Do Premium Themes Add Up?
My favourite weblog read of choice at the moment is Smashing Magazine who are pumping out great content several times a week. Their over dedication to the advertising model on their site design pisses me off no end (above the fold is like running into an online spruiker) so I stick to the syndication feed where content is still king over the lesser minions of money and greed. Maybe that’s a bit harsh but ads at that saturation do shit me no end (from the user perspective).
They published an article this week titled Premium WordPress Themes: Are They Here To Stay? Good question. So what are premium themes? They come with a price tag and may provide extra functionality within a customized design. Free themes tend to be customised around blogging, while premium themes provide for magazines, design folios or other business models.
But are they great? I’m assuming in this article you’re not a developer and don’t have developers in-house – otherwise you’d be getting an original design for your business. Here’s my take on why I don’t really see the point beyond a certain level of poverty-struck business or hobbyist for premium themes. And why premium themes aren’t the budget cure-all they might come across as being on first sight.
- You don’t own the brand – a magazine or folio without branding is like a generic cereal box in a supermarket
- You have no business guarantee that the design will be supported long term by the developer
- You don’t know the developer and may find yourself in troubled waters
- You don’t really know what you’re getting for your money
That’s just my take on some basic issues with using premium themes for your business. Let me expand on those points a little…
Bad for Branding
You don’t own the brand. By that I mean that the design is a generic one and even if only four or five magazines or folios look exactly the same then a lot of your branding power is lost. For example, if it were a design folio and someone ran across the same design folio (in appearance and structure) then what would they think? First they could think – from a site user perspective – they are on the same site. Or that you stole the design and are shonky. Or that you’re such a crap designer you needed to buy a relatively cheap knock-off to mask your limited abilities. As time goes on your premium design becomes more and more common.
No Business Guarantees
You have no business guarantee of ongoing support. This refers to the issue of future upgrade paths for WordPress as much as it does to the reality this developer may take his ball and go home any day. What if something doesn’t work as expected? What if you need support and don’t get it? What if a newer version comes out and after the upgrade your premium theme no longer works? The ideal picture that every developer is both technically flawless and a pristine ethical business person is not the reality of the web. At some point you may find yourself out in the cold. Do you have a Plan B?
Don’t Know the Developer
You don’t know the developer. This carries over from the previous point I made. Are you paying for a pirate version of the theme? Or will there be an officially sanctioned single place on the web to sell them? I think a single shop would be impractical so you have to consider that integrity aspect before paying your money. What details are you giving this person on the web – bank account numbers, personal details, etc? Is it safe to do business with individuals like this? Will you get sued someday by a third party who paid for these templates as customised (from a legitimate developer) but then found they were ripped and onsold to you as premium templates? If that happens what will you do?
What are you Really Getting?
You don’t really know what you’re getting. Again I stress that if you’re buying themes then you probably aren’t a developer yourself, right? So how do you know the design is usable or accessible? How do you know that theme is what you imagine it should achieve for you? My understanding of premium theme sales would be a scenario where the client views the theme online and pays by credit card for a download. Right? Or are you both technically expert yourself and have the freedom to troll and test all the code before you pay your money? I kind of doubt that freedom would be happening. So you don’t really know what you’re getting, to some extent, before you download. A view source might not be enough. Also, you might not get exactly what you saw in the demo (refer back to ethical businessmen).
Conclusion
While you might say all of that is the same with any web design process you have to remember this is a case of seeing a few screenshots online, paying some cash and downloading a theme. A lot of things could go wrong with that mixed bag of tricks. You aren’t getting an original design but are sharing the design with untold other people. For all you know you may have the same portfolio design as several porn sites and a conman from Lithuania. If that isn’t enough to put you off then consider if this would be a good idea if you were buying a plasma television – see picture, send money, yada yada. Yeh ebay right? And now don’t you see the potential for fraud in that business model?
If you have the time and the money to go another way I’d suggest its worth thinking about the real deal. Hire a designer and some developers to pull it all together. Hire from word of mouth not over the Internet. Do some risk analysis on the project. What are your business goals and objectives? Don’t go for budget because in the end free and cheap don’t always end up as good as they sound. Not really.
In the end you need a web solution that is designed for your web problem. The expense should be justified by the return on investment. Seriously. Why do you want a website again?
