An Easy and Comprehensive Guide on PSD to Shopify Conversion

With the increase in online shopping, eCommerce is now dominating traditional retail businesses. eCommerce is proving to be a lucrative business, therefore, entrepreneurs are trying their luck in the eCommerce industry. To compete with other online businesses, an entrepreneur needs to build a robust and attractive website that will give an edge in the market. Creating an eCommerce wasn’t easy and straightforward before some time. 

But with the advent of the latest technologies, new methods and solutions came to build websites. Shopify is a popular eCommerce development platform that allows the creation of websites easily. However, entrepreneurs are preferring PSD to Shopify conversion methods to build more attractive and customized eCommerce websites. If you want to convert PSD to Shopify then the following are the simple steps to accomplish this task.

1. Create a Shopify account

No matter if you want to create a Shopify theme for yourself or your client, the first thing that you need is to have a Shopify Partner Account. So, go to Shopify Partners to create an account. After signing up for an account under “Shopify Partner Program”, you can do the following:

• Creation of unlimited development stores that are free accounts especially made for developers, designers, and creatives to work with apps, themes, and set up a store.
• Creation and publication of custom themes on Shopify Theme Store along with creation and publication of Shopify Apps.
• Earning through referrals.

2. Set up a development store

Once your Shopify Partner Account is created, click on the “Development stores” tab in your dashboard then click the button “Create a development store”. A new page will open where you need to enter a name and password for your development store. Complete all the required details then click the “create store” button. After successful creation of the store, a page will appear with “Here’s what is happening with your store right now”. 

Also read 14 Common Web Designing Mistakes to Avoid in 2021

3. Analyze and slice the PSD

Undeniably, this is a very important step of the process to convert PSD to a Shopify theme. You need to deeply analyze your PSD file to ascertain the dynamic and static content of your design. You need to slice the content that cannot be created dynamically like images, buttons, and more. Slice these elements and save them in different individual design files. You don’t need to cut elements in full that can be dynamically created with HTML and CSS. You can use an image editing tool like Photoshop for slicing the PSD or any similar tool.  

4. Search and add a theme

After slicing the PSD file, you need to browse through the Shopify Theme Store to search for a template that resembles your PSD design. For this go to Online Store Themes from the dashboard then click “Visit Theme Store”. Choose a theme that matches the PSD, then the button “Install theme”. You will now have two options “install as an unpublished theme” and “publish as my shop’s theme”. Click on the “publish as my shop’s theme” option and the theme will be installed on the development store in moments. 

5. Customize the theme to match the requirements

Once the desired theme has been installed, now open the Theme Manager to perform customizations on the Shopify theme as per your PSD design. Click on the button “Customize Theme” in Theme Manager and you will see the Theme editor window gets opened. Here you can modify the theme and preview the settings in real-time. 

While you can adjust almost all aspects of your theme using Theme Editor. You can also utilize the “Edit code” page which is found in the left bar in the Theme drop-down. Not only can you edit an existing theme file but also add a new theme using the “Edit code” page. You can see the list of theme files along with a code editing pane on the right side of this page. 

Edit the theme files as per your PSD design and replace images with the relevant sliced images. By doing all this, you can make the theme according to the desired theme. Every file ends with a .liquid extension and it’s just a normal HTML file with some embedded code. The Liquid is a templating engine that serves as a bridge between the HTML and a Shopify store. You need to write Liquid markups to build a valid Shopify theme. 

6. Add custom functionality

After successfully converting PSD to Shopify the next step is to add needed custom functionalities to the brand-new theme. Click on the ‘Apps’ icon in the development store’s dashboard and you can find tons of Shopify Apps to enhance the functionality of your online store. You can also click the Visit Shopify App Store button to explore more Apps. Once the theme is complete you can now apply it to your online store by exporting your theme from the development store and import it to the Live Shopify Store by choosing it as the primary theme.  

Wrapping up

Creating a perfect eCommerce website isn’t easy as developers have to take care of their clients’ unique needs and requirements. The method of converting Photoshop files to Shopify has emerged as a popular way to create customized Shopify websites with attractive functionalities. Entrepreneurs are choosing PSD to Shopify conversion services to build unique and customized eCommerce websites. 

Author Bio

Emily White is a top-level eCommerce developer with a good work experience in CSS Chopper, a reputed eCommerce development company. She is a keen web developer as well as loves writing. She writes informative content in her free time to spread knowledge and information.