Choose a layout and theme
Pick a storefront layout and color palette in the visual builder, fine-tune the colors, and push it live with Publish.
Your storefront's look comes from two choices: a layout (how the home page is arranged) and a palette (its colors and fonts). You set both in the visual builder. Nothing changes on your live site until you click Publish.
Open the builder
- Go to Website in the left nav.
- On the Visual builder card at the top, click Open visual builder.
- The builder opens full-screen with a live preview of your site. Click Design in the top bar (or Site design at the top of the editing panel): everything on this page is there, in the Site design view of the panel. On a narrower screen it opens as a drawer.
Pick a layout
A layout arranges your whole home page: the hero, featured inventory, browse grids, and the rest. There are six.
- Under Layout, click the button with the template icon showing your current layout's name.
- Click any layout card to select it. Your options:
- Classic: balanced and conversion-friendly. The default.
- Showcase: editorial / premium, with a dominant display-serif hero.
- Split: edgy and modern, with an asymmetric hero and a floating search card.
- Luxury: elegant / upmarket; a transparent nav over a tall hero. Ships dark with straight edges.
- Storefront: inventory-first, best for high-volume lots.
- Velocity: bold and high-energy, with a vibrant photo hero.
- The preview reloads into the new layout so you can try it.
Picking a layout also switches your palette to the one that layout is designed for (for example, Luxury loads the dark Onyx palette with straight edges) and clears any color tweaks and corner style you'd made (your font choice is kept). That's so each layout looks finished out of the box. You can recolor it afterward with the color controls. It's all still a draft until you Publish.
Pick a palette
The palette sets your colors and heading font. There are twelve presets.
- Under Theme, open the palette control (the color-dots button showing your current palette's name).
- Each card shows a mini preview of your site in that palette. The presets: Classic, Modern, Premium, Bold, Minimal, Midnight, Terra, Nocturne, Heritage, Coastal, Redline, and Onyx.
- Click a card to apply it. The preview updates instantly.
Each layout ships with a palette that suits it, but any palette works with any layout, so feel free to mix and match. Switching the layout resets the palette to that layout's default, so choose your layout first, then your palette.
Fine-tune the colors
Want your brand colors instead of the preset's? Adjust them with the swatches under Colors, just below the palette control.
- Under Colors, find the eight named swatches: Primary, Accent, Background, Surface, Text, Muted text, Borders, and Footer. Rest the pointer on one to see what it colors.
- Click a swatch and pick a color. The preview updates live.
- A swatch you've changed gets a ring around it.
- Changed a color you didn't mean to? Once you've adjusted any swatch, Reset colors to the preset appears below them. Click it to return every color to the preset's defaults.
You don't set the Primary button text or Footer text colors. The builder chooses readable foreground colors automatically from the effective palette. Publish also checks the actual Text, Muted text, Accent, Background, Surface, subtle-band, dark-band, and Primary combinations. If a pair misses the accessibility threshold, Publish names the exact colors and ratio so you can adjust the editable swatch named in the error - usually the foreground - or choose another preset without losing your draft.
Choose fonts and corners
Fonts and corners, under the colors, sets two things on top of whatever palette you picked:
- Fonts: a pair chosen to work together. Clean (Inter everywhere), Editorial (Playfair Display headings over Inter text), Classic serif (Georgia headings over Inter text) or System (the visitor's own device font, the fastest).
- Corners: Sharp, Subtle, Rounded or Soft. This is the corner of your buttons, cards and form fields.
Follow the theme leaves the choice to your palette, which is what every site does until you pick. Every font in the list is already on your site or on the visitor's device, so none of them slows a page down. Like everything else in the builder, the preview follows at once and nothing is live until you Publish. Resetting your colors does not touch your fonts or corners.
A Spanish site
Language, below the fonts, holds Language of the site's own words: English or Spanish (Español). It changes the words the site writes for you on every page: the menu's built-in links (Home, Inventory, Financing and so on), the header and the phone menu, the contact bar, the footer, the cookie banner, the not-found page, the four forms (the contact form, the question box on a vehicle page, the pre-qualification, the trade-in) with their choices and thank-you words, the contact page, the words the financing and trade-in pages carry when you have not written those pages yourself, and the storefront assistant, which also answers in Spanish unless a shopper writes to it in another language. Everything you typed yourself, your headlines, your sections, your pages and any menu name you gave a link, stays exactly as you typed it; nothing is translated for you. So a Spanish site is you writing in Spanish, with the platform's sentences matching. The preview follows at once, the choice travels with your draft and your versions, and nothing is live until you Publish.
