For Wordpress Aficionados...

[Jonathan]

Hi guys - just in the process of launching a new site - themebeacon.com.

Still lots of bugs, and not quite finished - but nonetheless any feedback/comments are very welcome

 

[Jonathan]

P.S: Only have Wordpress themes at the moment, but will be adding HTML, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento shortly!

 

[nt81]

Two things were an instant turnoff sorry.

1. I'm a visual person - most people are, especially those who are gleaning multiple sites for decent themes, show some theme previews / thumbnails straight up.

2. When I searched the default options, it went to this page :
http://www.themebeacon.com/search_themes
To me, my instant impression was, oh - am I being asked to sign up here? the page was a little confusing!

Which is then prompting me (the user) to click a 3rd time. You're usually lucky to get two clicks out of first time visitors.

When I forced myself to make a 3rd click, I ended up on a blog-like page, and I'm someone who actively looks for good themes, I didn't go any further. I wanted to see themes, not a blog. After 3 clicks and nothing visual, I'm out.

Great idea and visually appealing site, however you're going to get uber bounces if you don't rethink the design and navigation a little.

Hope this helps

-Nicko

 

[Jonathan]

Hey Nicko, thanks for the honest feedback.

A couple of clarifications if you wouldn't mind -

Re point 1... Are you saying show some theme previews/thumbnails on the homepage? Like above the fold?

Re point 2... That page you go to initially is a tutorial page. Is that the one you're talking about? Perhaps this page is unnecessary and it's better to remove it?

On this bit: "I ended up on a blog-like page, and I'm someone who actively looks for good themes, I didn't go any further. I wanted to see themes, not a blog"

Do you mean that you weren't impressed with the first theme that loaded, or that you're just not into the concept? i.e. the whole live demo page to live demo page browsing functionality?

 

[nt81]

Hi Jonathan,

For #1, take templatemonster for example. When you hit their homepage, they are already showing thumbnail of themes to create interest in what's on offer. Yes, they have some visual clutter, but i've already started scrolling down looking for a theme.

Compared to something that is all text, and nothing really visual. I'm not in browse mode, i'm still in search mode as far as my brain is concerned.

#2

So on Template Monster, I have found a template that has sparked my curiosity. Click #2 - And there is the call to action. I'm ready to buy, out comes my credit card. Transaction

Compared to yours where, there is a lot of text, and i'm asking, OK, what's this all about? Oh? I need to click again? Click #3 if you're lucky

And i'm still just browsing themes... I'm no closer to a sale / conversion after 3 clicks.99% of your audience are on another site now.

The 3rd page just looked like a blog, it wasn't very clear that they were themes at all. I was still confused as to what was going on.

Thanks to the mobile browser and Gen Z, attention spans are measured in nanoseconds. I'm not touting the three click rule at all. I just noted that after 45 seconds on the site, I still hadn't noted a single theme, thumbnail or preview.

p.s. Where is the video embed on this forum? haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu4YBHn1ZOI

 

[findtim]

annoying beyond belief !!!!!!!!!



sorry, but its so badly functioned I am not going to review it as I did try today ( between Anzac footy ) and it did my head in.

my suggestion is you get some of your family to try and surf it to select or purchase and watch them do it.

this website needs MASSIVE beta testing which I think you should have done before presenting it here.

other then that I don't mind the "look"

my last suggestion is test on IE, firefox, safari, chrome, ipad, iphone and if you can android at the very least
http://ipadpeek.com/ may help you also

tim


tim

 

[TassieSEO]

Feedback

Hi mate,
I really like the site. It's a very clever take on looking for the right theme - something i find myself doing alot lately.

I find it very visually pleasing. I don't really understand the previous comment - I didnt think it came across as a blog. The only negative I have is that when I 'go to my themes' - it's great that I get a full screen of all the pages of the theme - but i coudnt see how I move quickly between all the themes on offer. Do I need to vote through each one?

