Templates - Feature Guide

A template is the base your whole store is built on: the homepage, the product pages, the category pages, your articles, and the way products and prices are shown. FreshStore has six templates and every store can use any of them. You can preview each one with your own products before you switch, and you can switch back at any time.

Go to Design > Templates in your store admin.

The six templates

Each template card shows who it suits (Best for) and who it does not (Not for). Every template below has a live store you can open to see it working.

Crystal: The All-Rounder

A clean, clear template that works for any niche. Crystal also has a second look called Prism, with rounded glass cards and pill buttons. See the Crystal Prism guide.

Best for: any niche. A safe start while you build your store.
Not for: standing out, because most FreshStore stores use it.
See it live: store.welovesharks.org (Crystal in its Prism look)

Emporium: The Department Store

Your homepage opens on a store directory of your numbered departments instead of a banner. Prices sit on shelf tickets, long lists open as a table that visitors can switch to a grid, and search sits in the header.

Best for: stores with 100 or more products in clear departments. Appliances, kitchen and gadgets: things people compare.
Not for: personal brands, or stores with fewer than 30 products.
See it live: drinkfridges.com

Bounty: The Offer Feed

A price feed sorted by how much is off. Products show as rows instead of cards, with the saving, the old price and the retailer on one line.

Best for: niches that discount often, such as toys, collectibles and electronics.
Not for: stores with few products on sale. Books, handmade goods and supplements rarely discount.
See it live: funko.rocks

Compass: The Buying Guide

Your guides lead. Each guide opens with a summary of its picks, product pages lead with the facts and the price, and everything sits on a paper page set in a newspaper style font.

Best for: stores with 8 or more guides and a clear angle.
Not for: stores that are mostly products with few articles.
See it live: playstation.goshopgaming.com

Podium: The Curator

Ranked, badged picks that carry your own comments, for a store where your taste is the product. Your name and face open the homepage, so fill in Design > About You before you switch. See the About You guide.

Best for: a named person with a point of view. Small, chosen ranges rather than whole catalogues.
Not for: big catalogues that shoppers browse by department.
See it live: store.sandybrandes.com

Vista: The Look Book

Big editorial bands with a few items at a time, each one on its own plate. Made for stores where the way things look is the reason people buy.

Best for: niches where looks sell, with good product photos.
Not for: technical or price led niches, or stores with patchy product images.
See it live: houseplantcrew.com

Preview a template with your own store

Go to Design > Templates.
On the template you want to try, click Preview with my store.
Use the Home, A product, A category and A guide tabs to see your own pages in that template.
Use Phone and Desktop to switch between a phone sized view and the full computer page.

The preview uses your products, your images and your words. Nothing changes on your store until you switch, and your visitors keep seeing your current template.

If you have Custom CSS, the preview page tells you how many lines you have and offers Preview without my Custom CSS, so you can see whether your CSS suits the new template.

Is your store ready? The readiness check

Each template card shows one line about your store, such as Ready for your store. or the first thing to check. The preview page shows the full list under Is your store ready for (template)?, with your own numbers.

Template	What the check looks at
Crystal	No check. Crystal suits any store.
Emporium	100 or more products with a price, and 4 or more categories with products.
Bounty	20 or more products on sale now, and at least 20% of your products.
Compass	8 or more published guides (articles), and a photo on every guide.
Podium	6 products with a price and a photo for your picks, and your own photo on Design > About You.
Vista	12 or more products with a photo (at least 90% of your products), and an image on every category.

Where FreshStore can fill a gap for you, the check offers a button:

Write guides for me (Compass) writes up to 5 guides at a time from your niche. It uses AI chips, and the window tells you how many before you start.
Add category images (Vista) looks for a stock photo for each category first, which uses no chips. Where none fits, AI makes one.
Add your photo (Podium) opens Design > About You.

The readiness check only warns. You can switch whatever it says.

How to switch

Go to Design > Templates.
Click Use this template on the card, or click Switch to (template) on the preview page.
Read the summary in the window. It lists what stays and what changes for your store.
Click Switch to (template) to confirm.

Your visitors see the new template within a few minutes, once your store cache refreshes.

If you have unpublished changes in the Store Editor, switching is blocked. Publish or discard them in Design > Editor first.

What carries over when you switch

These stay with you:

Your products, categories, articles and pages
Your page addresses, so shared links and search results keep working
Your logo, your settings, and every text, link and image you have edited
Colours you set yourself

These change:

Your homepage takes the new template's layout. Homepage sections that have a place in the new layout come across with your words in them.
A homepage section the new template has no place for stays on your old template, ready if you switch back. The window names these sections before you confirm.
Each template uses its own fonts. Fonts you chose stay with your old template.
If your theme was made for another template, the new template starts on its standard colours.

If you have Custom CSS, the window shows a Bring my Custom CSS tick box. It is ticked to start with. Untick it to leave your CSS on your old template. Your CSS stays there either way.

On Podium, FreshStore chooses some of your products for your picks and adds a short line to each. You can change every one.

Switching back

A switch deletes nothing. Your old template keeps everything exactly as you left it.

For 30 days after a switch, a banner at the top of Design > Templates has a Switch back to (template) button. After that, click Use this template on your old template's card. There is no time limit on switching back.

Changes you make on the new template stay with the new template, so they are there again if you return to it later.

Templates and Themes

A Template (Design > Templates) sets the page structure and layout of your whole store.
A Theme (Design > Themes) sets the colours, fonts and homepage arrangement on top of a template.

Crystal has six themes. The other five templates each run their own standard theme for now, so the Themes page shows one card on those templates.

🔗 Themes feature guide

Your logo, colours, fonts, homepage sections, text, links, images and Custom CSS can all be changed on every template. Open a card's What you can change list to see what each template adds and what is fixed on it.

Questions and Troubleshooting

Can every store use every template?

Yes. All six templates are open to every store.

Will switching template hurt my Google rankings?

Your page addresses stay the same, so links and search results keep working. Your content stays the same too.

My homepage section is missing after a switch. Where did it go?

The new template has no place for that type of section. It is saved on your old template and comes back if you switch back. The message after the switch names these sections.

My fonts changed after a switch.

Each template uses its own fonts. Change them on the new template at Design > Typography. Your old fonts come back if you switch back.

The Switch button is not working.

Check for unpublished changes in Design > Editor. Publish or discard them, then try again.