Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
Most theme demos are built for one category. Real catalogues drift. Of the six themes we publish, Allure is the only one with no preset sitting in the back half of its Shopify Theme Store category — its weakest is in the top third.
You did not plan to sell jewellery.
You started with one thing. Candles, maybe, or ceramics — something you knew. Then a customer asked whether you had anything to go with it, and you said no, and then you thought about it. By spring there were three ceramics. By December there was a small jewellery line, because a supplier offered a good price and you were curious.
Now open your storefront and look at it honestly. It was built for candles. The collection grid wants square product shots; jewellery needs space. The filters were designed for scent, and nobody filters jewellery by scent. Your store looks like a candle shop that is embarrassed about the other shelves.
This is the most common shape in small commerce, and almost no theme is written for it. Demos are built for one category, photographed for one category, and sold to a version of you that does not drift.
Allure by UTD was built by people who assumed you would.
Allure ships five presets. What is unusual is not that there are five — most themes have several. It is where Shopify’s own browse places them, as of 23 September 2026:
| Preset | Category | Position | Top % of its category |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allure | Clothing | 11th of 261 | top 4.2% |
| Bijou | Jewelry & Accessories | 18th of 117 | top 15.4% |
| Pristine | Beauty | 27th of 136 | top 19.9% |
| Carrara | Home | 28th of 120 | top 23.3% |
| Stitch | Bags | 18th of 56 | top 32.1% |
Five presets. Five different categories. All five in the top third of their category, four of the five in the top quarter.
We ran the same test across the other five themes we publish, because a claim like that is worth nothing unless someone tries to break it. The useful measure turned out to be the weakest preset rather than the strongest, and on that measure none of the other five come close.
Allure’s weakest preset sits at the top 32% of its category. For the other five themes we publish, the weakest preset lands between the top 54% and the top 80% — each of them has at least one preset in the back half of its category. That is normal, and it is what happens when a theme is really built for one room and dressed for the others.
Allure is the one where the dressing holds up.
It means the jewellery line does not have to live inside a layout designed for candles.
You start from Carrara for the home goods, and when the jewellery grows enough to deserve its own collection page, Bijou’s product layout is already in the theme you own — the one with room around the object, the one that does not crop a necklace into a square. No second purchase. No developer. No rebuild of a store that finally works.
And when the thing you sell shifts again in a year, which it will, the room is already there.
Real-visitor data, month by month, as the share of mobile visits passing all Core Web Vitals:
Mar 88.3 Apr 82.6 May 86.1 Jun 83.1 Jul 78.2 Aug 85.7August’s 85.7% is the highest of the six themes we publish and sits above the market median of 84.8% across 249 themes. It is not a speed claim — it is the absence of a speed problem, which is the more useful thing to be able to say about a storefront.
Allure arrives with sensible things already on: predictive search that also returns your blog posts, quick view from the collection grid, a size guide on product pages.
Two arrive off, and both are worth the click. Sticky add to cart keeps the buy button visible on long product pages — one checkbox in the product section. Colour swatches in filters replaces “Sage, Sand, Slate” with the actual colours, which matters enormously the moment your catalogue has variants worth choosing between.
And one to set deliberately rather than leave alone: the newsletter popup’s Cookie time arrives at one day, meaning a visitor who closes it is asked again tomorrow. The dropdown offers a week, a month, three months and a year. Almost any of those treats a person better than the default does.
Allure defines 1,414 settings — the fewest of the six themes we publish. Fewer controls means a shorter first evening and less to get lost in, which is genuinely the right trade for most people. But if you already know you will be reshaping this store every month for a year, our Ultra gives you 2,175 places to do it without a developer. Allure is built to be lived in; Ultra is built to be rebuilt.
$100, once, for the theme and all five presets. The median Shopify theme price is $300.
Twenty-five merchants have rated it 4.8 out of 5.
Before you decide anything, do this: open Carrara and Bijou on your phone — your actual phone — and put your widest and your narrowest product side by side in your head. If your catalogue is drifting, you will see within a minute whether this theme has a room for where it is drifting to.
Allure in the Shopify Theme Store →
Commerce Quarterly is published by UTD BV, which develops the Allure theme. Position data from our own daily crawl of all thirteen Shopify Theme Store categories, September 2026. Core Web Vitals from Chrome UX Report field data, March–August 2026. Settings counted from the Allure 1.2.5 release archive.
Allure is a Shopify theme published by UTD BV. It costs $100, once, for the theme and all five presets: Allure, Bijou, Pristine, Carrara and Stitch. The median Shopify theme price is $300 across 305 themes. You can move between presets after you buy, which is the point of this article — a catalogue that grows into a second category does not need a second purchase.
Yes. Presets are configurations of the same theme, not separate products, so all five are available in the theme you own. Switching changes section order, colour, typography and which optional sections are enabled. Do it in a duplicated theme first so your live store is untouched while you look at it.
The one closest to your catalogue's shape rather than your industry's label. Bijou gives a product more space around it, which suits jewellery and small objects. Carrara suits home goods where the room sells the object. Stitch suits bags and accessories. Pristine suits beauty. Allure itself is the broadest and suits clothing. Open the two closest on your own phone before deciding.
It is the fastest of the six themes we publish. In August 2026, 85.7% of mobile visits to stores running Allure passed all Core Web Vitals, against a market median of 84.8% across 249 themes with enough field data. That is real-visitor data from Chrome rather than a lab test, and it describes every store running the theme, so your own images and apps decide where inside that range you land.
1,414 — the fewest of the six themes we publish, whose range runs to 2,175. Fewer controls means a shorter first evening and less to get lost in, which suits most stores. If you know you will be reshaping the store every month for a year, Ultra gives you more room to do it without a developer.