For the aspiring digital merchant who wants to build their own online market to sell wares and products of all kinds, the task might appear daunting at first. Other ecommerce sites like Amazon dominate a fair number of markets already, and platforms like Shopify are costly to maintain and already have a fair number of competitors to contend with.
Such is why we have created this article compiling some of the best VirtueMart-supported Joomla templates to offer you an alternative to ensure that you get to have a horse in the race that is the field of ecommerce.
Why Joomla Templates?
Building a site from scratch is hard, which is why content-management systems like Joomla and Drupal have come to be fairly common nowadays to kick start the process. Joomla, in particular, started out as a developer-first system that was meant to give more power to site designers with functions that helped them add and develop more features to sites built with Joomla. However, since then Joomla has grown to accommodate all manner of exciting extensions that make the site design process even faster and more accessible to non-developers as well. The list below discusses some of these extensions and the features they offer in detail, but it’s always advisable to check out their respective addon pages to see what else they have to offer as you construct the foundations of your VirtueMart site.
What should you look out for?
Every template’s first identifying feature is how they look in their preview, because if their own designer isn’t able to make an appealing demo, how can you expect to do so with your own site? The templates here all have great appearances, but you’ll also want to ensure that the aesthetic matches the products you sell.
Also, watch out for user experience functions like wish lists and accessible dropdown shopping carts. Most people don’t think too hard about how well they interact with a site, but if they have a hard time getting to certain features like those, they might not come back. Aside from that, also make sure to check the last update date of the template. The ones we’ve listed here are fairly well documented (meaning their editors include information on what certain features do) and updated, but you’ll want to verify this if you’re planning to look for more on sites like Themeforest.
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1. Matrix – Responsive VirtueMart Joomla Template
Matrix is a stylish and responsive Joomla template to build your VirtueMart shop. This template comes with a host of amazing functions to help you create a functional and effective site to sell all manner of products. With the latest version of VirtueMart installed, your online retail store will come with all the newest features that this commerce extension has to offer so you can stay ahead of the curve of other commerce sites powered by this well documented extension.
From the start, the template offers an abundance of choices to personalise the site to your brand. You get 3 homepage layouts, 6 colour schemes, multiple menu types for different product categories and 4 site-wide layouts that determine how page elements across the store will look; choose between the more confined Boxed layout, Wide for full screen displays, the organised Framed option, and the trendy Rounded layout. Plenty of Font families and Google Fonts are also supported so you can change up the typography of the site as well depending on the kin d of store you want to present the site as. A luxury apparel and fashion site may want serif fonts that look more classy to fit the style of clothes and clientele it may be serving, but if you’re selling cutesy phone accessories you’ll want more hip and modern sans-serif fonts. All of this can be easily changed in the admin panel as well, efficiently and quickly executing wholesale changes across all of your pages so everything is in line with your creative vision.
On to the functionality of this Joomla template, plenty of additional quality of life features that help make the shopping experience faster and smoother for your customers are provided in the form of various shortcodes too. Product Quick View is one of them, giving a quick look into what a product is upon mousing over them on the digital storefront. The homepage also provides sleek looking previews through a product slider that goes through the hottest products on your website. Products may even be presented in a grid or list format depending on how your customers may want to navigate the VirtueMart store. And if you’re planning to edge into international markets, multicurrency and multilanguage support (right-to-left languages included as well) ensure that your ecommerce platform can accommodate a customer from any part of the world.
So what are you waiting for? Check out Matrix’s features and demo today!
2. Market – Responsive Multipurpose VirtueMart Theme
For the growing digital retailer who wants to build their own ecommerce platform, Market helps you do just that through a stylish Joomla VirtueMart template. You can expect a fair amount of variety in this template as well. 4 different homepage layouts featuring a mic of grid and wireframe layouts, font support for Google Fonts and more, customizable Mega menus and headers that are all easily and quickly swapped around with the Front-end Cpanel helping to manage all that relates to site-wide appearance and visual style.
