I started my store a few days ago, got a product and created with page pilot. I thought that was all till i got into my store i literally have to create the home page by myself. Challenge is i’m not good with design, and the product i’m running is christmas product which will be off market in a few weeks. Kindly advise of how to get a great winning store that equally converts sales. Also is it necessary to get a designer?
AI-generated summary
A new Shopify seller asked how to build a store that converts for a Christmas product with only a few weeks left, and whether hiring a designer is necessary. Most replies advised against spending time or money on a full redesign: use a simple homepage and free theme, prioritize a clear product page, test the mobile purchase flow, and state realistic Christmas delivery deadlines prominently.
After reviewing the store, commenters identified major trust and consistency issues: its product title and much of its text describe an ocean night light, while the photos show Christmas projections; some images and reviews appear duplicated or unrelated; press logos may be misleading; and a Christmas listing is marked sold out. They recommended removing leftover template content, clarifying what the product does, using genuine reviews, and updating the announcement bar with an accurate shipping cutoff.
The seller also reported slow loading near checkout. One reply suggested auditing scripts, leftover app code, and image sizes with browser tools, though no diagnosis or fix was confirmed. The discussion remains open, with no reported store changes or sales results; the shared priority is a trustworthy, consistent store rather than elaborate design.
Hi @Pamela4, welcome, and no, you don’t need a designer to get a store that converts. With a short-lived Christmas product, speed matters more than polish, so keep it lean:
1. Keep the homepage short. A banner with one clear offer, your product (or featured collection), 3 or 4 short trust points (delivery time, returns, secure payment), a few reviews or photos if you have them, and a footer with contact details. That’s enough.
2. Put the effort on the product page, because that’s where people decide: good photos, a clear price, what it is and who it’s for in two lines, delivery dates before Christmas, and your returns rule under the Add to cart button.
3. Use a free Shopify theme (Dawn or Refresh are fine) and just change the logo, colours and sections in the theme editor. Don’t buy a paid theme for a short season.
4. Test an order on your phone before you spend anything on ads.
Full disclosure, I’m part of the Triad Mark team. We set up brand-new stores for free if you’d rather not do the layout yourself, and you only pay for your own Shopify plan when you take it over. The details are in my Ask & Offer post here: Offer: Free Shopify store setup for brand-new stores (I'm part of the team)
Happy to answer questions in this thread.
Hey @Pamela4,
Welcome to the community!
You don’t need a designer for a full store here. With one Christmas product and only a few weeks left to sell it, your product page does almost all the work. Most of your visitors will land there straight from your ads or posts.
So keep it simple:
- Homepage: just feature the product. Big image, one line on why it makes a great gift, and a “Shop now” button. Nothing more needed.
- Product page: clear photos (one of the product being used or gifted), short benefit points near the top, Christmas delivery cutoff dates, and reviews if you have any.
- Urgency: “Order by Dec XX for Christmas delivery” in the announcement bar helps a lot for seasonal products.
Since time is tight, I’m happy to set it up for you so you can focus on getting traffic. Send me your store URL and I’ll take a look.
Cheers,
Moeed
Hi @Pamela4
Welcome to the community.
Can you share what theme you are using? Is it a free one from the Horizon family?
Also if you want to show us what you done for now, share your store, and if the frontend is still password-protected, share the password too.
So, not sure; it should have homepage sections. If not, you can add the sections you want, but you do not need to design anything. Still, you have to add sections, text, and images.
Note that there is an option to use Sidekick to design a store for you based on your input
You can maybe get something like this
So you get inspiration from some successfull store, get some elements, and add them to your store.
But note that you will not get " a great winning store that equally converts sales"; for that, you need time, knowledge, and experience. And it is a plus to get a designer; that way, you get fully unique store, but not that just look good, but also converts great. If you get a solid designer.
Good luck
@Laza_Binaery i’m using the Dwell theme please. https://kmrne1-6w.myshopify.com thats the link
Hi @Pamela4, welcome! The layout advice above covers it well, so I’ll add the one thing that matters most for a Christmas product: the delivery deadline.
- Put a clear cut-off right under the price and Add to Cart, e.g. “Order by Dec 12 for Christmas delivery”. Work it out from your supplier’s real processing + shipping time, and add a few days of buffer. Gift buyers don’t buy if they can’t tell whether it arrives in time.
- Repeat the same date in the announcement bar at the top. It creates honest urgency without fake countdown timers.
- Plan the switch-over now: after the cut-off date, change the text to “Arrives after Christmas – perfect for New Year” (or pause ads), so you don’t get angry customers and refund requests in late December.
- For the main photo, a “gift moment” image (product next to wrapping paper or under a tree) usually beats a plain white-background supplier photo for seasonal items.
Good luck with the season!
Hey @Moeed here is the link https://kmrne1-6w.myshopify.com⠋
Thank you so much @Sajidapex .I appreciate this
You’re welcome @Pamela4! I had a quick look at your store (Oasora). The layout is already clean, so just 3 quick fixes:
- Match the name with the photos. The product is called “Magical Ocean Projection Night Light” and the text talks about ocean scenes and fish, but the main photos show Santa and a Christmas sky. Shoppers may wonder which one they get. If the light shows both, say it in the title or the first line, e.g. “Ocean & Christmas Projection Night Light”, and show both scenes early in the gallery.
- The “Rated 4.9/5 by 1394 happy customers” line on a brand-new store can make careful buyers suspicious. Unless those are real reviews you’ve imported, I’d remove the number and keep a softer line like “Loved by families for bedtime”.
- Your top bar says “Welcome to our store”. That’s the perfect place for the delivery cut-off I mentioned, e.g. “Order by Dec 12 for Christmas delivery – free shipping”.
Good luck!
