Checklist for public Site themes

All Site themes eligible for publishing must meet our minimum technical and design requirements. We prepared a checklist so you can self-review your theme before submitting it to the Ecwid API team.

Checklist includes both technical and design requirements:

• Structural stability

• Text localization

• Image tolerance and quality

• Storefront availability

• Storefront performance

Find the detailed checklists for each section below.

Structural stability

Ensure your themes look good with different content or without any in some places. Structural stability requirements ensure themes are ready for real merchants — each with their own unique content.

• Theme grids and layouts keep shape under real content.

• Columns don’t jump, spacing stays balanced.

• No section breaks when text or image changes.

• Long/short headlines don’t break layout.

• CTAs fit both short and long labels.

• Descriptions can be minimal or rich — no overflow.

Merchant-friendly text rules

Store owners should be able to deduce the functionality of your sections/themes from the design, without reading any smaller texts. At the same time, all texts and headings must have a meaning and a clear structure.

• No Lorem Ipsum or meaningless filler text.

• Tone stays neutral and broadly usable (no slang, niche language, cultural assumptions, hype tone).

• Headings concise; paragraphs short (2–4 lines).

• CTAs are action-based (“Shop Now”, “Learn More”, no jokes or long phrases).

• Clean hierarchy: a clear primary heading structure, consistent use of large and secondary headings (H1/H2/H3), and well-structured paragraphs.

• Optional content must be clearly labeled (“Optional: Add a subtitle”).

• No fictional brand identity, invented stories, jokes, rhymes, or over-personalized copy. Keep the fictional brand narrative short and easy to replace.

Text localization

Lightspeed eCom (Ecwid) officially supports English, French, and Dutch. Although more languages are available in the control panel of E-Series, you are only required to keep your localization requirements for the three official languages:

• The main dev store for developing themes must be in English.

• All theme descriptions and documentation are available in official languages.

• All settings for your custom sections users can see in Instant Site Editor must be available in the three official languages.

• When displaying product prices, themes must use the correct currency symbol or currency code and support any active advanced discounts and "Compare to" prices.

Find the actual product price in the defaultDisplayedPriceFormatted field available with the Get Product call.

• Any major updates to the theme should be referenced in a changelog available in official languages. The changelog can be published on your side or in the theme description visible in the website editor.

Image tolerance and quality

Real customers will most certainly replace default images with their own. Therefore, your sections/themes must support any user images, even if low-quality ones, with different proportions and styles.

• The theme should work with images of different proportions (1:1, 3:4, 16:9), different colors, and styles.

• When default images are changed, theme elements like product cards must keep their proportions and alignment.

• Theme layout and design survives not-the-best-quality photos (phone-shot, inconsistent ratios and lightning, etc.).

Storefront availability

Requirements for website design ensure Ecwid users do not miss website functionality and their customers can navigate storefronts without problems.

• The following storefront elements must be available directly or through the menu on all pages: Cart icon, Search bar, "Sign in" link, Legal Pages links, and supported languages list/selector.

• All storefront elements should have sufficient contrast — 4.5:1 or better as per W3C AA standards.

• All storefront elements must have a visible focus state.

• No color-only meaning.

• The website design must be responsive and optimized for mobile view: button and text sizes should adjust automatically to make mobile navigation easier.

Full typography Reference: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/

Instant Site Editor

Themes must provide users of Instant Site editor with a stable and thorough UX:

• All settings have titles, descriptions, and placeholder texts where possible. Such texts should explain the setting clearly and in a detailed manner.

• All colors in section settings must be customizable through section design settings.

• Design and content settings inside your section should have a clear outline and categorization.

• If the app has several themes, every theme must have a clear screenshot for the Instant Site Editor listing (cover_image attribute inside the theme file).

Storefront performance

All themes must meet performance requirements to ensure that applying the theme doesn't slow down the website.

• All sections used in the theme must be W3C validated. Link to the validator: https://validator.w3.org/

• Google PageSpeed score should be above 70, preferably in the Pass category. Link to the PageSpeed Insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/

• The theme and its sections must not cause any errors in the browser console upon rendering. This includes warning messages on JS or HTML errors.

• If the theme adds structured data, there should not be any Google Structured Data errors in it. Link to the Structured Data test tools: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data