Modules and page elements are all interactive as well, lighting up and expanding in response to being moused over to boost user experience and visual engagement. The Joomla template also allows you to slot in a logo with site titling and slogans for you to truly set your brand. Best of all, all these elements are maintained across all manner of mobile devices due to its responsive design.
Market even comes packaged with or at least supports a huge set of premium extensions. All of them, when purchased separately, come in at a total of $100 that you’ll be saving by getting them as a full package with this template at the more reasonable price of $48. These premium features include Mini Cart Pro, which collates products that buyers add to their cart in a mini-window. Sj Market is another premium extension that adds extra functionalities to help manage commerce functions on the site more easily. The built-in filtering feature is a great addition as well that helps customers sieve through your products to find what they’re looking for.
Need to really sell some products with video demos and high-definition image previews, this Joomla template also lets you do that! Extensions like the SJ Video Box and SJ Carousel help in all kinds of media embedding needs to really showcase your stellar products in the best possible light. And if you think these aren’t enough, the YT shortcode plugin is sure to fill out any gaps so you won’t have to spend insane amounts of time to learn site coding to fill said gaps in site functionality.
A great added bit of functionality is the multilanguage function that ensures that you can easily support multilingual customers across the globe with this very functional and well-made Joomla template.
Learn more about Market on its product page and through its live preview!
3. FLEX – Multi-Purpose Joomla Template
If you thought the last two templates looked too much like a storefront and want a site that’s a little more subtle, try out Flex: a robust and VirtueMart-supported Joomla template. While not specifically built as a commerce site, Flex is great for a variety of purposes. Its modern and unobtrusive design is a good fit for a variety of fields, from technology, film and even photography given the detailed homepage layouts to describe a firm and the multiple portfolio layouts that work great for featuring visual media. And even then, you could easily build a storefront to supplement sites like those to sell services or digital products. Videographers and photographers alike may sell video and stock image packs comprised of unused, scrap media that you haven’t found much use for in other creative projects. Even a musician could sell off unused tracks for use in stuff like a YouTuber’s background music or a Twitch streamer’s pre-stream soundtrack.
As much as we’ve lauded Flex’s versatility, it also has a lot going for it in terms of design and function. The Joomla template isn’t just integrated with VirtueMart for all manner of commerce activities, but is also customisable through its packaged drag & drop layout builder and SP Page Builder Pro (a premium extension that would cost more on its own) integration. With these solid tools, you get to interface with over 72 Addons included with Flex. These modules support things like a HTML5 Media player, animated headlines, lightbox galleries and plenty of other visual media features to really make any images and videos pop on your site.
This Joomla template’s VirtueMart integration also introduces a great deal of commerce features that any digital retailer needs. Equip your online marketplace with fleshed out payment and shipment systems, coupons and all manner of deals to rake in purchases and customers. Manage overseas multicurrency payments with a system that also automatically updates currency rates as they change so you won’t worry about losing out to fluctuating exchange rates.
Take a peek at even more of this template’s features and its preview now!
4. Homeshop Responsive Multipurpose VirtueMart Theme
Homeshop is a colourful and trendy Joomla template made by the VirtuemMart template designing experts from Monkeysan. This template’s developers have a fair amount of experienced with designing a huge variety of well-equipped Joomla VirtueMart templates, so you can rest assured that their works are well documented and designed with commerce functionality in mind. Plus, if you’re a developer or designer with experience in Adobe Photoshop or HTML5 and CSS3 coding, you’ll be able to find alternate versions if you want to play with other ways to work with Homeshop. This template comes with ThemeMagic, an extension that assists in applying site-wide changes in appearance to quickly ensure that your retail website’s style is set to your brand’s colours and theming. Megamenu configuration is also here to help in constructing menu layouts for ease of navigation to different product categories if you want to do something like supplement your fashion retail store with a lifestyle segment as well.