Thanks @Sajidapex let me take note of that ASAP
I also noticed during my test at checkout point my page loads slowly, how can i correct that please?
Hey @Pamela4,
Had a look through your store. Your photos are actually good, they’re festive and they show the product working. The problem is everything around them.
Here’s where you are: your page was built from an ocean night light template, and most of the old text is still there.
- The product is called “Magical Ocean Projection Night Light”, but your photos show Santa and Christmas scenes.
- The second image is just a faded copy of the first.
- The top bar still says “Welcome to our store”.
- The first review talks about watching fish swim.
- The “Week 1 to Week 4” section is a sleep routine plan. Someone buying a Christmas gift doesn’t need that.
- More reviews about ocean creatures.
- More ocean copy, and one stat says “Experienced a natural pump that lasted all evening”. That one’s left over from a completely different product.
- Some FAQ answers also talk about ingredients.
- Quick heads up, remove the Bloomberg, Cosmopolitan etc logos unless you’ve actually been featured. Fake press logos can get your ads rejected.
Your “Christmas Projection Lights” product listing is also marked sold out, so check that one too.
Here’s where you wanna go: a page that sells one thing clearly, a Christmas gift that turns any room magical, with “Order by Dec XX for Christmas delivery” right at the top.
Here’s what’s standing in your way: time. You’ve got a few weeks, and every visitor who sees ocean text on a Christmas product right now is a sale you lose.
Here’s what I can do: I can rewrite the page around Christmas, clean out all the leftover template text, fix the images, and set up the homepage with a clear delivery deadline. That way you can spend your time on traffic. Feel free to connect with me if you’d like me to take care of it.
Cheers,
Moeed
Thank you so much @Moeed this review goes a long way.
Hi there,
Checkout pages are rendered by Shopify’s native checkout, but any custom assets you add (scripts, styles, or Liquid snippets) are still loaded before the redirect. The most common culprits that slow the transition are:
- Third‑party app scripts that run on every page – they block the main thread and often load large libraries (e.g., analytics, live‑chat, upsell widgets). Identify them in the waterfall (look for long > 200 ms tasks) and either defer them with `async`/`defer` or load them only on pages where they’re needed.
- Orphaned Liquid code left in `theme.liquid` after uninstalling an app – stray `{% include %}` or `script` tags will still be requested, causing 404s and extra round‑trips. Search the theme for references to the removed app and remove any leftover markup.
- Large hero images or product photos that are part of the checkout flow (e.g., in the cart drawer). Preload the LCP image with `` and serve a WebP version at an appropriate width to keep the first‑contentful‑paint under 1 s.
To get a quick baseline, run a Lighthouse audit on a preview of your store and note the “Total Blocking Time” and “Largest Contentful Paint” values. Then:
- Open the page in Chrome DevTools → Network, filter by “JS”, and disable any non‑essential scripts one by one to see the impact on TBT.
- In the Theme Editor, locate `theme.liquid` and any `checkout.liquid` snippets; comment out third‑party script tags and re‑test.
- Optimise images used in the cart/checkout: compress, serve responsive sizes, and add `preload` for the first image that appears.
If you’d like a quick diagnostic look at your script waterfall, feel free to run a free check on audit.eightyfive.cloud or share your preview link.
Best regards,
EightyFive Engineering London
(If you’d like a quick diagnostic look at your script waterfall, feel free to run a free check on audit.eightyfive.cloud or share your preview link)
Hi @Pamela4
You don’t necessarily need a designer. A clean, trustworthy Shopify store with good product images, clear messaging, strong CTAs, reviews, and a simple checkout flow can convert well.
Since your product is seasonal, I’d focus on getting the store optimized quickly rather than spending too much time on design. If you share your store URL, I can take a look and suggest the most important changes to improve conversions.
Best regards,
Devcoder 
Hi @Pamela4
You probably don’t need to hire a designer yet. Before spending money, make sure the store feels completely consistent with your actual product.
You should do one important thing: go through the entire store and remove anything copied from the template that doesn’t describe your product. Small mismatches like these can quickly reduce trust. A customer may forgive a basic-looking homepage, but irrelevant content can make them question the store.
For a Christmas product, you can add one question on your product page: “Why should I buy this as a Christmas gift?” Show the product in use, explain what the buyer actually receives, make the information clear, and remove anything that doesn’t help that decision.
Also check the whole store on mobile, especially the product page and checkout. For a seasonal product, I would focus on making those few steps clear and easy rather than trying to redesign everything.
You can also place a test order yourself from your phone before running ads. Check the whole journey like a customer, not like the store owner.
A simple store that feels trustworthy and works smoothly can be more effective than a beautiful store. A designer can improve the presentation later, but I would not make that my first priority when there are only a few weeks of the season left.
These days what you can do is connect an agent like Claude or ChatGPT to your Shopify store and then point it to another Shopify store that you like the look of and ask it to convert your store to look similar, with you tweaking the design to personalise as you go.
Hi @Pamela4 
I wouldn’t rush to hire a designer just yet. When you’re starting out, a simple, clean store that makes it easy to understand the product and complete a purchase is more important than having a complicated design.
Since your product is seasonal, I’d focus on the essentials first: a clear homepage with one main message, good product photos, a straightforward description, transparent shipping and delivery estimates, and an easy-to-find return policy. Make sure the store also looks good on mobile, since many shoppers will visit from social media.
I’d also be realistic about the timeline. Before spending more money on design, try to understand whether people are interested in the product and whether your delivery estimates make sense for a Christmas purchase. A beautiful store won’t help much if customers aren’t confident their orders will arrive in time.
You can always improve the design later as you learn what works. For now, I’d aim for a trustworthy, easy-to-navigate store rather than a “perfect” one.