Chris and I have an internal debate on the growth of our theme store and what in particular what is driving that growth. Chris feels people buy theme support and not the theme itself. I believe people buy WordPress themes based on design and it is an emotional decision. For many buyers, theme support is an after thought.
Part of this debate is due to our roles in the theme development process. I work on the design and Chris works on support in our forum. Or maybe we just think in two completely different ways.
Which One of Us is Right?
I suspect both of us.
If you use our formal buyer reviews as a guide, I’m clearly the winner. While we have five star ratings for all reviews, the reviews are mostly product and design focused. Comments include:
- I’ve worked with hundreds of themes, and this one is definitely well-designed and easy to work with. I especially love that it’s built on the Genesis framework. Easy to set up and customize.
- This must be the ultimate medical practice theme and any business based on appointments and consultancy.
- Great theme for a professional services company. It’s clean, modern and easy to use.
- The Frederik child theme is great looking and very flexible. At this price, it’s a steal. Even if you are new to WordPress, you can work through the instructions and have a great looking site up quickly. Kudos to Web Savvy Marketing from a happy lawyer.
- I’m a fan of Genesis Framework and when I came across these themes designed by WSM I was absolutely speechless.
- I purchased the Hans theme last year and love it! It looks very professional and “corporate” and for me, that was exactly what I wanted.
But in support of Chris and his views on sales, here are some comments from the forum:
- Thank you so much for the quick response …. the service here is top notch and will be sure to purchase more!
- You guys rock!
- Thank you – I really, truly, appreciate the support for customization.
- Thank you for the quick support, i really appreciate that : )
- Thanks for the great support.
- Awesome! You guys are always so great about answering questions quickly.
In Reality, Neither the Theme Nor the Support Can Exist Without Each Other
To sell anything, I have to design WordPress themes that are visually pleasing. And in our case, we make sure they fit a niche market. If potential buyers don’t like the look of the theme or find purpose for it, no one will buy it.
On the other hand, I also have to have Chris and Debbie available to provide rock solid support or our theme store would quickly go out of business. If we didn’t have excellent support in our forum, many buyers would be screaming for refunds.
Both are critical for success.
Interesting Facts About People Who Buy WordPress Theme
When we launched our theme store I had no idea what to expect. Some things I learned along the way include:
- About 10-20% of our theme buyers never even log into the forum to view instructions or ask questions.
- The remaining 80% are mostly people who read and figure things out on their own and we never hear from them.
- We only receive support questions from a tiny amount of buyers.
- Of those buyers who do ask questions, I lose money on virtually every one of them. They literally ask so many questions that I spend way more in support time than the $49.95 they gave me to purchase the theme.
When we first started receiving support requests I think I almost fainted. I witnessed the same people asking a ton of questions and I had no idea how the theme sales could fund the time for my coders to answer all of these questions. Then I realized that these frequent support visitors were only a small fraction of those that actually buy our WordPress themes.
What Type of Theme Buyer Are You?
The point of this post is to educate future theme buyers. Ask yourself what type of theme buyer you are and what is important to you. If design is your sole concern, you can be free to browse around the internet and buy virtually any WordPress theme at will.
If theme support is critical to you, then you have to shop carefully. You need to make sure the theme developer can adequately support your expectations for support.
Trust me, everyone has different levels of expectations. Some people expect us to provide unlimited one on one support over the phone in exchange for their $49.95 theme purchase. I would love to do that, but I cannot. We would be out of business before I could blink. Other people don’t expect any support what-so-ever.
Know your expectations, know what is standard for the industry, and then search for a theme developer that matches up to what you personally need.
I’m Not Sure if We are Normal
We answer theme questions within 24 hours and many times within a few hours. And we (okay really Chris and Debbie) don’t just answer our users’ questions; we give CSS tweaks and a little education. Chris takes the time to give an answer and he tries to make sure our buyers stay on the path of best practices. If you look through our forum questions you’ll see the vast majority of our posts are closed. We’ve answered them all and the only open ones are waiting for responses from users.
Is this normal? I’m not sure. I do know that for some of our buyers, this level of support is probably more important than the theme design. Others would be happier if I discounted the theme and gave them no support.
The Take Away
Know who you are before you hit the buy button. You’ll be happier, as will the WordPress theme developer.
As a person who has bought many themes and never used them because I couldn’t figure them out, the main reason I have bought several themes from you is because they were affordable, easy to use and pretty to look at. The support is an added bonus. I can generally Google what I need to do but your support makes it very simple. If the theme didn’t meet my needs or I couldn’t figure out how to make it work, I’d go elsewhere. And I have. I have bought several themes from other sites that never worked and I could never get to work. Your themes are easy! I get a lot of lovely complements on my site.
God bless you – you fall within “the remaining 80% are mostly people who read and figure things out on their own and we never hear from them” and for this reason I love you.
Full disclosure for those readers who don’t know Susanne – she is my sister and was a beta for our theme store. Another reason for me to love her as much as I do. =)
I’ve never needed to use your support, either. It’s one of the reasons I went ahead and bought the developer’s license. Genesis is pretty straightforward to begin with and when you find a developer who somehow manages to make it even more straightforward, you’ve struck a gold mine. When the same developer is there to answer a question on the rare occasion you get stuck, that’s platinum-level.
And I’m not even related!
