We played around with different Liquid-based Shopify themes (here) and decided to pick our favorite and share a full review.
The best Shopify template for 2025 is undoubtedly Dawn.
Why?
We liked its minimalist design, user-friendly features, and adaptability, and decided to share our take in case you are looking to start building your e-commerce from a template.
Key Features of Dawn
- Minimalist Design: Dawn offers a clean and simple aesthetic that allows product images to take center stage. This is particularly beneficial for brands in the fashion, beauty, and luxury sectors where visual appeal is paramount.
- Media-Forward Product Pages: The theme supports large, high-resolution images and video content, which can boost customer engagement and provide a better shopping experience. This feature is essential for showcasing products in detail, allowing customers to see textures, colors, and sizes more clearly.
- Built-In SEO Optimization: Dawn is designed with SEO best practices in mind, helping businesses improve their visibility on search engines without needing extensive technical knowledge. This is crucial for driving organic traffic to e-commerce sites.
- Responsive and Fast: The theme is fully responsive, ensuring that it looks great on all devices—from desktops to smartphones. Additionally, its optimized loading speed contributes to lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates.
- Regular Updates: As a free theme provided by Shopify, Dawn benefits from continuous updates and improvements directly from the Shopify team. This ensures compatibility with the latest features and security protocols.
- Customization Options: While maintaining its minimalist charm, Dawn offers various customization options that allow merchants to tailor their stores to fit their brand identity without compromising on performance.
Usage Statistics
Dawn has quickly become one of the most popular themes on Shopify since its release. It has received over 170 reviews with a significant portion being positive (31% positive rating) as of December 2024. Its free availability makes it accessible to startups and small businesses looking to establish a professional online presence without incurring high costs.
Real-World Examples
Several successful e-commerce stores have adopted the Dawn theme, here we tried to group up some examples for you to check:
- Fashion Retailers: Many fashion brands utilize Dawn for its ability to highlight clothing items through large images and clean layouts, allowing customers to focus on what matters most—the products themselves (check Essential Apparel).
- Beauty Brands: Companies in the beauty sector benefit from the theme’s media-forward capabilities, using videos and high-quality images to demonstrate product effectiveness and application techniques (see MegaFood).
- Artisan Goods: Stores selling handmade or artisanal products leverage the minimalist design of Dawn to create an elegant shopping experience that reflects the quality of their goods (here you see an example, with Brighton).
If you would like to feel inspired, Posstack shared 20 examples of real-world Dawn-based e-shops for you to explore.
What is next?
Picking the right theme is no joke. It's great if this article helped you make some progress in your quest.
At Polipo we are working on a Shopify storefront that can be created, maintained and modified directly from Figma.
Curious about that?
Start from here.