How Does Hyvä Theme Help Improve UI/UX?

We’ve all been there.

You follow all the UI/UX principles and apply multiple strategies to build a better Magento store. But then reality hits. 🥴

Magento, with all of its power, comes undone and clunky for user experience. 

I’m not claiming Magento to be bad, however, its complex nature sometimes falls short in terms of speed and performance.

But… But… But… I have a solution.

Recently, a new theme was launched for Magento, which is the Hyvä theme. It has entirely changed performance expectations from Magento by introducing solutions to all the speed issues that Magento has been facing for years.

In this blog, we’ll understand how the Hyvä Theme is going to help you improve the user experience on your Magento store. Later, we’ll also explore bonus tips that will ease your journey with Magento.

Let’s start with the Hyvä theme basics.

Understanding Hyvä Theme

The Hyvä theme is a lightweight frontend designed for Magento that promises to fix all the performance issues of the existing Magento frontend themes like those of Luma (default Magento theme).

Hyvä prioritizes reducing complexity and maximizing performance, ultimately leading to a smoother and faster shopping experience for your customers. This theme was launched to the public in 2020, and since then it has received immense support from fellow Magento community members, seeing its strengths.

Now, let’s get to understand the advantages that the Hyvä theme comes with.

What are Hyvä Theme’s UI/UX Advantages for your Magento Store?

Here I’m listing some of the advantages that you achieve in UI and UX when installing the Hyvä theme in your Magento store. Let’s start. 😀

1. Lightening-Fast Loading Times

Load speed and performance have a big impact on your website’s user experience. And those who know Hyvä Theme know that it is hyped for lightning-fast load speed.

But have you ever wondered how Hyvä achieves such great speed and performance, something that Magento has struggled with for years? Well, the thing is that William Wigman (the creator of Hyvä themes), has built Hyvä themes from scratch.

Again, what do I mean by scratch here?

Okay, so, let me mention that traditional Magento themes are built on top of the existing Magento codebase (like LUMA, the reference theme). Now, this existing codebase consists of heavy-weighted Javascript libraries (such as RequireJS and KnockoutJS), which results in poor web performance.

And maintenance of multiple heavy-weighted libraries can be a burden.

So, as a solution, Hyvä left behind the existing codebase of Magento and built an entire theme front end from scratch. For introducing lightweight code, they chose to depend entirely on two lightweight frameworks, the AlpineJS and Tailwind CSS.

And now, you can spot a difference in how seamlessly Hyvä works on the web.

Overcoming these Magento issues that were passed on for years and years was possible as Hyvä chose to develop the front end independently.

In easier terms, Hyvä themes require less code compared to traditional Magento themes, which eventually helps them focus well on better speed and flexibility. 

2. Effortless Design Customization

In the previous section, we saw that Hyvä themes are built from scratch.

This means that nothing from traditional Magento is part of it. Now, this also includes the UI Components, aka the pre-designed web elements, that we get with every other theme on Magento.

Hyvä does not have any theme interface, it comes as a blank canvas, where you can build your store in your own way. You may also feel this to be a disadvantage as it requires designing all the design elements. Hence, timetaking.

However, Hyvä lacks nowhere and has a solution for this as well.

The Solution: Hyvä’s UI Components Library.

Hyvä’s UI library is pre-designed user interface elements that can be easily integrated into Hyvä Themes. This library provides ready-to-use components, templates, or styles to improve the user interface of websites built with Hyvä themes.

You receive these UI components as a Figma design. They include a collection of components for multiple areas of your Magento store to fit different variations of stores and catalogs, which are easy to customize.

Using these pre-built components in your store helps you have tons of development time, and is free of cost with theme purchase. Here, let me give you a tour of how you receive your UI components library as a Figma file when purchasing Hyvä themes.

You can find all the UI components in page layouts on the left-hand side.

Moreover, UI components from the Hyvä theme offer you design control and effortless customization options, allowing you to create unique designs.

3. Mobile-Responsiveness

It’s 2024, and a website is called user friendly, only if it works well on all the screen sizes.

And mainly mobile devices. 📱

This is because everyone prefers smaller gadgets these days. Now, as mobile responsiveness is top-priority, Hyvä theme considers using a mobile-first approach. In this approach, the UI design is first made to fit mobile screen size and is later adapted to larger screens. This helps build a responsive theme that provides a better experience for mobile users.

On top of that, Hyvä has reduced dependencies in comparison to traditional Magento. So, the lightweight code brings further cure for responsiveness by introducing quicker load times and a better browsing experience for your users.

