Why are the Themes so boring?

[bhtoys]

I mean, they're fine, and work well enough. But I find most I look at are all basically the same "blocky" layout. 
Is it just me?

[DRMasterChief]

Yes, you are somewhat right. I think there is a lot of copying involved, hardly any designer/developer will start from scratch.

There are really great options that are now necessary. But if someone has a good, new design, they will hardly reveal it or it is simply made uniquely for them and then expensive.

[30knees]

Agree. It's also hard to find a good theme designer. If anybody knows somene, please share. :)

[wakabayashi]

18 hours ago, DRMasterChief said:

Yes, you are somewhat right. I think there is a lot of copying involved, hardly any designer/developer will start from scratch.

There are really great options that are now necessary. But if someone has a good, new design, they will hardly reveal it or it is simply made uniquely for them and then expensive.

That's basically what I did. I don't remember how long it took me, but surely 2-3 years (with breaks involved).

For an open source project with modules/plugins it is very hard to build a good theme. There is not only design, but also a lot of technical aspects (speed, seo and so on). A lot of merchants expect a theme to be 100-200$ and then they are fine for 10 years. Imo that's no more realistic these days. I see a lot of SaaS, that have a higher pricing per month...

[the.rampage.rado]

If you sell the said theme for $150 to 500 users and have them on subscription plan for support is it not worth the effort?

[DRMasterChief]

yep,  long time ago i said that it is necessary to have a good theme and sell the installation for an affordable entry price, e.g. 100.-  AND then do a subscription for an low amount each month, e.g. 5 to 10.-  or whatever.

With this model, you can reach a lot of users/merchants, also small ones with not that money power,  and you can generate a good income for the designer/coder and guarantee him a monthly income.  This should be the possibility to make him work on the next 'good' theme which he can bring out a year later or so.

[nickz]

You can mod Niara as much as you wish, also there are Zthemes among others which have still 1.6 PS Themes.
In our mobile friendly world when looked the shop up on the ohne they look all like one Egg to another.

Edited February 23 by nickz

[wakabayashi]

On 2/23/2024 at 6:00 PM, the.rampage.rado said:

If you sell the said theme for $150 to 500 users and have them on subscription plan for support is it not worth the effort?

I guess thats these are the numbers, where it's starting to be interesting. But how to get 500 users buying your theme? 🙂 I don't know much about the details as I am not living for designing themes. It also depends where the designer is from. 

[the.rampage.rado]

Warehouse in March 2018 had 9k sales. Panda is still online with version for PS1.6 and thirtybees.

I believe thirtybees is growing, slowly but surely the userbase is up. 

Is it worth it - for me there is market. I would gladly change my theme from Warehouse if there is a modern one that offer the same level of customization and options. I don't use even 15% of the options but I like the liberty to do so if I want.

[x97wehner]

2 hours ago, the.rampage.rado said:

Warehouse in March 2018 had 9k sales. Panda is still online with version for PS1.6 and thirtyubees.

I believe thirtybees is growing, slowly but surely the userbase is up. 

Is it worth it - for me there is market. I would gladly change my theme from Warehouse if there is a modern one that offer the same level of customization and options. I don't use even 15% of the options but I like the liberty to do so if I want.

Ditto.

[30knees]

18 hours ago, wakabayashi said:

I guess thats these are the numbers, where it's starting to be interesting. But how to get 500 users buying your theme? 🙂 I don't know much about the details as I am not living for designing themes. It also depends where the designer is from. 

Yes, how to get 500 users. For sure it would need to go out to the theme stores and be promoted in the Prestashop forum.

I would like to know how many people here in the forum would pay you how much for your theme and pay up front eg a two-year subscription. Of course, we've not seen the theme. But assuming it's sweet and we all love it. :-)

And in order to really show that people mean it, they could pay a non-refundable deposit. And you could say: I'll only go ahead with this if at least XX people make the deposit.

[wakabayashi]

On 2/27/2024 at 9:56 AM, 30knees said:

Of course, we've not seen the theme.

It's not a big secret, what my store is 😅 https://www.spielezar.ch

But as I said. I am not making a living as coder or theme designer 😉 I can not say, why no real theme designer is doing it.

[x97wehner]

10 hours ago, wakabayashi said:

It's not a big secret, what my store is 😅 https://www.spielezar.ch

But as I said. I am not making a living as coder or theme designer 😉 I can not say, why no real theme designer is doing it.

I do love how your search module works. Products and pages.

[zen]

Interesting thread, since feb I am also working again on my theme Cisero for TB 1.5, with last Boostrap & Jquery libs, it takes time to finish everything, and even more time to make it customisable from back office. I will build a new demo version in order to share the new finished version of Cisero.

To make a commercial version of it, the subscription you suggested may be a good way for that.

 

[zen]

Hello ThirtyBees Forum !

Here is a demo version of Cisero theme last version (but same image for all products), it's on Bootstrap v5.3.3 latest stable release available, no payment is setup, so step 2 only can be reached in order steps.

Also, I would like to update Jquery version for TB to latest v3.7.1.. I did try but it makes new notices in console for plugins and widgets to update too, seems like a long task to do.

The site is still under construction but I would like to have your feedback so that I can put in place useful comments and keep on finishing this theme asap.

https://biovedique.fr/

 

Best Regards,

Zen

 

Edited March 24 by zen