Introducing the Snacks Theme

There's a new design template in your admin, a theme we call Snacks. Perfect for mobile shopping, its streamlined navigation and customizable look will make your products pop.

Snacks is free and easy to tweak to your tastes. Michael Croxton, one of Big Cartel's designers, is the brains behind the Snacks theme, and he's here to walk through what makes it stand out.

A focus on mobile

Sometimes when we're designing a new theme, we think of a certain kind of store: a clothing brand, or a shop with just a few products, for example. Instead of focusing on a specific store type, I thought about the shopper's experience. These days, over 50% of shop sales are coming from people shopping on phones. I wanted a theme that had a lot of personality on small screens.

Designers typically start with a bigger desktop design that has a lot of personality, then tweak and simplify it to work on a mobile screen. Sometimes that means that by the time it gets down to a mobile size, it’s lost everything that made it cool. I wanted to create something that was quirky, but that didn't outshine the products.

Streamlined navigation

With Snacks, your categories are a filter on the products page. That means instead of individual category pages, customers stay in the same spot, but shop the items they're most interested in. It's maybe a subtle distinction, but with the goal to help them easily find their favorites.

Simple customization

One of Big Cartel's strengths is that you can get your shop up and running very quickly. We wanted to keep the customization portion of Snacks really simple, so you really only need to pick a typeface and a couple of colors and your shop will still feel like it has personality.

It’s meant to be simple. Take nice photos, use nice colors, and your shop will look like a million bucks.

More features you'll love

• Flexible for any product image size

• Fun and friendly Maintenance Mode page

• Product page slideshows on small screens

• Varied page layouts so your eyes never get bored

Each of our themes, including this one, evolve out of a desire to make our themes feel artistic and unique. We try to give you options that feel distinctly different, and that are easy to make your own. You can get a taste in the demo store or chow down on Snacks in your admin.

Learn about Snacks and the other Big Cartel themes on our Themes page.