Template monster

JD Dublin

I am interested in setting up an ecommerce site, and came across this crowd:

http://www.templatemonster.com

IT / marketing SEO / website gods and godesses look away now.

It looks easy to set up a basic site - anyone got experience with using this as a solution and if so what were your conclusions?

I know the design and whole concept of DIY websites will offend and maybe even hurt those of a nervous disposition :pac::pac::pac: but any comments from boardies appreciated.

Graham

Template monster isn't an ecommerce solution, they provide templates to add to your already installed ecommerce solution.

Before looking at templates:

Decide on your requirements (e.g number of items/categories, hosting platform, payment solutions etc etc etc)
Research some of the existing ecommerce solutions and score them against your requirements,

Then go and look to see what templates are available for your chosen solution.

JD Dublin

Graham wrote: »

Template monster isn't an ecommerce solution, they provide templates to add to your already installed ecommerce solution.

Before looking at templates:

Decide on your requirements (e.g number of items/categories, hosting platform, payment solutions etc etc etc)
Research some of the existing ecommerce solutions and score them against your requirements,

Then go and look to see what templates are available for your chosen solution.

Thanks for that. Have you used the templates and are they easy to use for a beginner?

Graham

Haven't looked at any of their ecommerce templates but have come across some of their templates for static websites in the past.

I would imagine the difficulty would vary significantly depending on your chosen ecommerce platform. Difficulty would also depend on your definition of 'a beginner'.

I would strongly advise against doing things backwards, don't chose an ecommerce solution based on a particular template design. Choose an appropriate ecommerce solution, then scope out the templates.

thesteve

http://themeforest.net/ tend to be a lot cheaper than templatemonster

Graham

thesteve wrote: »

http://themeforest.net/ tend to be a lot cheaper than templatemonster

+1

Their designs are also more up-to date than template monster.

was.deevey

Gonna chime in here as a developer thats needed to set and modify up some template monster stuff for clients that it honestly is not worth while.

1. It rarely looks anything like their demo sites once you add in your own information.
2. You'll be left with holes all over the place (content / image areas) if you don't have content to put in it.
3. Most of them are really badly coded and will look god-awful in anything other than Internet explorer.
4. In alot of cases it would be actually easier and more cost effective to build a half decent template from scratch than to try to shoehorn the template monster sites to fit yours.

+1 on Themeforest, also check out Elegant themes as well for E-commerce. Bear in mind some templates need to operate in tandem with other plugins if you need anything more advanced than paypal as a payment system.

As regards the difficulty level of setting up a site, its really gonna depend how tech savvy you are, but if its one of the more popular CMS systems (wordpress/joomla/magento etc...) there are a million online tutorials on how to get started if you have the time to learn how to do it.

If you are going the e-commerce route really decide what you actually require (long term) before jumping into a platform adding 1000 products and then a few months down the line need something completely different and what you just spent months doing wont work anymore.

As an example, I had a client a few years back who needed a basic e-commerce site with Paypal. A month after going live Paypal disallowed his product niche. So the site had to be completely ripped apart and converted to facilitate an unsupported payment system and the site had to be rebuilt from scratch, all products re-uploaded etc....had he gone with the initially suggested platform (lil more expensive, but a multitude more features and future proofing) he would have not had the issue.

As they say, measure twice, cut once.

JD Dublin

Thanks to all boardies for responses, food for thought and valuable information.

I may just set up the website to test the waters without the full ecommerce aspect and see if we are getting a good response. I'll post here when we have some results back.

looder

was.deevey wrote: »

Gonna chime in here as a developer thats needed to set and modify up some template monster stuff for clients that it honestly is not worth while.

1. It rarely looks anything like their demo sites once you add in your own information.
2. You'll be left with holes all over the place (content / image areas) if you don't have content to put in it.
3. Most of them are really badly coded and will look god-awful in anything other than Internet explorer.
4. In alot of cases it would be actually easier and more cost effective to build a half decent template from scratch than to try to shoehorn the template monster sites to fit yours.

