One site, two modes: selling or cataloguing
Shopkeeper's most practical design decision is that it doesn't force you to be a live store on day one. The vendor's FAQ describes a Catalog Mode setting that hides the cart and the add-to-cart buttons, leaving product pages in place for browsing and showcasing. When you're ready to take orders, the same switch turns ecommerce back on.
That matters if you're building a lookbook for a wholesaler, a pre-launch catalogue, or a shop whose stock and checkout aren't ready yet. You get to assemble product layouts without a checkout sitting on every page. The reference storefront the vendor publishes at shopkeeper.getbowtied.com is the quickest way to see how product pages, galleries and lists are arranged before deciding whether that arrangement suits your catalogue.
The vendor also describes the theme as ecommerce-first, with product pages built to hold long descriptions, reviews, image galleries and related products. Try a real example rather than a placeholder: a product with a long spec table, several photos and a handful of reviews will tell you more about fit than the demo's tidy sample data.
Editing pages with WPBakery or another builder
Shopkeeper ships with WPBakery Page Builder, which the vendor describes as an included premium plugin. Pages are assembled by mixing elements in a drag-and-drop editor, so the demo layouts are a starting point you can rearrange rather than a fixed structure. If your team already knows WPBakery, the theme won't ask you to learn a second editing model.
Beyond the builder, the vendor lists theme options for background and text colors, Google Fonts, adjustable font sizes, and two bundled premium webfonts (Neue Einstallung and Radnika). Header controls include centered-logo and split-navigation arrangements, transparent headers with page-specific color schemes, an off-canvas hamburger menu, sticky headers, and a separate mobile logo. These settings let you shape the identity without touching code; heavier structural changes are where the included child theme becomes useful.
Builder choices beyond the bundled editor
The vendor lists Elementor, Elementor Pro, Visual Composer and the WordPress block editor as supported alternatives to WPBakery. Gutenberg optimisation is also marked Yes in the marketplace attributes. This gives teams more than one editing route without implying that a layout created in one builder can automatically be edited in another.
WPML and Gravity Forms appear in the compatibility list too. Those declarations describe the vendor's intended integrations; they do not establish how a particular payment gateway or a customised store will behave.
