#general-chat
Thread
We are considering retheming our website to improve conversion. I have talked with several devs looking to build on paid themes, but I’m concerned the result will look too templated and not premium enough. We are a premium - affordable luxury product and price point and I’d like our site to reflect that. Our current site is just weird. But I can’t afford a professionally designed site yet. We use landing pages as well. Any thoughts or recommendations of who you would use? Current site is a customized dawn theme. .
Do you mind sharing your budget?
As a dev, I usually go for paid themes just because of the breadth of the out of the box sections that are available. It can be totally customized as you like, code or otherwise. If there are super specific requirements then we go for a theme build off of Dawn. Lots of luxury sites use paid themes like to speed up the process and we’ve worked with it for brands like , , and (site still in progress).
All that to say - templates are just a stepping stone and can be adjusted to your vision. The content and imagery also matters a lot.
@Shin Takeda Budget at this time is <5k. We could do Oddit and then pay a dev to implement but it seems it would be cheaper to just build from scratch on a paid theme… Or we could just leave the site alone and create more landing pages…
got it - let me see what I can find
@Anthony Guynes - since you’re a new store, I would suggest:
• Buy a premium theme—it’s ok if it looks like all other stores, there’s a reason that all themes look the same because making the design too custom affects conversions. That’s only a few hundred dollars in spends.
• Install it yourself if you can, the process is usually simple but otherwise you can find good folks in this community too.
• Current site structure does look a bit off, I think you have a lot of low-hanging fruits from launching with a premium theme. After a few months on the theme, review the CRO data and see if you need an agency to make more micro-adjustments.
• You can also consider for more customizations on top of your store. Happy to connect you to them if you want to have a chat.
<@U080MV2DFC7> any recs for a designer to use in this instance? Would you consult them before setting up the theme or after?
Thanks for all the thoughtful advice, this slack always exceeds my expectations!
i just worked with a design/dev using a hybrid approach - we bought a nice theme ($400), and they designed/developed a semi custom homepage, with the rest of the pages (3-4 others like PDP, about, science, contact) designed within the limits of what the template offers. still feels very premium to me.
DM me and would be happy to show you what was produced. should fit within your budget
I recommend you reach out to @Teodora Olarescu, I'm also on a very low budget and she helped me with design & direction and I hired a dev out of upwork and gave exact directions.