Homeshop’s defining feature as a Virtuemart Joomla template, however, lies in how elaborately designed its product management system is. Customers don’t want to spend long amounts of time scrolling through product displays that aren’t relevant to them, which is why something like the VM product tag system is so vital. With search engine optimised product tags that assist customers with sieving out their desired products, you’ll also be able to have them rank on Google’s search engine to reach out to other new customers looking for similar products. Other additional quality of life features such as the product tabs also assist in this by collating Best Sellers, Featured items that you’ve chosen to showcase and even Random products from your catalogue into separate tabs. Users may also make use of the quick view option so they can quickly look through product details on a pup up window rather than having to open up a whole product page on their own.
Plenty of other necessary ecommerce features are provided and exclusively developed for this Joomla template as well. Users can collate wish lists, filter by price, swap seamlessly between list and grid views for product displays and even see product labels that indicate if they’re on sale or if they are limited offer items. Social media plugins to keep them connected to the site elsewhere will also ensure that even as they are on other platforms, they can be kept up to date on whatever new offers and events are going on in your digital store.
Learn more about what this template has to offer on its page and through its preview.
5. ShoppyStore – Responsive Multipurpose VirtueMart Theme
Build a simple and effective VirtueMart ecommerce website with Shoppystore, a functional and responsive Joomla template. From the start, you get 3 different homepage layouts and 6 preset colour styles to pick and choose from. The Mega Menu function also ensures that any visitors will have an easy time navigating your VirtueMart website through its organised configuration of various product categories should you wish to display and sell multiple kinds of items. For further shopping convenience, you’ll also get a quick view feature that displays a truncated product page that displays upon mousing over a product among a sea of listings for a fast read of what the product offers. Ease-of-access functions like these are especially vital in the realm of ecommerce, given the rather fast paced purchasing practices of the standard online shopper. If the product doesn’t grab their attention in a few seconds, they won’t buy it; so make sure it does with the quick view function!
You’ll also get a huge set of over 85 shortcodes with this Joomla VirtueMart template, all made possible by the packaged latest YT Shortcode version. Simply plop them down from the compiled shortcode library and adjust them as needed before publishing your snazzy new ecommerce site.
If you’re familiar with SJ’s products, then you’ll also know that they produce a huge variety of different extensions catered to supplement what VirtueMart already does. Extensions that manage special deals for specified products, minicarts to record shopping cart items, and even a basicv news extension that synergises with the integrated event countdown timer all come together to flesh out your digital marketplace.
Integrate all manner of social media platforms as well with shortcode developed to link to any social media accounts you have to represent your business with this amazing Joomla template. That way, you’ll stay connected to customers and be able to also launch your own marketing campaigns offsite or even disseminate all manner of deals and coupons to influencers willing to boost and endorse your brand!
Get a head start on your digital commerce journey today by visiting the template page and its preview!
6. EmallShop – Responsive Multipurpose Virtuemart Theme
Emallshop is another robust and well-designed Joomla template for you to build your VirtueMart website. With this template, you’ll be able to develop some very trendy and sleek websites to sell whatever wares you want to market online. In fact, upon purchase you will get to access a staggering variety of home page demos for an abundance of different businesses. While its default aesthetic and style comes off as very neutral, you could switch it out to specialise into any particular field like beauty products, luxury items like jewellery, or even food and beverage like vegetables and wine. Each of its variants have very different feels to them, which is something to keep in mind when building your commerce site.
When selling a product, knowing the clientele you’re trying to sell to is important as well. And the site needs to appeal to said clientele in order to draw them in. A cheap and general looking template won’t inspire much trust in a luxury retailer, and a cluttered looking site won’t appeal to the digital experts looking to buy the latest technological peripherals. Emallshop and the other templates try their best to really cater to certain businesses, but you’ll also need to do your part to make things work in order to succeed in roping in customers as you build your retail site.
And even if you find Emallshop’s prebuilt layouts and colour schemes not quite suitable for your brand’s needs, you also get to go into the back-end of the template to access unlimited colours or even introduce interesting visuals like a site background image.
