Update (28th Oct 2020): This article is outdated and Thrive Themes apparently supports Woo-commerce way more than it used to. Check the video by Doug at convology.com below for the full-integration. I’ve stopped focusing on Thrive theme builder and Thrive Architect and switched to Elementor for theme building + page builder for various reasons. I still recommend Thrive leads, Thrive Ultimatum.
You can. But I don’t recommend it. Not if, the main purpose of your site is to be an e-commerce website.
I will explain you the details.
Over the years, I have served a huge array of clients with a variety of requests related to Thrive themes. They ask for customisation, mobile optimisation, making child themes, and also integrating woocommerce with thrive themes.
After working on two such woocommerce related projects, I started to pass on tasks like that. Even though it is possible, its a HUGE amount of work to get even of basics of it looking good, usable and right.
It needs a huge amount of customisation in terms of CSS. And then you might also need to child theme and modify the woocommerce PHP files.
So what do I recommend?
First, ask yourself
- Are you trying to setup a full fledged ecommerce site?
- Are your products going to have multiple screenshots, a full page description with images and sections?
- Do you need an extensive cart modification functionality?
- Do you expect simple basic UI elements of every ecommerce store to make the user experience easy? E.g. Like wanting a + and – button on your # of items box. (See this demo woocommerce store by thrive themes, and notice how the product page doesn’t have a button to increase count of the product)
If you answered yes to questions above, then don’t use thrive themes for an ecommerce store. Simple.
But if you want to sell a courses, informational products etc which don’t require extensive cart modification functionality, you will do just fine with Thrive Themes.
Thrive themes wasn’t built specially for running an ecommerce store using woocommerce. Its built for lead generation, conversion, content, courses etc.
- So I suggest setup a subdomain. If your domain is skreechers.com, then setup a store.skreechers.com. Make it a separate wordpress install, get a flexible super-fast WooCommerce theme that supports WooCommerce out of the box. (As of updating this article, Its got 73000+ sales with 4.8 stars avg. Flatsome theme is so good and popular that there are 3rd party WooCommerce plugin developers who support it)
- The theme is 59$, but trust me you will save loads of time and banging your head against wall compared to trying to punch thrive themes to look good with WooCommerce. Also I have used Flatsome theme personally for a client’s website which continues to run fast and reliably long term over years.
- Use the exact same fonts, logo and colours that you use on your thrive themes site, so that when the user switches between the store site and content/membership site, they get a seamless experience. This is important to not scare your users and provide a seamless brand experience.
But again…let me repeat this, *if* you are selling just few products, and you don’t really need a special product page, special cart experience etc. And all you need is for the user to click on “add to cart” from your sales page, see a checkout page and finish payment, then don’t bother to setup this special store subdomain.
I am a thrive themes consultant myself and been following the forums and company closely. Their roadmap doesn’t have any new WooCommerce features in the near future as of writing this post. Their support for WooCommerce was just to clear an objection that many users might have before buying their themes.
Leave a comment below if you have specific questions.
I made a 10 minute video tutorial on how to setup WooCommerce on Thrive Themes. You can see how the result looks along with my recommendations on who should and shouldn’t use it.
