Overview

Your store's look and feel is made up of three things: the template you choose, the design settings you apply on top of it, and the content pages and menu you build around it. All three are managed from the BeNimble portal, and none of them require any coding.

This guide walks through everything you can change, in the order most merchants work through it:

  1. Pick a template
  2. Apply your branding (colours, logo, fonts)
  3. Set up your homepage (hero images, product lists, blog, reviews)
  4. Go further with a custom homepage layout and a custom menu
  5. Add your own content pages

How Design Changes Go Live

Before you change anything, it helps to understand how BeNimble saves your work.

Every change you make under My Shop → Design is saved to a draft version of your store first. Your live storefront keeps showing the current design until you decide to publish.

At the top of the Design page you will see the DRAFT STATUS card:

  • UP TO DATE – your draft and your live store match. Nothing to publish.
  • PENDING – you have unpublished changes. The card lists exactly which sections changed, for example Colors, Hero Images, Site Menu.

When changes are pending, three buttons appear:

  • BROWSE DRAFT SITE – opens your storefront with the draft design applied, so you can check your work before shoppers see it.
  • GO LIVE – publishes every pending change to your live store.
  • RESET DRAFT – throws away all draft changes and pulls your draft back in line with what is currently live.

Save each section as you go, preview with BROWSE DRAFT SITE, and only click GO LIVE once you are happy with everything.

There is no need to publish after every small edit — a single GO LIVE applies every pending change at once.

Changing Your Template

Your template controls the overall structure of your store — the header style, product layouts, and which homepage sections are available.

To change it, go to My Shop → Templates. You can also get there from My Shop → Design → Overview by clicking Change Template.

The available templates are:

  • DIVISIMA – modern, trendy and elegant, with a unique product slider
  • PHYLLIA
  • PROLIFIC
  • TRANQUIL
  • VANTAGE

Each template card gives you two actions:

  1. Click INFO to open a live demo of that template so you can browse it properly before committing.
  2. Click SELECT to switch your store to it.

Your current template is marked ACTIVE CURRENTLY. Templates that are not included in your subscription show NOT AVAILABLE — you can still preview them with INFO.

What happens when you switch

  • Your products, categories, pages, images and content all stay exactly where they are. Only the presentation changes.
  • If you are using a preset colour scheme, the new template's scheme is applied in draft and must be confirmed under My Shop → Design. If you are on a custom colour scheme, your custom colours stay.
  • Any custom homepage layout you have built is not deleted. You can switch templates and come back to your layout later.
  • The change is processed in the background and takes up to 15 minutes. While it is running, the template and design pages show UPDATE IN PROGRESS and are locked. You will be emailed when it completes.

Not every template supports every homepage feature. Sections that depend on the template are marked with a warning on the Design page.

Check that your new template supports a feature before you rely on it.

Design Settings

Everything below lives under My Shop → Design, in the left-hand menu of that page.

Colors

Design → Colors gives you two ways to set your palette.

Presets – each template ships with ready-made colour schemes. Pick one and it is applied across your menu, buttons and notice bar.

Custom colour scheme – set eight colours individually:

  • Background – your page background
  • Font – default text colour
  • Menu Background and Menu Text – your header menu
  • Notice Background and Notice Text – your notice bar
  • Button Background and Button Text – primary action buttons

A live preview panel next to the pickers shows a mock notice bar, menu, body text and buttons so you can check contrast before saving. Click USE CUSTOM SCHEME to apply it.

Custom colours require a Creative or Club subscription. Preset schemes are available on all plans.

Logo

Design → Logo handles both your store logo and your browser favicon.

For your logo:

  • Accepted formats: PNG, JPG, JPEG or WEBP, up to 500KB
  • Recommended size: at least 350x80
  • A transparent PNG gives the cleanest result in your header
  • Logos with a little extra spacing around the edges usually sit better in the header

For your favicon (the small icon in the browser tab):

  • Same accepted formats, up to 500KB
  • Recommended size: 32x32 or 64x64
  • Keep the artwork simple so it stays readable at a tiny size

Choose your file, check the preview, then click SAVE LOGO or SAVE FAVICON.

Fonts

Design → Fonts lets you set typography independently of your template:

  • Header font – used for headings
  • Body font – used for everything else
  • Base font size – Template Default, X-Small, Small, Normal, Large or X-Large

The preview panel updates instantly as you change each setting, showing an example heading and a paragraph of body text so you can sanity-check readability. Click Save fonts when you are happy.

Custom fonts also require a Creative or Club subscription.

Notice Bar

Design → Notice Bar adds a short message strip to your store — ideal for promotions, shipping cut-off dates or service announcements.

  • Maximum 100 characters
  • Show on all pages – by default the bar shows on your homepage only; tick this to show it site-wide
  • Allow dismiss – lets shoppers close the bar

Leave the message empty to hide the notice bar entirely.

The preview shows exactly how the bar will read, along with its current scope and dismiss setting. Click SAVE NOTICE BAR to apply.

Homepage Settings

These sections control what appears on your home page and are also found in the Design menu.

