5 Best Ecommerce Themes for October 2012

The holidays are almost here and what better way to spruce up your website than with some great eCommerce themes to improve the look and function of your e-store. Here’s a rundown of some of the best eCommerce themes to get you ready for holiday shoppers:

1. Sold! Responsive/E-Commerce Theme

Sold! Premium WordPress Theme is an excellent mix of style and function. The clean, white space design does not distract and serves as the perfect backdrop to highlight choice merchandise. Sold has a beautiful slider where you can put your most interesting items on sale. You can even define points on the slide where you can add comments or even zoom images ala Flickr. This is perfect for highlighting detail on specific points of the product. Sold! uses two of the most powerful plugins – WooCommerce and Jigoshop – making it an effective eCommerce solution. Its multi-lingual capability, responsive features and easy customizability enables your store to service both local and global market.

Sold! Theme: $55 | Demo & Download

2. Mercor Responsive WooCommerce WordPress Theme

Another interesting theme worth mentioning is Mercor. Mercor Premium WordPress Theme gives you the look and feel of a department store or supermarket weekly catalogue. This responsive theme’s clean, fresh layout and white space styling creates an uncluttered look that’s easy on the eye even if there are numerous images and texts on the page. Mercor has a dynamic Nivo homepage slider to highlight store specials or to announce store events and sales. Mercor is fully responsive and uses WooCommerce to power e-commerce transactions. This powerful feature combination makes your site current, competitive and able to address the emerging mobile shoppers market.

Mercor Theme: $55 | Demo & Download

3. Intrigue Premium WordPress Theme

This latest eCommerce theme from CSSIgniter is bold and eye-catching. Intrigue Premium WordPress Theme is a responsive eCommerce theme that combines the power of WooCommerce and CSSIgniter’s straightforward theme design. This means that setting up a powerful eCommerce site need not be a complicated and tedious task to accomplish. With Intrigue, you can use a plethora of widgets to create the functionality you require. This theme comes out of the box in a hot red and black color scheme but you can also choose from the available 7 color schemes to create the look most appropriate to your market. Intrigue Premium WordPress Theme is not over the top and includes just the right amount of features and functionalities for whatever you need.

Intrigue Theme: $39 | Demo & Download

4. Mearishop – Clean Responsive E-Commerce Theme

Mearishop Premium WordPress Theme is a great eCommerce solution that’s edgy and modern. The Lookbook-ish appeal makes it a perfect match for a fashion and accessories store. Customers can check out the portfolio or lookbook pages to determine the style that best suits them. Mearishop uses the powerful Hana panel combined with WooCommerce functionality to give you the power to control almost every aspect of the theme. With tons of options available, this features makes this responsive theme perfect for both WP noobs and experienced developers to use. Choose from unlimited color options, 7 backgrounds and 34 patterns to define your custom look. You can even upload your background image. With 7 sliders to choose from, Mearishop gives you the options you to reach your target market in style.

Mearishop Theme: $55 | Demo & Download

5. Xing Business/eCommerce WordPress Theme

Xing Premium WordPress Theme is a modern and clean theme designed to meet the eCommerce needs of both small and large scale business alike. Xing is primarily an eCommerce theme but it is also flexible enough to be used for creative portfolios or for magazine/editorial blog type websites. Xing uses several jQuery powered features like the Flexslider and the jQuery Product Carousels(for WooCommerce recent/featured products). This highly customizable and responsive theme gives you tons of options to create the look you want. Xing is not wanting in anything – from shortcodes, to custom post formats, to custom widgets, to 8 portfolio layouts, to social sharing features and other features and functionalities to help you to create and customize your eCommerce site. Check out Xing today.

Xing Theme: $55 | Demo & Download

Keep your eyes peeled for more WordPress holiday roundups in the next few weeks!

Nimble Theme: Coming Soon from Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes recently gave a sneak peak of their upcoming Nimble Theme. Nimble is a business theme described to be simple, flexible, and balanced. It will be interesting to see how Nick Roach pulls this one off – balancing bold and colorful design without going over the top. Nimble will also be responsive and will definitely be generously packed with features and functionality, as is characteristic of each and every Elegant Theme.

A quick look at the theme’s snapshot shows that this theme has a carousel style slider prominently placed on the homepage. Elegant themes has stated that this is to give business websites a platform to present a call to action. The slider can be enabled or disabled if so desired. The slider is followed by 3 sections and a footer. The first section is a place to put product and service summaries which lead to pages that describe business offerings in detail. The second section is for news and update summaries to give your visitors a good idea of how things are going in the business. The third section is a place to put projects that can be linked to portfolio or gallery pages.