The Joomla template also ensures that you get all the tools needed to make a solid digital marketplace. Ajax powered features ranging from an “add to cart” function, product comparisons and wish lists all ensure that users can access every feature they might need without switching to other pages. Quick view supplements that so they can get brief product descriptions and details, and a comment system is even integrated to accept product reviews from happy customers, or even address queries and potential issues as they arise.
Take a gander at its product page and live demo!
7. Reviver – Responsive Multipurpose VirtueMart Theme
If you want a site that looks more modern and trendier, Reviver is a great Joomla template with VirtueMart capabilities to boot! Its demo shows off a very nice and sleek layout chock-full of visually interesting page elements like image carousels and animated product listings that are interactive; with preview images changing to alternate images that let you see different shots of the same product. These elements are just static too. With SP Page Builder packaged with this Joomla template, you can utilise its powerful drag & drop system to also move those elements into novel layouts that you can configure as much as you want. The builder even lets you interface with the controls of things like Slider Revolution’s carousel sliders and countdown timers to finetune whatever settings you need.
ThemeMagic adds to the level of customisation that Reviver can offer, ensuring that you can switch out fonts for a preferred one and even change up the colour of your digital store to fit whatever brand identity you’re setting out to establish.
Various user experience features can be found included with this template as well. “Sale”, “Hot” and “Offer” labels make sure that users are updated of any possible deals or bargains they can get through your wares, making these items more attractive to the online bargain hunters among your customers. List and grid views ensure that customers can swap between whichever preferred way they may want to navigate the site, and are supplemented by a customisable quick preview on whatever product they mouser over.
If all this isn’t enough, all manner of extra features like newsletter plugins and social media extensions also ensure that whoever opts for these services also get to stay connected to your site even when they’re not signed on to it. Distribute emails and all kinds of social media posts to market limited sales and events to get more people in the know of what’s going on in your ecommerce website.
So if you want to take a solid Joomla VirtueMart template for your site, look through Reviver’s template page and live preview now!
8. Milano – Fashion Responsive Virtuemart Template
Milano was among the Virtuemart Joomla templates for fashion websites that we have previously reviewed. However, despite its title, it is an incredibly good-looking template that can honestly be applied to plenty of different ecommerce sites. With this template, you get 9 different home pages to browse through and select with different configurations of sliders and product previews. Masonry grid layouts are available as well that link to various clothing collections like dresses, shoes and pants; or really any manner of products you wish to feature. In fact, the template lends quite well to accessories as well such as bags or wallets.
Otherwise, the template accommodates changes in style and colour scheme by cycling through unlimited colours and rich typography powered by Bootstrap to ensure that even the text looks good on your fashion website. The key feature that allows this is the Helix Framework, which you should try and look out for in other templates to see how flexible they are with regard to adjusting your site’s overall visual appearance.
In the vein of commerce functions, the vital Quickview shortcode is available for product listings, generating an in-page popup that shows a preview of the product from which customers can purchase the item. If you’re using the product listing function to feature blog articles, you could get a little creative with this function and even use it to allow users to get a quick peak of your posts too; potentially even allowing for an almost one-page layout. Comment systems powered by Ajax are also enabled for customers to leave glowing reviews of products they’ve purchased.
If you want to go international and want to accommodate multiple languages, this Joomla template even accommodates RTL (Right to Left) languages as well so you won’t exclude international customers in your fashion business. Newsletters can be managed as well through the packaged AcyMailing extension to maintain communications with your customers through e-mail marketing so you can send out marketing campaigns and remind them seasonal sales.
Remember to check out Milano’s product page and live demo!
9. Flatastic Responsive Multipurpose VirtueMart Theme
Flatastic is another solid Joomla template to establish a sleek and accessible VirtueMart ecommerce website. Well-built and good-looking, it comes in 2 different looks: its older, more classic look that might not look quite as modern and a sleeker and more updated one that features a more modern design. This Joomla template comes with a great deal of additional customisation options to really personalise the look of the site and make it unique among a host of online storefronts!