Nice job mate - I think it's a great idea and pretty polished already.
cheers
Todd

 

[aus11]

I am just in the process of looking for a theme for a new website, so I've been looking at quite a few sites similar to yours.

Yours functions a lot differently to most, so it did take me a little bit to work out how it all worked, but once I understood I thought is was great.

Flicking through the themes, reminded me a bit of StumbleUpon.

I do agree with nt81 in the fact that not having any previews of themes on the homepage did throw me off a little.

Does the sign in button on the homepage not currently work?

But personally I love the functionality of the site. Well done!

 

[nt81]

I agree that the site looks great, the workflow / functionality is all that needs to be looked at Nice work so far.

 

[Jonathan]

Nicko - I hear what you're saying... I'll definitely add some theme screenshots to the homepage - that's a good idea.

What I'm less clear on is how to address your feedback about the number of clicks required to 'get to the goods' and not realising / being confused about what's going on. Any thoughts on how I could make things more user friendly?

Findtim - sorry to hear that... I know mobile is a bit of a trainwreck at the moment - I'm working on it. If you're feeling generous, please give it a go on desktop and let me know how it goes.

Todd - Cheers Yeah, at the moment you have to thumbs up / thumbs down to get through all the themes. One of the features I'd like to add next is a 'grid' view, where you can see screenshots of all your results on one page.

aus11 - Thanks! I guess the question is, how do I do a better job of explaining to people how things work? I'm thinking a simple screencast/video on the homepage might be a good move? The sign in / sign up buttons on the homepage don't work at the moment

 

[nt81]

It isn't all doom and gloom if people take 3-4 clicks to get to the content, as long as they can easily find their way, or are enticed to.

That's where I spoke from experience, sexy thumbnails will sell it

 

[Jonathan]

I better start looking for some sexy thumbnails then

The other thing I wanted to ask you guys about was the 'sign up' popup. Not sure if you noticed it, but it appears after 3 or so 'thumbs up' votes and basically asks people to create an account (via their facebook or google account, or simply by entering an email/password) to continue browsing themes.

I'm concerned that it's annoying and obtrusive, and may make a lot of people bounce away. On the other hand, I think there's huge value in getting people to create an account. Aside from being able to keep an email dialogue going with them (new themes, discounts/coupons, competitions, design trends, etc.), people will be able to save their favourite themes, specific projects, browsing preferences, etc.

Would it be better to just request people to create an account for the get go? This is what StumbleUpon does (https://www.stumbleupon.com/). If you click the 'start exploring' button, you go straight to their sign up page before you can actually start using the service.

 

[findtim]

i was on my laptop, didn't even look at it on ipad etc

don't get me wrong, nice idea, and i said the "look" was good , just you are going to have a high bounce rate.

remember the comments here are from SEASONED surfers and we all can not separate us from our skills THUS why you need to go down to your potential purchaser eg: "dubbodentist tight arse" that thinks because he knows how to send an email he can just buy a template and build his own website

TRUST me they exist, they are the ones that never ring me back after i give them a quote and 6 months later i LOVE seeing the crap they produced OR they ring me back OR the domain name is still not online.

thats your target market

tim

 

[Jonathan]

Tim, I'm not sure that's true... I think my target is actually freelance web developers and entrepreneurs / bootstrapped startups.

Happy to be proven wrong on this assumption, but from the admittedly small amount of research I've done, I suspect that the biggest buyers of themes & templates are not the "dubbo dentist tight arse" market.

 

[Jonathan]

Hi guys - I'm resurrecting this thread because I've been working on this since my last post a few months ago.

Any new feedback would be most welcome

See http://www.themebeacon.com

 

[findtim]

i like it, its right on genre.

LOVE the navigation and how it flows from choice to choice, it reminds of that sandwich frachise where the menu board says " i'd like this bread" ..... and it takes you through the process of asking for a sandwich, pick your bread, pick your spread, pick your protein, pick your salad...

i see you have some work to do but its heading in the right direction i think.

tim

 

[johno69]

A few things are cut off for me.. Firefox.

http://screencast.com/t/yn64W1x4