The theme has been well received by most of those who left comments. There have be a handful who feel that Elegant Themes should veer away from themes that spend a significant chunk of the homepage on sliders or big images. Elegant Themes has responded that this design approach has been what business clients have been looking for and leads to greater conversion rates for the clients.

According to Nick Roach:

Most corporate sites do indeed need to convey a message, and it is important for that message to be big, bold and in front of the users right when he/she lands on the page. Giving a clear call to action with a single image, large header and a button is what I have found converts the best and results in the lowest bounce rates. It works because it is easy to understand. In almost every occasion, simplicity is what wins out over clutter. Having too much “stuff” in view when you land on the page can confuse the user. It’s better to lead them on a clear path.

Coming from someone who has been doing this for so many years, and who by now, knows and understands this market pretty well, it’s safe to assume that this new theme, considering all other factors, has been well-thought out and designed.

For now, we all just have to be content with twiddling our thumbs and waiting for Nimble to be fully released and then make our conclusions thereafter.

Check Out the Nimble Theme

ThemeFuse Launches Monthly Membership

ThemeFuse has recently launched its Monthly Club Membership. For a monthly fee of $17 a month + a one time fee of $199, members get all themes on the ThemeFuse inventory including future themes and updates over the course of your Club Membership. On top of this, Club Members enjoy additional perks such as VIP status on the support forum and can take special sneak peaks in the Members area of the ThemeFuse website with the privilege of deciding what themes to create next. In addition, extra money comes with every user that comes through a member’s affiliate link. Member gets 30% on the initial fee and 10% on every monthly fee of every user that joins through his/her affiliate link.

This scheme replaces the “All Theme’s Pack” product. As a special offer to purchasers of the old scheme, the initial $199 is waived. These members only need to pay $17 monthly fee. All you need to do is email your “All Theme’s Pack” transaction ID and ThemeFuse will email a voucher for the $199 initial registration fee.

Single themes at ThemeFuse cost $49 for standard single domain use and $79 for developer unlimited domain use. These prices do not give the user access to upgrades or new theme releases. A Club Membership takes care of upgrades and new themes. It also gives you access to all themes in the ThemeFuse inventory which is relatively reasonable at $17 a month compared to the single theme pricing if you see yourself using a lot of themes for a lot of websites. The one time fee is valid for as long as you keep your membership current. If you decide to cut your membership and re-continue your membership later, you will need to repay the one time fee.

While other developers offer lower priced membership ($39/$79 yearly), it all boils down to the question of how much are you willing to pay for ThemeFuse themes? If you consider these themes to be the perfect solutions to your clientele’s needs then price should not be an issue. To learn more about the new Club Membership at ThemeFuse, you can visit their blog and read about it.

Check Out ThemeFuse’s Monthly Membership

How To Make Your First WordPress Theme

With WordPress being one of the most popular content management systems available today, many WordPress users, developers or not, are beginning to realize that there is a market out there seeking for new and innovative themes for their WordPress powered sites. So how do you start make your very own WordPress theme? Let’s look at a few resources available on the web to help us do that.

Our first stop is the WordPress Codex. This compendium of WordPress resources is rich with “how to’s” from installing your WordPress theme to playing around with code. If you go to the Codex’s Theme Development section, you will find all the useful information from the structure of a WP theme, to template files to practically everything you want to know about WordPress. It has links to sections on theme design, teaching about the proper layout and other design aspects of the theme. Studying the Codex is essential to serious players in the WordPress community.

When you’re ready to try our information you learned from the codex, siteground.com has an interesting tutorial to build a simple wordpress theme. The site helps you go through the process of creating simple code to generate a simple WordPress theme. You can play around with the code to make more complicated themes if you wish. This would be a great place to help you take your baby steps a little further as you work towards being a more experienced theme developer.

If you’re really in a hurry to build your theme because of an opportunity you just can’t miss, you can probably start off your first few themes with Artisteer. This is a WYSIWYG theme builder software which enables you to make professional looking WordPress themes in minutes. You can create a theme in Artisteer then export it to WordPress in the form of a folder containing the normal WordPress files. Studying the files and your Artisteer rendition will give you a lot of information about building themes. The Artisteer’s home edition is available for download at artisteer.com at a price of $49.95.

A lot of folks who want to develop themes are more designers rather than code geeks. If you feel more comfortable with photoshop than messing around in notepad to tweak code, then you might fancy psd2cssonline.com. This utility enables you to convert your photoshop design into the equivalent wordpress files in a few minutes. Now you can spend more time working on the aesthetic aspects of your theme and worry about the code later. Check out this video to get an idea of how easy it is to use psd2cssonline.