SP Page Builder comes packaged with this template, offering a choice between making use of what are some good layouts to start from with little modification needed on your part, or simply start shifting elements around to build some novel configurations. Drag and drop the various shortcodes and page elements around to make them feature your wares in the way you want, and even try out the different box and wide layouts for a more focused design with empty space to let the site breathe, or bring your product displays to the forefront of your customers’ attention with the full screen Wide layout.
Products can be featured on a host of visually pleasing sliders, the big 3 being the versatile Revolution Slider, Smart and Camera sliders. ThemeMagic lets you change the colour scheme as well if you have a particular set of brand colours, or a pallet that might work with the general style of clothes you design. Dark themes may be good for luxury brands and even urbanwear brands to give off a sense of coolness that appeals to the clientele that might prefer these styles.
On the commerce side of things, extra features like hover tooltips and isotope filtering for products can let your customers get a very smooth and convenient shopping experience that guides them along the way. This Joomla template, being a Monkeysan template, is very robust and offers a solid base to build a digital commerce site. However, all the extra functionality you get out of the SP Page Builder extension makes it a stellar choice.
Get a rundown of what else this template has to offer here and how it looks live here!
10. Luxury – Responsive Virtuemart Theme
If you want a classier VirtueMart website for an online shop that exudes a bit more of an elegant personality, the Joomla template Luxury hits both marks with its very classy visual aesthetic. The template has 7 different presets to pick from, all with very unique and distinct layouts all united by a common minimalist style. Their default monochromatic colour scheme lends to a template that does not compete for attention with product images, giving the spotlight to your products’ images and making site navigation rather easy on the eyes.
This VirtueMart template also comes with a great assortment of blog layouts to market and even review certain projects; an effective way to get your site to climb the Google search rankings. Any articles you decide to develop and publish with these very sleek blogs are also SEO optimised to assist in getting your own product reviews onto the first page of Google’s search results.
Luxury also manages to live up to its name even in its shop page. Where a majority of Virtuemart templates tend to skew towards the fairly general and neutral designs to allow for more multipurpose uses, this Joomla template tries to achieve a solid sense of style and identity that lists products in a myriad of sleek layouts. Products may be listed in grid or lists, depending on your personal preference, and can even be added to a wishlist and cart as well.
This Joomla template’s cherry on top is its own focus on being mobile-first, ensuring that whatever pages you build for your site with Luxury are all fully responsive and can be displayed just as wonderfully on mobile devices. Most templates are marketed to be as responsive as they can for any device that accesses the VirtueMart sites they’re built for, but ones as clean as Luxury typically work the best due to how optimised a simple site layout like this are for mobile users.
So do take some time to browse this template’s product page or live preview to learn more!
Final remarks
In compiling this article of Joomla templates for VirtueMart websites, we want to make sure that your search for templates is as smooth as possible. Getting one is a rather pricey commitment, so you won’t want to get stuck with a Joomla template whose look you’ll very quickly tire of or worse – find that it lack features that you need. You’ve also probably gotten a better idea of what features are important on top of what we’ve advised you should look out for in our intro, so we hope this article has been helpful in that regard as well.
If you want our opinions on the best VirtueMart Joomla templates on this list, we’d have to say they are Matrix, Flatastic and Luxury. Flatastic managed to beat out its Monkeysan siblings once again in this article more due to its visual look than anything else. Monkeysan’s developers already have a good sense of the features any good VirtueMart site needs to conduct all manner of ecommerce activities, so their products largely share the same features. However, its fairly neutral, modern yet good aesthetic really makes it a solid choice for any digital marketplace. Matrix is a strong competitor, due to the sheer amount of shortcodes it provides alongside a well-designed appearance as well. Luxury comes in due to a solid aesthetic without skimping on its very important commerce functionality, making it a good fit for a digital marketplace that looks good without trying to sell itself too hard.
If you have a personal favourite on or off this list, drop a comment and let us know!
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