Thanks so much for the kind words Edee! After such goodness, I’m making you my Genesis sista.
I bought a premium WP theme the first time because of the design. When I was ready to launch a 2nd blog, I purchased a premium theme from the same company because of my experience with the first package. It is so easy to use, and customer service iss great. Based on that I looked for one of their themes that would work for the 2nd blog.
You make a great point. Design may win at the start, but support will trump on future purchases.
Our team looks for design, functionality AND support. There are so many great themes available today (yours included), that have similar looks and feels to them. At the end of the day, if I found a theme from one vendor that looked even remotely the same as that of another vendor’s, but the first vendor provided stellar support services with that theme whereas the 2nd vendor gave me notes and had me troubleshoot it myself, or sent me strictly to a forum for assistance; where it’s a crapshoot on whether or not someone else had the answer… I’d definitely go with the first vendor…even if the cost was a few dollars higher. Luckily, my team has been able to find both design and support with you guys, and we look forward to seeing more from you in the future.
Thanks to Chris and Debbie our forum responses are not a crapshoot. 😉
It’s definitely a mix! I rarely need support on your themes, which is a great testament to Genesis – but also to your coding and your documentation. But, like with almost every theme I ever use, I always want to make one little tweak, or change the font or swap out a placeholder for something else… and your support is always willing to help with that.
I was really disappointed recently by WooThemes, one of the “big guys” in the theme space. I asked for help locating a bit of CSS and some text that was controlled, but not easily editable in the theme settings… they directed me to their listings for programmers, designers, etc. I was none-to-happy with that response.
Keep up the great work, Web Savvy team!
Thanks for the kind words Rach. I think the bigger you grow, the harder it is to provide quality attention. It is one of the things I constantly stew over as I watch our own theme store.
I am smack dab in the middle of designing my site. I purchased the particular genesis template I have because of its reputation. One of the company principles went so far as to look at my site, like my facebook page and even send me an email! Something I NEVER expected.
Previously I had purchased themes on that emotional whim…. I liked the colors or layout or whatever. Every day produced a different template. I literally purchased more than 20. The majority of them came from a place that directed you to a wonderful forum. I couldnt tell you who ran it, but I can say that the customers on the booard were more responsive and helpful than the support team. The majority of my issues were answered with “you need to buy a different template for that”. Really?? I cant somehow combine a line of code from one of the 20 I already own??? Because last week you said I needed this one.
For me, real support is a must. I dont need much of it, but when I need it, I need it. I dont expect you to write code for me. Just lead me to where I need to go and help me to understand what Im not getting. Sometimes I get lost in the lines. Im old school and it takes me a lil longer when there are no “goto line 100” 🙂 But it is just as important to have a great design I can start with.
and heck… Having one of the big guys drop you a personal note is always cool!
Katrina I wish I had the time to personally follow and email our buyers. The desire is there but not the ability due to our volumes.
Thanks for sharing your story. It is a good one.
Hi Rebecca, thought I’d add a male voice to the conversation 😉
I’m with you as well – I think most people buy a theme because of the design. That’s why I see so many of my own customers using themes with horrible, horrible code on their sites – coz it looks good on the surface, what it looks like underneath doesn’t matter.
More sophisticated users (I would estimate this to be 5% of buyers) would look further beyond the design – reputation, features, etc. These are the people who read reviews and comparisons of Genesis vs Thesis vs Headway vs …
In my opinion, support is a function of customer satisfaction. It may feed back into the reputation and help capture the 5% more sophisticated users but since support is a money losing component, I wouldn’t make support too prominent in the sales copy.
Dear Chris, listen to Rebecca. That is all.
Dear David, thank you for commenting. That it all.
Rebecca – I’ve been buying themes for years and yours is the FIRST to truly provide an outstanding level of support. I do my best to read the instructions and try to figure things out, but often times I do get stuck and it’s great to know that the WSM team (ok, Chris & Debbie) are on the spot within 24 hours. I recommend you to all my marketing colleagues and to my clients. I tell them that I use your themes because of your awesome support. I know that even the big theme stores like WooThemes don’t provide anything close. Even if the 20% is the only ones asking questions, these are the 20% who will be repeat buyers and big referrers. Sounds like textbook “Pareto” principle… I know but this 20 percent-er considers herself a raving fan. Don’t ever change. 🙂
Rosie thanks so much for the kind words! I truly appreciate the positive feedback.
When I buy a WordPress theme I’m looking first at the design part and then I do what I did when I signed up for the Developer Pack here at Web Savvy Marketing: I contact the owner or the support team and ask them some questions. I then stay and wait and see how they respond.
Do they answer quick to your questions or took them 2-3 days to answer? This says a lot about the “kicking time” which is the response speed of any business to new potential customers. Web Savvy Marketing got a 10 out of 10 as Rebecca answered my questions in less than 3 hours. Well done.
How they answer to your questions? Are they polite, courteous and eager to sign you up? Are they flexible? I firstly bought one theme as I needed for a website but I liked all them themes. WSM in this case was very helpful and helped me with small CSS tricks to achieve what I wanted to achieve. 10 ot of 10 again.
What about the tutorials? Documentation? You’ll need to bury your head into some “how to” documents. Can you easily find what are you looking for?
You must consider all of these, not just the theme design.
Thanks for the kind words Bob! They are ever so appreciated. =)