You can also check out an excellent article on Lifehacker entitled “How to Create a Custom Theme for Your WordPress Blog with Minimal Coding Required.” What’s great about this article is its simple approach on what you can expect as you go through the process of creating your own theme. It also has valuable resources like links to creating photoshop files for your theme as well as basic html/css knowledge for you to complete your task. The article also explains the structure and files of a typical WordPress theme.

Other Resources You can Check Out

These resources will definitely whet your appetite for theme building skills. There’s a ton of other resources available out there for your to refine your WordPress coding skills. As the WordPress mantra goes, “Code is Poetry.” Start writing your WordPress poems today.

When Is The Best Time To Sell WordPress Themes?

Like any other product, the demand for WordPress themes does have seasonality. In our observation, theme sales do well from January to March then slows down from April to May. Summer months are usually slow while sales pick up in the fall with a dip around Christmas time.

Seasonality in any product or service is determined mainly by socio-cultural factors in the marketplace. In most markets around the world, economic activity is dependent on holidays or the absence or presence of school. There is also the aspect of climate, where people tend to stay indoors more during the cold months.

In the case of theme sales, it can be said that this phenomenon is mainly driven by the level of activity a person has during a season. Great sales during the first quarter of the year may be attributed to more free time for buyers to stay online as the kids are still in school and most folks prefer to stay indoors during winter. This means people have more time to tinker with their websites during this time and spotting opportunities for improvement or change could mean upgrading to a newer WordPress theme or buying and installing a new plugin. The spring slowdown correlates to the physical activities associated with this season: spring cleaning, gardening, putting away winter stuff, etc. Sometimes the lure of the outdoors is greater than staying inside the house, what with the weather becoming more pleasant and warmer. When summer kicks in and as the kids are out of school, that’s when all the vacations, trips and out of town activities happen. People tend to relax a bit more and work on websites take a back burner during this time. As kids go back to school in the fall, sales gradually picks up as people find more time to focus on work before the next big holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, roll in. Spending patterns during Thanksgiving and Christmas usually turn towards gifts, gadgets, and other stuff to buy online unless WordPress authors take their cue from the season and create enticing special prices for WordPress theme packages or bundles.

Knowing these patterns, how do you align development and marketing activities for your themes? It would be wise to have your development activities lie heavily during the spring and summer months. That way, your resources do not have to compete with the demands of development and marketing at the same time. The best time to strengthen core technology, respond to emerging design trends, is during these lean months. As fall comes, resources can be shifted to marketing and after sales support as sales starts picking up. This is the right time to introduce new products and manage customer satisfaction as they adapt to your new themes.

Recognizing these consumer patterns may help you plan your annual business cycle as you make those critical decisions to save time, effort and money in your WordPress business.

Best WordPress Theme of All Time?

Have you ever stopped to consider what makes a theme the best WordPress theme of all time? Taking a look at some of the best themes of 2012 we have compiled, which one would be your choice? What qualities should a theme have in order for it to be ranked as the best WordPress theme ever? Here are a few attributes you can use to rate your theme choices:

  1. Flexible – A theme must have the ability to meet the needs of various users. You must be able to customize a theme for various applications. Ideally, the theme you use for your portfolio site, should work excellently on your wife’s personal blog site, your client’s e-commerce site, or any other website requirement you need. A multifunctional theme begets more users.
  2. Timeless – The best theme of all time should be ageless. It should demonstrate resilience in the midst of technology trends that come and go. The key to this is for code and other technical stuff under the hood to be easily upgradable and to be supported by a development team to keep it alive and updated. The theme’s aesthetic features should classic/timeless while being highly customizable to reflect emerging artistic theme movements or trends.
  3. Accessible – The theme has to be easily accessible to as many as possible. The pricing must be reasonable not only for 1st world countries but also in the emerging tech hubs of the developing world. Usage must be easy for persons of varied physical/mental abilities, age or educational background. How would the technically challenged or non-coders find using the theme? Is the theme available in many languages? Will the theme be accessible in varied devices of choice?
  4. Responsive – The theme has to should be responsive in every way. Mobile and handheld devices are changing the way we access information and creating websites that look good not only in traditional desktop computers but also on smartphones and tablets is the way of the future. If you want to create a website that responds to the needs of your clients, anywhere they are and everywhere they go – then being responsive is the way to go.
  5. Customer Support – The theme should have adequate support and provision for any WordPress updates. This is differentiates a good theme from a great theme. Customer support is paramount to any service oriented business and it will spell long-term success to anyone who puts that extra effort in.

