Custom theme

[MockoB]

I recently made the mistake buying joommasters most expensive plan with one of their templates. Unfortunately their templates are all disaster when it goes to performance. They are beautiful but could win contest for worst page speed performance. Really! I'm interested how much approximately could cost me custom template made entirely according programming practices for best performance and SEO? I plan to buy some psd file and make some modifications. So basically the design is not an issue.

[Traumflug]

Rewriting a whole template? Depends on the feature count/complexity, of course, but a first guess would be half a year of fulltime work = some 50'000 Euros. This also assumes these nice features can actually be implemented in a better performing way.

Maybe this very rough estimate answers your question already.

[nickon]

@MockoB Get the tranformer theme (or any theme from tantan) I recently got transformer and after changing quite some things I think we are at a good stage. Don't think about looks only. If you wan't a basic theme go with community one. If you like features (like I do) go on themeforerst and by one.

[interfinet]

Hello, we are providing custom theme for optimised performance of Prestashop. please add me on SKYPE: bhabanid Looking forward to hear from you. Thanks San

[MockoB]

@Traumflug I'm talking about design without any functionality modifications. 50 000 euro is way too much for simple template. There are custom themes selling for $2000 with single license. It's just me who can't decide what I need... @nickon Thanks for your suggestion. I will check their templates! But you should agree that looks is what catches the eye at first. @interfinet Thanks for your offer, once I decide what to do I will contact you on Skype!

[nickon]

@MockoB tranformer and panda theme are pretty and add much needed functionality that makes your life easy. Thirtybees community theme is very light and very optimized for tb but it lacks some nice eyecandy. So for me tb community theme = light and fast / transformer or other theme eyecandy and functionality. qiute easy. Either way if you are not comfortable editing .tpl and .css files your find the theme that is closest to what you need and hire a person to customize it

[MockoB]

I was going to pay the developers of the theme I bought but they don't even bother to reply a ticket... to be honest I would like to stay away from such popular template like transformer. I will risk brand authenticity I believe ... but I will definitely check them out because I saw they have great support!

[30knees]

It's so difficult to find good theme developers, but the guy behind transformer and panda is super.

[Traumflug]

@MockoB

I’m talking about design without any functionality modifications.

You asked for performance improvements. This does mean functionality modifications, even if the resulting behavior is the same. There is no magic "make it faster" button a developer can click, such code usually has to be rewritten from scratch.

Thus I agree with the other responders: it's better to choose an already well performing template and build upon that. Changing colors and rearranging a couple of design blocks is much easier and can indeed be done in the 4-digit price range.

[lesley]

[Euria]

@MockoB | We build several shops, B2C and B2B with Transformer theme. No theme is a perfect fit for your business, but with Transformer theme you do have a lot of options to customize your shop. Next month we even go live with a managed webshop / reseller platfom F2C with a modified Transformer theme.

[nickon]

Only thing I am missing about transformer theme v3 is lazy load

[Euria]

@nickon | Yep, hope to convice the theme developer to change that.

[MockoB]

There are very beautiful variants of the transformer theme! But @Euria aren't the customization options what kill the performance? Too many js and CSS files to load. At least all themes I tried, which could be modified, got performance issues. That's why I need custom made template to avoid those problems. That's the way I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong.

[nickon]

@MockoB There is always a fine line between performance and usability. A too basic theme usually has not many optical feautures to make the site attractive. And then there is the price / issues of custom made themes. You have to be very selective on who you choose to design your template. What is in 4 months you find a bug ? Wiil you get support? what will you pay to fix them? Will the developer respond ? The upside of themes like transformer is that as many ppl use it any bugs are already ironed out. Then there is the cost. I would rather spend 5000 on adwords then on a theme. I think you are overthinking things. Theme is just ONE of many things to do on an eshop. Customers care more about price/ support rather than the looks. The only "feature" I need from a theme is to help customers find easy (and as quick as possilble) what they want.

[lesley]

@nickon what if the theme was bloated and slow and put you on page 2 of Google instead of page 1?

[nickon]

@lesley You would still have 5000E to pay for adwords to go to page 1 :-D But the question could also be "What if the theme was light with no usability and looked like crap?" You don't go with the most bloaded theme, you don't go with a theme that has nothing "to say" to the users. I score 84 and 2.41sec pingdom with transformer vs 74 and 6 with my old theme. (And that's with ps 1.6, image with tb :-)) For mr are two paths to go if we are talking about tb (or ps) 1. use the default theme for good performance and upgradability or 2. if you need features go buy a theme that has those features. On my last project I spend 2000E on a custom theme and let me tell you I won't be doing that mistake again. As I said: It's a fine line between performance and usabiltiy.

[MockoB]

But @nickon thirty bees community theme has almost every feature all others have but it is light and with great performance. Just one issue with it - I don't like it, but it is my problem. I believe that theme could be eye catching and fast but it depends on developer's capabilities. Personally I think that google doesn't deserve a cent and I prefer to give 5000 for SEO instead to google. They are ruin the search results with their paid search and showing mainly NON relevant results, which is against their policy, but that is another topic to discuss.

[nickon]

@MockoB. For me tb community is quite nice. If it has almost everything you want, why don';t you post here the changes that you want and I am sure someone will give you a quote. Don't overthink. Just do it. As I said. the theme is just one of many things you have to do. Don't stall on the theme.

[moy2010]

@MockoB , Why don't you modify the community theme based on the PSD file you'll purchase?

[MockoB]

@nickon i received already some offers for help from developers. Not with price because I don't have particular design I liked yet ... @moy2010 I wish I knew smarty, CSS, etc. unfortunately I don't :( But that is exactly what I need from developer, remake of the community theme with custom one and couple of previously purchased modules.

[lesley]

I would recommend trying to contact Bull Design, https://thirtybees.com/partners/partner-agencies/bulldesign/ or @zen both of them make beautiful themes.

[moy2010]

@mockob Then contact Bull Design as Lesley suggests. I've seen their work (they have their portfolio on their website) and they do a nice job!

[interfinet]

@MockoB they are awesome as their Portfolio says so. Thanks