The inventory page (filters, sorting, the vehicle cards and badges, the make, model and price pages), the vehicle page (the spec sheet, the features list, the photo gallery, the payment estimate, the out-the-door lines), the about, reviews and accessibility pages, the error page and the page titles follow too. On the home page, every section's default words (Why buy from us, How it works, the browse tiles, the closing band and the rest) read in Spanish as long as you have not changed them; a word you changed stays yours, even if you changed it to English. The automatic reply a shopper gets after a form (Settings, Lead routing) is sent in Spanish as well. Every vehicle card reads in the site's language wherever it appears, on the home page, the inventory page and a vehicle page's "You might also like", with its badge and its transmission and fuel type (Automática, Gasolina), and each page tells browsers and screen readers that it is in Spanish. A body style, a color or a description you typed on a vehicle stays as you typed it, and the California total-price notice stays in its legal English wording. A lead a Spanish form produces reads in English on your Leads page: the answers are the same choices, only the shopper saw them in Spanish.
Preview on different screen sizes
Use the Desktop / Tablet / Mobile icons in the toolbar to see how each choice looks at each width before you publish.
Publish (this is what goes live)
Everything you've done so far is a draft; your real storefront still shows the old look.
- The toolbar shows Unpublished changes while you have edits pending.
- Click Publish. The button shows Publishing…, then the chip changes to All changes published.
- Your live storefront now uses the new layout and palette.
Your edits are a draft until you Publish: they show in the preview, but the public site is unchanged. Layout changes in particular only reach your live site on Publish (the preview shows them; the public site waits). Your draft is saved in your browser as you work, so closing or refreshing the builder won't lose it. When you reopen, you'll be offered the chance to keep your unsaved changes. But the only way to make any of it live is to Publish.
To throw away your pending edits and snap back to what's currently live, click Discard.
FAQ
Will changing the layout or palette break my live site right away?
No. Layout and palette changes are a draft. Your live storefront is untouched until you click Publish. Until then, only the preview in the builder reflects your changes.
I switched layouts and my colors reset. Why?
That's intentional. Each layout ships with a matching palette so it looks designed-for the moment you pick it. After switching, use the palette control and the color swatches to set the colors you want, then Publish.
Can I undo a change?
Yes. Use Undo / Redo in the toolbar (or Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z). To drop all pending changes at once, click Discard. Once you've published, you can also restore an earlier published version from the Version history card under Advanced on the Website page.
Will I lose my changes if I close or refresh the builder?
No. Your draft is saved in your browser as you work and restored when you reopen the builder; you'll get a prompt offering to keep your unsaved changes (with a one-click option to discard them). Just remember that saved-in-your-browser isn't the same as live: nothing reaches your public site until you click Publish.
My Publish was rejected because the site changed.
If a teammate published while you had the builder open, your draft is now based on an older version and the server blocks the Publish to avoid overwriting their work. Reopen the builder to load the current site, re-apply your changes, and Publish again.
My Publish was rejected because of color contrast.
The error identifies the foreground and background colors that do not have enough contrast and shows their exact ratio. Adjust the editable swatch named in the error - usually the foreground - or choose another preset, check the preview again, and Publish. Nothing from the rejected draft is written to the live site.
Who can change the layout and theme?
Anyone can open the builder and try changes, but only an Owner or a Manager can Publish them to the live site, so salespeople can't push website changes live. For anyone else the builder says so when it opens and keeps Publish switched off. This works on all plans.
Can I use my exact brand colors?
Yes. Adjust the eight color swatches (Primary, Accent, Background, Surface, Text, Muted text, Borders, Footer). Primary button text, Footer text, and necessary form/control outlines are adjusted automatically for contrast; the Borders swatch still sets the softer decorative card and separator lines. A combination that would make actual text or primary controls unreadable is kept in your draft but cannot be published until its contrast is corrected.