I see beautiful templates with various effects all the time, currently looking at a parallax template, but I also saw a shopify site today. The images work really well regardless of screen size/their size, there are various moving effects that work beautifully, lovely grids, not just rows of boxes, endless scrolling, fantastic blogs, & they just look like high end websites. Perfect spacing, properly responsive, excellent product information pages. Not a 'featured product' in sight.
This one has some really nice elements.
https://www.templatemonster.com/website-templates/57677.html
Is it possible to set up an xcart website like that? The xcart ones I see all look the same & for my purposes arent right. Getting mouseover effects, dealing with different size product images, & having it truly responsive just doesnt seem to be happening. Shopify doesnt have half the features I want but those templates just work. I got Eveprest but its a very bare bones version. Eveprest on template monster has a ton of features. Eveprest on xcart doesnt.