4. Seamless Collaboration for Developers and Designers

The Figma integration of UI components helps designers and developers to work perfectly on your project.

Starting with the process, first, designers can create an initial layout with components customization in Figma. Later the designs can easily be translated into the actual Hyvä theme code by developers. This also eliminates the need for back-and-forth communication and ensures everyone is on the same page.

Learn: How to use ready-made Hyvä UI components in your theme

But, how does Hyvä make it possible? Let’s check.

1. Hyvä’s modular design approach allows developers to reuse pre-built blocks, speeding up UI creation and iteration cycles for UI/UX improvements.
2. Hyvä theme has lightweight dependencies (AlpineJS, Tailwind CSS) with a small and efficient codebase that helps easily write and maintain code on Hyvä, leading to a stable design and development phase.
3. AlpineJS facilitates rapid prototyping of UI elements, allowing developers to quickly implement and test new UI ideas without dealing with complex setups or loads of dependencies.
4. Tailwind CSS offers a high degree of customization that allows developers to build a more cohesive and user-friendly frontend that matches brand identity.

Overall, Hyvä’s UI component approach and their choice of dependencies bring efficiency for developers and designers.

5. Vibrant Community

Another thing that makes Hyvä theme better for building a greater UI and UX is its community.

We know that any product needs a strong community to build trust of people. And Hyvä has built its own “Slack Community”.

This Slack community comprises developers, designers, and users who actively share their knowledge and experiences. This collaborative environment allows store owners and developers to discuss their doubts with fellow community members and bring in innovative solutions for common UI/UX challenges.

How do we get access to it?

When you purchase a Hyvä theme, you’re invited to join their Slack community. This gives you and your team (including designers, developers, and team leads) a direct line to the Hyvä community for support, collaboration, and ongoing learning, making your Hyvä journey even smoother!

That’s all. Up until now, we’ve explored the UI/UX advantages of using Hyvä themes.

But the benefits of the Hyvä theme don’t stop there! Here are two additional “Hyvä Tips” to further elevate your Magento store with Hyvä themes.

Bonus Tips to Further Improve Magento store With Hyvä 🤫

Alright, here comes the good stuff. So, pay attention!

TIP #1 — Hyvä Checkout

Hyvä checkout is a custom checkout solution for Magento just like the Hyvä theme.

It offers a brand-new checkout experience and is built upon the success and core values of the Hyvä theme. The advantages?

• Helps maintain the best speed and performance of the Hyvä theme
• Allows personalization of checkout page
• Supports the most popular payment methods and shipping methods
• Frequent updates with new features and integrations

… And more.

Moreover, this simplified checkout solution is easy to integrate with your Hyvä theme and Magento store, reducing your hassles and improving conversions.

TIP #2 — InstaBuild for Hyvä

Instabuild for Hyvä themes are pre-built, customizable layout temples that are designed to work with Hyvä themes. Traditional Hyvä theme development involves building a custom theme from scratch, whereas these templates serve as a Hyva Accelerator, offering a faster and more accessible way to leverage the benefits of Hyvä Themes. Including:

• Lightweight and fast-loading templates for improved performance.
• Responsive design for optimal viewing across all devices.
• Customizable to match brand identity.

Moreover, these templates do not require technical know-how and are easy to implement, making them a cost-effective solution in comparison to custom theme development.

Conclusion

Reading through this blog, you understand how great Hyvä themes are for improving the customer journey on your website with an introduction to improved web performance. And let’s not forget how InstaBuild for Hyvä comes to the rescue of the design phase with its ready-made templates.

We also saw how Hyvä checkout further helps by improving the checkout experience of your users. Or instead, your users would be stuck with Luma (slow😑) checkout. Lastly, all that Hyvä brings on board is goodness for your Magento store, taking it from SLOW to GROW.

So, are you ready to experience the difference with Hyvä?

Book an appointment with our experts to get started with the Hyvä theme & Hyvä checkout implementation.

Additional Resources

You may still have multiple doubts about the Hyvä theme before you make your final decision on purchasing it. So, here I’ve brought some resources to help you research better.

• Hyvä Theme Benefits that Your Store Needs
• Time and Cost to Build Hyvä Theme in Magento
• InstaBuild: Hyvä Theme-ready Templates
• Why is Hyvä Important for Mobile Commerce
• Top Hyvä Theme Extension Providers
• Hyvä Themes vs. Headless Commerce
• Hyvä vs. PWA
• How Hyvä Theme Helps to Improve Your Ad Quality Score

Thank You. 😀