+1 on Themeforest, also check out Elegant themes as well for E-commerce. Bear in mind some templates need to operate in tandem with other plugins if you need anything more advanced than paypal as a payment system.

As regards the difficulty level of setting up a site, its really gonna depend how tech savvy you are, but if its one of the more popular CMS systems (wordpress/joomla/magento etc...) there are a million online tutorials on how to get started if you have the time to learn how to do it.

If you are going the e-commerce route really decide what you actually require (long term) before jumping into a platform adding 1000 products and then a few months down the line need something completely different and what you just spent months doing wont work anymore.

As an example, I had a client a few years back who needed a basic e-commerce site with Paypal. A month after going live Paypal disallowed his product niche. So the site had to be completely ripped apart and converted to facilitate an unsupported payment system and the site had to be rebuilt from scratch, all products re-uploaded etc....had he gone with the initially suggested platform (lil more expensive, but a multitude more features and future proofing) he would have not had the issue.

As they say, measure twice, cut once.

+1 on Elegant Themes for basic sites!
Excellent support too and dirt cheap.


RE an eCommerce solution I'd personally recommend Magento. I've used a few different ecommerce CMS systems and Magento is the best in my opinion. Installing Magento can be some pain in the hole though and it's very resource heavy.

I've also put together a site from Template Monster and it was very difficult and took a lot of time to get someway right.

Trojan

was.deevey wrote: »

1. It rarely looks anything like their demo sites once you add in your own information.
2. You'll be left with holes all over the place (content / image areas) if you don't have content to put in it.
3. Most of them are really badly coded and will look god-awful in anything other than Internet explorer.
4. In alot of cases it would be actually easier and more cost effective to build a half decent template from scratch than to try to shoehorn the template monster sites to fit yours.

+1 on Themeforest, also check out Elegant themes as well for E-commerce. Bear in mind some templates need to operate in tandem with other plugins if you need anything more advanced than paypal as a payment system.

I'm a fan of Themeforest because they do some quality control - still not enough, but better than none.

Your (1-4) criticisms of Template Monster are valid to some degree when applied to Themeforest etc. How the site looks is all about the demo content (often unlicenced) and the code can still be poor despite the quality checks.

I've noticed a common disregard for page load speed amongst the authors who are more concerned about packing in as much bling as possible to wow inexperienced buyers.

was.deevey

I've noticed a common disregard for page load speed amongst the authors who are more concerned about packing in as much bling as possible to wow inexperienced buyers.

Quite True, had one client had bought a themeforest template that was complaining about his load time (15 seconds+ on a 8mb connection), his 4 slider images were 2mb EACH and he had another 1mb+ on scripts.

Alot of that can be sorted by caching and a bit of image editing mind you but not something most novices would manage easily without a fair bit of research and getting down and dirty with the nuts and bolts of the platform.

Guess it boils down to how much time the OP can invest in learning about web development and whether it will really benefit him/her in the future as opposed to focusing on the business side of things without distraction.

There's oodles of other pitfalls when it comes to DIY installs, permalinks, category structures, etc that can be a complete pain in the ass to fix and move around at a later date.

Atomico

When it comes to an e-commerce venture, it's not so much about the website as it is about the marketing and the SEO aspects. Generally speaking, if you want to go the cheap option then you really do get what you pay for. If you aren't appearing in search engines and building up your traffic and rankings, then you are missing out.

The problem with these type of template approaches and DIY jobs is that, as mentioned, they can often be badly coded and not set up to allow you to perform well on search engines. Also, if it looks poor visually and is riddled with bugs or errors, or loads slowly, then nobody will buy from it anyway.

More than anything though, you can have a really nice site, but that's just the beginning. Without the marketing elements (including setting aside budget for marketing activities), you won't have too many customers to begin with.