10 Elements of a Successful Commercial Template Provider

Written by Sudhi | 20 April 2009

In researching this article for Smashing Magazine, I learned a lot about what makes a commercial template provider successful. Whether you are thinking of offering your own commercial Joomla! templates, or shopping around for a new premium template provider, this list may be useful.

Stunning Design

To be competitive, a commercial template provider must keep their design ahead of the curve. It is easy to create a boxy, boring template for Joomla! It is hard to create a unique, visually appealing, functional design that makes the user say "wow!" Here are some examples:

Simplicity

Commercial templates that can pull off a simple design can often be the most successful. Some providers feel they need to offer a complicated, feature-rich template to stay competitive. But often their skills are tested by creating a template that flows, holds content nicely, and offers flexibility - all while keeping the clutter to a minimum. Here is a great, simple template for Joomla:

Quality Support

The quality of a template provider can be measured by the quality of the support received for their product. In addition to being accessible to customers who need some help, quality support means courteous interaction, complete and accurate answers and fast responses. Additional support elements that make up a successful template provider include tutorials on how to customize and install templates and active support forums.

Usability

Templates must be usable. All those fancy features and stunning graphics won't matter if the administrator can't set up the template to meet their needs or the end-user can't take advantage of them.

Great commercial template providers build in backend management of the template features and fully comment their source code so a slightly skilled administrator can customize the template like a pro.

Specific Functionality

Successful commercial template providers have built in a specific purpose or function for the template. Although a standard template may be what you're looking for at times, many new templates are being created for a specific application such as displaying sports news. An example of this might be a community building template that integrates with the Community Builder component and many of the extension-specific plugins. Another example is a template built to integrate with Phpbb or Virtuemart.

A solid pricing model

There are several models available - the most common and profitable appears to be the "Template Club" model. For those not familiar, the user will pay a monthly/quarterly/yearly price to have access to premium quality templates. These plans often come with multiple levels from individual (1 license) to a "Developer Plan" (unlimited licenses). Rockettheme, Joomlart, Yootheme, GavickPro and Shape5 all use this model.

Another model is the pay per download system which lets you choose one template that you want. This is better for someone with a smaller budget and only one site to develop. Joomlashack and Joomla-Monster both use this model.

Free Templates

A quality and successful commercial template provider offers free templates now and then. In addition to offering free templates, they should be the same quality as their premium template (although a few less premium features is expected). Read our other article outlining the importance of offering free templates.

Quality Coding

Without a doubt, a commercial template provider should offer at least HTML Valid if not XHTML Valid code. Additional criteria to look at include CSS Validity, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the use of correct graphic types. All commercial templates should be compatible across browser types. You can check a template's cross-browser compatibility using this handy tool.

New Methods

Commercial template providers should be aware of new technologies available to designers. Althought they should not jump on the latest technique unless it is secure and stable, there are many new coding practices like Mootools that can make a template stand out from the rest. A quality template designer will push the limits of what a template can do for Joomla! They will build in functionality you might not have thought possible, and create unique and stunning applications out of the Joomla! core.

Options

A quality commercial template should come with many options. From color schemes to module positions. From layout to module variations - the administrator should be able to build several completely unique looking websites from the same template.