There are many more attributes that can be added to this list. Feel free to share your thoughts and your choices. We’d really love to know which WordPress Theme you think is THE BEST WordPress Theme of ALL time.

Freemium: Is This The Best Model For Selling WordPress Themes?

In a previous article we discussed the merits and disadvantages of free vs. premium WordPress themes. Which themes are better? The answer really lies on what type of user you are. Are you a newbie or are you maintaining a professional website? We have to admit though, that if you’re after great looks and superb functionality, nothing usually beats Premium themes. You’ll probably relate to the experience spending hours scouring the web for free alternatives to Premiums. We usually strike gold when we find freemium themes.

We often encounter freemium products/services in our daily lives. When you open your mailbox, you might find a 30-day trial disc of the latest creative software mailed to you. Think of all the free apps (full or lite versions) you download, test and enjoy everyday. Free versions of expense management applications are available for download on Google Play or App Store with limited capabilities enough to get you started. Gamers also encounter Freemiums often. Big name services like Skype, Dropbox and Gmail have freemium services that open the door to paid subscriptions later on.

What exactly are freemiums? These are limited versions of premium products or services offered at no cost. What makes the Freemium model unique is that it gives users a sufficient functional experience to acquire their loyalty to that particular product/service. In offering these products, developers make it easier for users to convert to premium versions as the need arises. In some cases, developers give away a service for free so it becomes a standard creating a demand for premium service among business clients later on.

The advantage of freemium themes is that it gives users the chance to test drive themes with real content. This helps them decide if the theme they try is really appropriate for their website. As you get more familiar with the theme, you can easily convert to a premium theme via upgrade buttons in the admin panel. The upgrade can be sold easier to an otherwise pre-converted user.

From a marketing standpoint, freemium themes gives a win-win solution for both users and developer. Even if users don’t upgrade a trial/lite theme, future products will be better and easier to sell because of the experience users gain from these specific developers.

Twenty Twelve WordPress Theme – Get It Here!

Twenty Twelve WordPress Theme

If you haven’t already heard, Automattic is set to release the Twenty Twelve WordPress Theme with their 3.5 update. There has been some anticipation for a while as to when the fine folks at WordPress would release their Theme for 2012 since the year is quickly ending. Well…while it’s not “officially” released yet, we are pleased to present you with a download of the Twenty Twelve Theme.

Twenty Twelve Theme

There are a lot of really slick features, and if you are a fan of clean and minimal lines — we think you’ll really enjoy this Theme. More details are sure to be coming soon from WordPress. If you’d like to start messing with the Theme, we’ve made it available here. Keep in mind that WordPress may change one or two things before their official release of Twenty Twelve, but for those of you who simply can’t wait you can download it here – all 78K of it 🙂

 

What Will Be The Biggest WordPress Theme Trend in 2013?

Web design is not a stand alone activity. It is affected by several factors like technology trends, business trends, market trends, and consumer behaviour. It takes a studied effort in order to intelligently and accurately “predict” what the market wants in the future. No one can claim to make 100% accurate predictions but by taking stock of what goes on not just in the web design industry but in the related industries that affect it as well we can somehow make calculated “guesses” as to what trends may happen in the near future.

Here are some of our predictions on what’s currently hot and what will continue to be hot up to the early portion of 2013:

  1. Mobile Driven – WordPress themes will continue to be responsive, adaptive, fluid. Older but still popular themes will come out with mobile-friendly versions.
  2. HTML5 and CSS3 – Stricter adherence to W3C Valid code and significant decrease if not obsolescence of Flash.
  3. Simplified and uncluttered call to action buttons per page – Simple, minimal and uncluttered themes with lesser number of buttons to click.
  4. Big Typography – Big, bold and readable fonts.
  5. Single Web Page Design – Infinite scrolling (parallax style).
  6. Authentically Digital – Windows 8 style graphics (less shiny, more flat).
  7. Simplified front end customization – Backend customizations will move to the front making it easier to preview specific customization choices.
  8. Social Media Management – Integrating social media into the WordPress design template (Instagram, Pinterest, Dribble streams etc).
  9. Modular Template Layouts – More drag and drop options with less coding required for customization.
  10. Adaptive to new SEO trends – WordPress Themes will be adaptive to new SEO trends like Voice search, mobile search, humanized ranking, social media factors, etc.

If you a WordPress professional or developer, what emerging trends do you foresee in 2013? Share your thoughts. We want to know what you think.