Hero Images

Hero images are the large banners at the top of your homepage. Go to Design → Hero Images.

Start by choosing how many you want — 0, 1, 2 or 3 hero images. Setting 0 removes the hero area entirely.

For each hero you can set:

  • Hero heading text (up to 40 characters)
  • Hero body text (up to 200 characters)
  • Shop button text (up to 40 characters)
  • The image itself

You have two ways to get an image:

  1. Upload image – use your own artwork. Recommended size is 2000x400, maximum 500KB.
  2. Choose from PEXELS – search the free Pexels stock photo library directly inside the portal. Type a short description such as "flowers" or "coffee shop", browse the results, and pick one.

Use the trash icon on a hero card to remove that image, then click SAVE HERO IMAGES.

Hero layouts crop differently on different screen sizes, so keep your most important content near the centre of the image.

If you are using a custom Homepage Design layout, your banners are managed through the design blocks in the layout builder instead, and the Hero Images section will tell you so.

Product List

Design → Product List controls the product block on your homepage:

  • Show on homepage – turn the block on or off
  • Product length – how many products to display, from 1 to 12

About Us

Design → About Us has a single toggle: Show on homepage. This decides whether an About Us section appears on your home page.

The wording itself comes from your ABOUT US page, which you edit under My Shop → Pages.

Blog

Design → Blog controls how your blog surfaces on the storefront:

  • Show on homepage – display your latest posts on the home page
  • Show in menu – add a blog link to your storefront menu
  • Number of posts (latest first) – between 1 and 4

Your actual blog posts are written and managed separately in the portal's blog section.

NimbleVerified Reviews

If you have the NimbleVerified Reviews extension active, a NimbleVerified Reviews section appears in the Design menu. From here you can control:

  • Show latest NimbleVerified review on homepage
  • Show NimbleVerified reviews on products

The number of reviews shown on the homepage is determined by your template. If you are running a custom homepage layout, homepage review placement is handled in that layout instead — but the product page setting still applies.

Custom Homepage Design

If the standard homepage blocks are not enough, you can build your homepage from scratch. Go to Design → Homepage Design and click EDIT DRAFT LAYOUT.

This opens the full-screen layout builder, where you assemble your homepage from design blocks:

  • Carousel
  • Product grid
  • Featured products
  • Featured categories
  • Parallax image bar
  • Promo image bar
  • Hero video
  • Text and image side by side
  • Icon set
  • Logo list
  • Testimonials
  • Blog snippets
  • NimbleVerified reviews
  • Google Maps
  • Spacer
  • Custom HTML and CSS

You can preview your layout in desktop or mobile view while you work, and CLEAR DRAFT LAYOUT removes the whole custom layout if you want to start again or revert to your template's standard homepage.

Building and previewing a custom homepage layout is available to try, but publishing a custom homepage design requires a Club subscription.

Switching templates does not delete your layout edits — you can always come back and continue where you left off.

Custom Site Menu

By default your storefront menu is generated by your template. Design → Site Menu lets you replace it with a menu you build yourself.

Tick Use custom Site Menu on storefront to activate it. Turning it off later keeps all your saved items — your store simply falls back to the normal template menu until you switch it back on.

To add an item, fill in:

  • Item title – the label shoppers see (up to 80 characters)
  • List under – Top Level, or an existing item to make this a child
  • Link to – choose Page, Category, Product, Custom URL, or No link if you just want a heading
  • Target – the specific page, category or product, or the URL to link to
  • Open in – same tab or new tab

Then click ADD MENU ITEM.

In the Current Menu panel you can drag items to reorder them, and drag an item under a top-level item to make it a child. Menus are limited to two levels — deeper nesting is not saved. Use the icons on each row to rename or delete an item.

The custom Site Menu requires a Club subscription.

Click SAVE SITE MENU when you are done. Like everything else on the Design page, the menu goes to draft first and appears on your live store when you click GO LIVE.

Content Pages

Go to My Shop → Pages to see every content page on your storefront. Each row shows the page title, its type, and its live URL, with an EDIT link to change it.

Your store starts with a set of standard pages, including ABOUT US. Depending on your subscription you can also add richer page types such as FAQs, image and video portfolios, and reviews.

If you want complete control, click ADD CUSTOM HTML & CSS PAGE to build a page with your own markup and styling.

Using the Nimbl Builder Template

If your store is on the Nimbl Builder template, the standard Design page will point you to the template editor instead. Click OPEN TEMPLATE EDITOR to manage that design.

Tips

Keep the following in mind while you work on your storefront design.

  • Work in draft, preview with BROWSE DRAFT SITE, then publish once with GO LIVE.
  • If a design experiment goes wrong, RESET DRAFT puts you straight back to your live design.
  • Keep hero image files under 500KB — large banners are the most common cause of a slow-loading homepage.
  • Check your storefront on a phone as well as a desktop before publishing.
  • Template changes take up to 15 minutes to process, so avoid switching templates in the middle of a promotion.

Some homepage features depend on your template and some design features depend on your subscription.

If a section is greyed out or shows an upgrade notice, check your plan under My Billing → Subscription or contact [email protected].