Storefront | Themes

The Themes section in Orbit allows you to manage your storefront's appearance. A theme controls the overall design of your store — its colours, fonts, and layout — so you can give customers a polished, on-brand experience.

From here you can view your active theme, browse and install new themes from the marketplace, activate an installed theme, customise the design, and keep an eye on your store's page speed.

Accessing Themes

To access Themes:

• From the left-hand menu, go to Storefront.

• Select Themes.

The Themes page will open, showing your active theme along with your store's performance and a preview.

What a theme is

A theme is the design of your storefront — the front-facing shop your customers see. It sets the look and feel of your pages, including colours, fonts, and layout. Only one theme can be active at a time, and that active theme determines how your store appears to visitors.

Viewing your active theme

Your active theme is shown at the top of the page. It displays the theme name, a green Active badge, the installed version number, and a short description of the theme. A Storefront Preview lower down the page lets you see how the active theme looks on desktop and mobile, and you can open the live store using View Live.

Browsing and installing themes

To find new themes, click Browse Marketplace at the top of the page. The marketplace opens separately, where you can explore the available themes and see how each one looks.

To install a theme from the marketplace:

1. Click Browse Marketplace.

2. Browse the available themes and choose the one you want.

3. Install the theme.

Once installed, the theme is added to your Theme Library, ready to be activated. You can install several themes and keep them in your library without making them live.

Activating an installed theme

Installed themes that are not currently active appear in the Theme Library, lower down the page. Each one shows its name, description, and installed version.

To activate an installed theme:

1. Find the theme in the Theme Library.

2. Click Activate next to it.

3. Confirm the activation when prompted.

The selected theme becomes your active theme and your storefront updates to use its design. If activating a theme would affect pages you have already created, Orbit will ask you to choose how to handle those pages before the change is applied. To remove a theme you no longer need, click Uninstall next to it in the library.

Customising the active theme

To change the design of your active theme, click the Customize button next to it. The customiser opens separately, where you can adjust the theme's settings — such as colours, fonts, and layout — to match your brand. Your changes apply to the active theme only.

Checking for theme updates

From time to time, theme authors release new versions with improvements and fixes. When an update is available for a theme, Orbit shows an update indicator next to the theme name, both for your active theme and for themes in your Theme Library.

To update a theme, click the update indicator next to the theme and confirm the update. Orbit installs the latest version while keeping the theme's activation state, so an active theme stays active after updating.

Page Speed

The Page Speed panel shows your store's Core Web Vitals — a set of measurements from real visitor sessions that reflect how fast and stable your storefront feels. A badge at the top of the panel shows how many of the metrics are currently passing.

The panel reports the following metrics:

• LCP — Largest Contentful Paint, how quickly the main content of a page becomes visible.

• FCP — First Contentful Paint, how quickly the first part of a page appears.

• INP — Interaction to Next Paint, how quickly the store responds when customers click or type.

• CLS — Cumulative Layout Shift, how stable the layout stays while a page loads.

• TTFB — Time to First Byte, how quickly the server starts to respond.

Each metric shows its current value, a rating of Good, Needs Work, or Poor, and the target it is measured against. You can switch the period between Today, Last 7 days, and Last 30 days, and the Sessions by Device breakdown shows how your visitors split across desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Why themes are important

Your theme shapes the first impression customers have of your store. A clean, well-presented storefront builds trust and makes it easier for visitors to browse and buy. By choosing the right theme and customising it to your brand, you can create a consistent shopping experience, while the Page Speed panel helps you keep your store fast and responsive.

If you have any questions, please contact us at support@orbitcommerce.net