Some themes are packed full of customizable features. Others only allow for a small number of basic customizations as above. Here are some of the most interesting features that are only found in certain themes.

Responsive design

In browsing the theme store, you will notice that many themes have an image of an iPhone as well as the main image for the theme. As I mentioned in the first chapter, more and more people are using mobile devices to access the web and make purchases.
With responsive design, a website will adjust its design based on the device that is being used to view it. So if your store uses a theme with a responsive design, it will look great on your desktop, on an iPhone, an iPad and many other devices.

Here's the popular Responsive theme (San Francisco style) shown on desktop, iPad and iPhone.

To see how this works, look at one of the themes with responsive design, Minimal for example. Try reducing the width of your browser window and notice how the design of the pages responds: the slideshow and other images get smaller, the number of products shown in a row is reduced, and the footer is all displayed in one column rather than three.
If you are considering a theme with responsive design, make sure to see what it looks like on a mobile device!

Homepage slideshow

Many of the themes now come with a slideshow (or carousel) feature for the homepage. This can be an excellent way to present your brand image and to highlight important products.

For some of the themes, you can also include captions and prices for each slide in your slideshow. Though, if you are handy with Photoshop or a similar package, you can integrate the captions directly into the images before you upload them.

Homepage slideshows with captions and pricing on the Jitensha White and Clean White themes.

Product Image Zoom

I mentioned earlier the importance of high quality product images. Online we need to offer the visitor the ability to really examine the product. Some themes have product pages with generously sized images while others have smaller ones. The standard approach to product zoom has been a click-to-enlarge lightbox feature. The rest of the screen fades out and a larger sized image is presented in the center of the page. This can work reasonably well if the larger sized image is actually larger.

A number of themes are now offering a more powerful zoom feature. When the visitor puts the mouse pointer over the product image, they are presented with a zoomed in version of the image within the same frame. They can move the mouse pointer to move the image to see different parts of the product in detail. You can try it out in the demo store for the Clean White theme or you can see some examples on the next page.

Another important aspect is how themes handle when there is more than one product image. When the visitor first arrives on the product page, the featured image will be shown in large format and the other images will be shown in a small or thumbnail format. How the visitor enlarges these thumbnail images depends on the theme and the theme settings. Sometimes a click on a thumbnail performs a click-to-enlarge on lightbox and sometimes a click will replace the featured image with the other image. For some themes, simply placing the mouse pointer on one of the thumbnails, will enlarge the image.

Lastly on product image zoom, there is an app called Magic Zoom Plus that can easily be added to your store. You'll find it in the App Store, for $79 at the time of writing with a free trial for thirty days.

Fancy store fonts

Not so long ago, web design was very limited by the choice of fonts that could be used. In the last few years, some excellent new services have emerged that bring the fonts of print media to the web. Services such as Google Web Fonts, Typekit and Fontdeck each now offer hundreds of great fonts. And a growing number of Shopify themes now include choices of fonts from these services. You'll see many examples in the screenshots of themes in this section.

Integrated social sharing

More and more themes now enable visitors to share products direct to their favorite social media sites. The main options are to share to Facebook, Twitter and email. Google+, Google's competitor to Facebook, is also important. Despite its lower market share, Google+ shares may positively help your store's search engine rankings on Google.
Pinterest, where users "pin" the images, videos and other objects that they like, to "pinboards", is one of the fastest growing social sites. More directly focused on ecommerce, Svpply and Fancy enable their visitors to share the products they want. If your store sells visually attractive products, Pinterest, Svpply and Fancy may be well worth further investigation.

Visitors can share products direct to their favorite social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) on the Jitensha White theme.

Integrated contact form

It's essential to provide your visitors and customers with an easy way to contact you. It should be easy to find your store's email on your site. However, a contact form is a useful addition.
With a form, a visitor can quickly send in a query without the complication of opening their email. Shopify stores do not come with a contact form as standard though more themes are now offering this as a feature.
If your chosen theme does not come with a contact form, other options include the Contact Form app in the Shopify App Store, or a service like Wufoo.

Contact forms using the Contact Form app (left) and an integrated contact form on the Responsive New York theme (right).

Email newsletter subscription

Building a list of emails of those that are interested in your products is very important. Many people like to get to know your store before they buy, and that can take time. It's also very easy for a customer to forget about your store. It is just one of billions of websites. And of course, it is always quite expensive to get new customers.

So a personable email from your store, from time to time, can build trust towards a purchase, remind them that you exist just in case they'd forgotten and of course, it's a whole lot cheaper than trying to find new customers. And most likely, if you do it well, there will be sales!

Quite a few themes now come with an integrated newsletter subscription box. The visitor can quickly fill in their email and click to subscribe. These themes all integrate with MailChimp, a well-known email newsletter service. Alternatively there are apps available in the app store to integrate your store with MailChimp and other newsletter services such Campaign Monitor and Constant Contact.

Recent blog articles and tweets on the homepage

Keeping your homepage fresh and up to date reassures visitors that your store is an alive and active business. Some themes can include your latest tweets from Twitter and a few themes can also include excerpts from your latest blog articles.

Many themes can include your latest tweets or excerpts from your latest blog articles. This is Responsive San Francisco.

Products marked as on sale

Remember the "Jumping Goat Poster" marked on sale in the imposters store that we looked at earlier? People love to spot a bargain and with the ability to mark products as on sale, they can easily see them!

This is a nice feature to have but it is not available in all themes. On some themes, the colors can be changed in the theme settings. For other themes, the sale mark is done using a small graphic that can be replaced as you like.

Products marked as on sale on the Jitensha White, Expression Ocean and Minimal Music themes.

Other features

There are numerous other features available on select themes. With some themes, you can easily upload your choice of favicon, the small icon that represents your website, beside the website address or on the tab of your browser. Other themes provide the option to integrate your blog comments with the comment service Disqus.

This provides a richer commenting experience with integrated social sharing to your visitors.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is another feature that is often included. This tends to be quite basic however but you can set up your store very well now direct in the Shopify admin anyway.

With some themes you can upload your choice of favicon, the small icon that represents the site in your web browser.