep coming up with relevant design themes on your Shopify store. For example, on the occasions of Mother’s Day or Valentine's Day, you may want to give your homepage a special look and feel for these events.

• Boost Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

You must optimize all your Shopify store pages for search engines; however, the homepage needs special consideration. Thus, you may need to customize your homepage at regular intervals to update relevant keywords and other elements for SEO.

• Enhance the Brand Identity:

You may already know your website is the key element of your brand identity. You want to leave a solid impression on your potential customers with a stunning design. Thus, you should consider customizing your homepage design and content to keep it aligned with the trends as well as the brand.

When should I customize the homepage design?

You may need to customize the homepage design on various occasions, such as:

• Launching a major promotional sale: Highlight it on the homepage, especially the above-the-fold section.

• Festivals or holidays: Give a special theme to your homepage on occasions such as Christmas, New Year's Day, Independence Day, and so on.

• Popular eCommerce events: Prepare for shopping events like BFCM (Black Friday and Cyber Monday), Small Business Saturday, etc. You must capitalize on these occasions to maximize your revenue and profits. 

• Rebranding: Customize your homepage with new branding guidelines.

• Launching a new product line or collection: Create special sections to highlight the new product line or collection.

• A/B testing: Create different versions of the homepage to boost conversions or solve a certain problem through A/B tests.

How to Customize Your Shopify Homepage Design

There are two methods to go about this:

1. Customize your homepage with Shopify’s native editor — for basic customizations.

2. Build your homepage with GemPages — for advanced customizations.

3. Use GemPages’ theme section builder — Combine both the above two methods, i.e., creating theme sections using GemPages and using them in Shopify’s editor.

Let’s go through the step-by-step guides for each of the above methods:

Method 1: How to Customize a Homepage with Shopify’s Native Editor

Step 1: Finalize Your Shopify Theme

You may already have the default theme (Dawn) or any other theme you previously used. However, we’ll go through this step to see if there’s a need to:

• Switch to another theme

• Upgrade the current theme to the latest version

• Continue with the same theme and version

If your current theme is not meeting your expectations in terms of design style, performance, or feature requirements — you may want to consider other great options available on the Shopify Theme Store.

Wondering how and what theme you should consider? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with all the resources you need!

Step 2: Access Your Homepage in Shopify Theme Editor

Go to your Shopify admin and click Sales channels > Online Store > Themes.

You’ll see your current theme on the right side. Click the “Customize” button to proceed. 

Pro tip: If you’re customizing your existing theme, the one that was already customized previously, it’s advisable to duplicate the theme before making any changes. By doing this, you can keep a backup of your customized theme and restore it if anything goes wrong in the customization process.

You’ll land on the “Home page” template by default. Now, review the existing theme layout with all the sections and sub-sections on the left sidebar.

You’re ready to make the necessary changes.

Step 2: Customize Your Shopify Theme Sections

Mainly, you may need to perform five types of activities on your theme sections:

1. Edit Content of Existing Theme Sections

2. Add New Theme Sections

3. Hide Theme Sections

4. Delete Theme Sections

5. Reposition Theme Sections

2.1 Edit Content of Existing Theme Sections

For example, let’s say you want to edit/customize the “Image banner” section on your homepage. Click on the dropdown arrow to expand the section. Then, click on the respective sections and blocks to edit the content.

As shown in the demo below, you can change the text section with available customization options.

2.2 Add New Theme Sections

If you need to add a new theme section that’s not available in the default layout, click the “Add section” button. Choose the type of section you want to add.

Once you’ve added a new section, you can customize the same way we did before.

2.3 Hide/Delete Theme Sections

You also have options to hide and delete theme sections or blocks if needed.

If you don’t want to display a certain section on your homepage — but you still want to keep it for future reference, you can simply hide it. If not needed at all, you can just delete the section, and save changes.

2.4 Reposition Theme Sections

If you just want to make any changes in the structure or sequence of sections, you can drag the section tab within the left sidebar to adjust its position.

Additionally, you can also change settings if needed. But keep in mind — changes made in these settings aren’t limited to the homepage only, they reflect throughout the store.

Step 3: Publish and Review Changes

Once all the customizations or changes are finalized and published, review your live store.

Method 2: How to Build a High-Converting Homepage with GemPages

When you customize your homepage with Shopify’s native editor, you’re limited within the capabilities of your Shopify theme and its features.

If you want to customize your homepage with more flexibility and advanced features, GemPages can help you do so, with ease of use.

An outstanding overall rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars from more than 5,000 reviews shows how thousands of Shopify merchants are leveraging the page building capabilities of GemPages.

Step 1: Install the GemPages App

First, if you haven’t already, install the GemPages app from the Shopify App Store.

Click on the Install button, review the access permission — and click Install again.

Step 2: Select a Template or Start from Scratch

Once the app is installed, you’ll land on the dashboard, i.e., Pages tab.

Click on the “Create new page” section right at the top, and you’ll see the option to select the version. Version 7 is the latest version, so we’ll go with that one for this guide. 

Now, you’ll have two options to go for:

1. Start from scratch — meaning, start building your homepage with a blank page by placing all the sections and elements as needed.

2. Use a template: Click on the “Home Page” tab to review and select a pre-built template that matches your design and style requirements.

You can hover over the template blocks to have a quick preview of how it looks.

Or click on the “eye” icon to preview the template in full view. If you find the template relevant and want to use it, click on the “Select the template” button in the top right corner.

For this tutorial, we’ll go with the above “Back to School” template.

Step 3: Design Your Homepage with Advanced Features

Now comes the fun part!

It’s time to get creative and design your homepage leveraging the advanced features of GemPages. While you would want to customize the template, you can also add more sections and elements to build a solid homepage as per your brand requirements.

