Shopify Site Review: rains.com

Today, I’ll be reviewing the site Rains.com. Rains is a brand established in Denmark in 2012, producing raincoats and waterproof bags. They use Shopify as their infrastructure, paired with a very intelligently coded theme. In this review, I’ll be analyzing and sharing my notes on the theme of Rains.com that I found and really liked.

• The entire homepage consists of Hero Media sections. Instead of using a carousel, they smartly focus all attention on a single image or video. It’s well-documented through various studies that only a very small percentage of users click on other images within carousels. In other words, carousel setups are unnecessary and create non-converting weight on the site. Everything should be visible.

• The menu is activated by a click, which is a structure I love. With this setup, it’s possible to load the menu content only after a click, meaning it doesn’t burden the initial load. Although hover-based menus offer a smoother experience, preloading menu content can negatively impact performance. Also, hover setups don’t exist on mobile, meaning a different experience is provided between desktop and mobile, which could be negative from a UX perspective.

• On the site’s most visited pages — Home, PDP, and PLP — they’ve avoided unnecessary sections. Instead of complex actions, they’ve focused on delivering the message simply yet powerfully. This is excellent optimization.

• I love the structure of the product cards on the site.
  • Variants are tied to colors and loaded as subitems, meaning each color variant calls a different subitem.
  • The sole purpose of the color variants is to display different colors; for other customizations and purchases, users must go to the product page.
  • Since each variant is a subitem, these subitems can be loaded later, avoiding adding weight to the initial load.
  • Variant images can also be hovered over, so the hover action isn’t limited to the first product.
  • Sizes are displayed, but only as information. They aren’t clickable and don’t change variants. There’s no need to complicate things, after all.

• The PDP is bold and also simple.

  • The product images flow smoothly, and there’s no attempt to pause them on hover, unlike a section in one of our themes where we wasted a lot of time trying to implement this.
  • There are no extra icons on the images. Clicking the image opens the zoom view, and clicking it again closes it. Simple.
  • Since the entire screen is the product gallery, there are no worries about how the info area will align—whether it’s sticky or too large. It’s a clean full-screen experience.

• The images on the site are limited to a maximum of 2048px, and the videos are quite small compared to their sizes. There’s no goal of achieving ultra-high detail quality; the message is giving with large media.

• Sections like Quick ATC, Shoppable, Interactive Banner — sections we often overload with functionality in our themes — are absent from this site. They’ve used spaces comfortly, not piling on top of each other. The product cards seem to be where the most effort went, and the clever simplification of methods and functionality is something I really appreciate.

• I looked into how they resolved the issue of previous products not being visible on Page 2 with the “Show More” function in the PLP. When you enter the page directly from Page 2, the problem isn’t solved; it’s still there. However, as you scroll down and the “Show more” button comes into view, the previous products load themselves smoothly.

• Also in the PLP, instead of showing page numbers, they display how many products are visible out of the total number. This is much more user-friendly. Who cares about page numbers? Show me the product count; don’t make me multiply and divide to figure it out.

• Cutout images have been used in search suggestions and for variant selection in the PDP, which removes the borders and makes the product stand out more.

In summary;
Rains.com is a very intelligently designed and coded site. They’ve made excellent use of Shopify’s infrastructure. The theme is simple and clean, without unnecessary sections or actions. The product cards and PDP are simple and effective.

If I were a solo developer aiming to release a simple theme, I would publish a theme like this. Without getting lost in too many features and without overburdening the theme, a theme that is focused and functional like this would be a truly great success