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What features are necessary of an IM WordPress Theme?

by WCRocket
12 replies
Hello all!

I am a WordPress theme designer/developer and I'd like to build a theme that is not only useful, but also contains the necessary features to help internet marketers sell their products.

What I have in mind is a theme that is beautiful, intuitive, simple to setup, contains SEO options, and can easily be modified by a designer.

Possibly a image or content slider, contact form, you name it. This can all be built into the theme without plugins.

So, what is an internet marketer looking for in a WordPress theme?
#features #theme #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author mikeroosa
    Easy to setup sales pages, squeeze pages, and download pages with lots of graphics included. Another nice feature to have built in would be some type of A/B split tester.
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    • Profile picture of the author JRCarson
      Also a changeable header, with upload from computer feature (not ftp).
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  • Profile picture of the author Nickolie0990
    Here is something that probably is more of what I would want in a wordpress theme. Smart cookies, I was reviewing the "Product Launch Theme" found Here:

    Product Launch Wordpress Theme | Cheap Internet Marketing Tools

    and I really liked the idea of the theme regulating the traffic. I think this would be good in membership sites, becuase you could have social media buttons on your posts and when somebody shares your content on Facebook or Twitter, instead of taking them to the content, it takes them to a squeeze page to capture the new lead.

    So I would say some way for the theme to help in the process of lead generation.

    Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author TelZilla
    A beautiful premium theme that isn't completely bloated would be nice...but probably impossible.
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    Don't get so wrapped up in making money that you forget the important things in life.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joyful Thiek
    While a good deal has to be placed on the looks, using unnecessary scripts (jquery, custom fonts, etc) that will slow down the loading time of the pages should be avoided in my opinion. Much importance should be placed on SEO. Easily navigable options for headers, footers and custom codes (ads, newsletter sign-up codes, etc) and easy social media integration features are a must.
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  • Profile picture of the author williamtan
    A WordPress theme that is also mobile device ready.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bish
    specify different layouts for individual pages, I know themes like this already exist (I have a couple), but I'll only buy a theme that allows this.
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  • Profile picture of the author WCRocket
    Is it preferred to have built-in styles or a way to modify a single style with color pickers?
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Unfortunately, whenever you ask similar questions from the average user - you will get unrealistic expectations (and requests) because... well, because they are the kind of users that don't understand the internal working of WP and its theme system.

    The more you want it (the theme) to satisfy all the lazy marketer requests, the more bloated it will become, which, ultimately, will make it useless.

    Most inexperienced users are obsessed with the "look" but I found to be irrelevant in most of the cases. The winning themes of the future will add functionality and automation of certain tasks... as a few of them already do it!

    It will become more of a coder job than fancy 'designer' stuff...

    Just my $0.02
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    • Profile picture of the author WCRocket
      Originally Posted by Istvan Horvath View Post

      Unfortunately, whenever you ask similar questions from the average user - you will get unrealistic expectations (and requests) because... well, because they are the kind of users that don't understand the internal working of WP and its theme system.

      The more you want it (the theme) to satisfy all the lazy marketer requests, the more bloated it will become, which, ultimately, will make it useless.

      Most inexperienced users are obsessed with the "look" but I found to be irrelevant in most of the cases. The winning themes of the future will add functionality and automation of certain tasks... as a few of them already do it!

      It will become more of a coder job than fancy 'designer' stuff...

      Just my $0.02
      Great post and a very important point. A theme can't be everything to everyone, but a enterprising theme builder can make more than one theme.

      I find it humorous that lazy marketing and automation are separate ideas.

      Anyways, care to elaborate on the "automation of certain tasks?" I believe you have brought up what I started this thread for.
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  • Profile picture of the author williamtan
    Hi WCRocket,

    IMO, there are tons of premium themes out there to satisfy all sort of marketers.

    If I were a theme designer, I'd first target a good niche to start building my themes on - in this case, HTML5 based so that it also satisfy the avalanche of cross platform mobile-based browsers.

    Again, there's no one theme that can satisfy all.
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  • Profile picture of the author christopher jon
    the necessary features to help internet marketers sell their products
    You're looking at it from a one size fits all perspective when you should be focusing more on which marketers are your target audience.

    Take a look at clickbump and optimizepress, both are good at what they do but aren't single theme solutions. Each caters to a specific niche of marketers who require certain features.

    You're doing the right thing by asking questions and gathering market research but you may be better off deciding I am going to make X that helps Y, once you know exactly what you want your product to be and who your customers are, then you can fine tune it to what those customers really want.
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