First, to maximize your view, click on the two arrows icon on the top right corner to see the editor in full-screen mode.

3.1 Customize Your Homepage Template

Start with the sections that you want to customize and make all changes as needed. The goal is to customize the template to match your branding and highlight any specific details.

For example, you can change the font color by just selecting the text and the color scheme.

Similarly, you can customize several aspects of the homepage template. Here are some of the key sections or elements that you may want to customize:

• Website copy: 

This is perhaps the most important aspect that you must customize. You don’t want to use the same template language. If the budget allows, you can hire an eCommerce copywriter to help you with website copy for your homepage.

• Overall color scheme:

You would want to make sure the color scheme of the homepage is on brand throughout the page. Depending on your brand style, you may want to keep it clean and mild or busy and bright — it’s up to you.

• Background images or videos:

Update or upload relevant images that reflect your products, brand style, and ideal buyer persona. Make sure the media files are optimized with a proper file format and size so that they do not adversely impact your site performance.

For images, you could use the WebP format as it’s optimized for the web. Similarly, for videos, you can use the WebM format if the video needs to be uploaded directly. For long-form video content, you can embed a YouTube video so that it doesn’t use Shopify’s server and allow the page to load faster.

• CTA button colors + hover effect:

CTA (Call to Action) buttons need to stand out from the rest of the content or theme on your homepage. That’s one of the reasons most brands use high contrast colors for CTA buttons. For example, a bright green or yellow CTA button on a dark black background. 

Also, the hover effect adds an element of animation to your CTA buttons.

• Text/font style, size, and color:

Again, your font style has to be aligned with your brand guidelines. For optimized speed performance, you should stick to the system font. Using stylish or funky fonts can definitely enhance your design, but they could also negatively impact your site speed.

• Product placements and promotions

Customize or rearrange the placement of products or collections shown on your homepage. For example, you can priortize and highlight your bestselling product through a featured product section.

3.2 Add Sections and Elements to Your Homepage

Now, you can add more sections and elements to customize your homepage template.

On the left sidebar of the visual editor, you have two tabs: Sections and Elements. You can toggle between both tabs to keep customizing your template.

For example, as shown in the demo below, you can simply remove the hero section altogether with the delete button and replace it with a new hero section, with the drag-and-drop feature.

Similarly, check out other sections that can help enhance your store’s performance and boost your sales. For example, you can leverage sections such as product detail, brands, product breakdown, compare, bundle, and many more.

Step 4: Publish the Homepage

Once all the customizations are done, you can finally hit the Publish button.

As soon as you hit the Publish button, you’ll see a pop-up asking you to confirm whether you’d like to replace the current homepage with the customized one. Check the box if you want to immediately replace it — and hit the Publish button.

And that’s it! Your new homepage, designed and customized with GemPages, is ready to impress and immerse your website visitors.

Method 3: Use GemPages’ Theme Section Builder

If you’re using Shopify’s theme editor for homepage customization but don’t have the needed section in your theme, you can create one with GemPages. It can be used across all pages on your Shopify store. 

You just need to create or customize it once, and it'll apply to all places. For example, you can create a theme section for FAQs that needs to be displayed on multiple product pages. You can create a theme section with all the FAQs.

So, whenever you need to revise this FAQs section, you can just make changes in the theme section, and it’ll be automatically update on all applicable pages.

Also, did we mention that creating theme sections with GemPages is extremely smooth and easy? Yes, just go the GemPages dashboard, and click “Create Theme Sections”.

And you know the drill — just drag and drop sections or elements as needed. Click “Save” and then “Publish Theme Section”.

Learn more: GemPages v7 Theme Section: An Introduction 

Why Use GemPages for Shopify Homepage Design?

When customers are searching for products online, they have many websites at their fingertips. How you present yourself with a unique homepage design helps you stand apart from those hundreds of competitors.

GemPages helps you build the homepage and store pages that give your brand a unique identity. Here are the key features and benefits of GemPages:

• Library of Templates:

GemPages offers you a variety of templates to choose from. You can find homepage templates for popular products or niches such as fashion products, jewelry & accessories, pet food & supplies, pet toys, bikini & swimwear, electronics, sport products, and the list goes on.

• Easy-to-Use Builder

You don’t need to be a website design or coding expert to build or customize your store pages with GemPages. The intuitive and visual editor makes it easy to design store pages. You just have to drag and drop elements and click on the sections that you want to customize.

• Conversion-Focused Elements

The homepage design shouldn’t be all about the visual aesthetics — it has to convert visitors into buyers and help grow your business. GemPages is built with performance and conversions in mind. You can add conversion-focused elements such as product bundles, post-purchase upsells, countdown timer, stock counter, sticky CTA buttons, “Before & After” image comparison, and so on.

• Interaction Builder

Your homepage design should be able to engage the visitors and entice them to explore more of your website. With interactions and animations, you can design an interactive website that grabs the attention of your website visitors and immerses them in visual storytelling.

Build a Shopify Homepage with GemPages for FREE!

Whether you’re starting a brand-new business or want to level up your established eCommerce business, you simply can’t ignore the importance of the homepage. It absolutely deserves to put the efforts, resources, and time into building a high-converting homepage.

Thousands of merchants worldwide trust GemPages. You can give it a try without any hesitation! GemPages lets you build and publish one page for free. So, what’s there to lose? Nothing, right?

To learn more about other eCommerce marketing strategies, trends, and best practices — check out more resources on the GemPages Blog. Also, join the GemPages Facebook community to network and learn from like-minded entrepreneurs and experts.

FAQs About Shopify Homepage Customization