Tyme's post on designer's love for sliders

Tyme has written a great article on the new sensation: sliders. Read it here.

Tyme makes a wonderful point - look at any theme out there, and I'd venture to guess 75% -80% of all the site templates use some type of slider. I don't see any templates without some type of gradients, shiny buttons; I don't see many templates that don't use some type of feature that was recently posted on a Photoshop tutorial blog (think the "bokeh effect"). It's difficult to change the design community to a place where the designers are focused on usability & design fundamentals when the same types of templates are created over and over again.

Don't get me wrong, there are places for sliders. Tyme says it would be good on something like a food blog (I agree). Hell, I'm guilty of using a fade-in slider on my portfolio site; but the problem is that these sites being pushed out now are just using it because it's popular.

What's next?

There'll always be people following the crowd

Goddamn, still the emdash cut-off. Whoops.

There'll always be people following the crowd, but they're usually still learning things, so that's okay. Once they learn to design more, they can form their own opinions.

I don't like sliders because I don't like moving pieces in my web sites. Your mileage may vary.

Emdash should be fixed.

If you are building a custom theme for yourself or a client then I can see there being a problem with you putting sliders when they are not needed. However, we have to remember that themes are made in general for an audience that is unknown. They can be useful to some, while being completely pointless to others.

All of those themes on Themeforest are designed to look sexy to people who probably don't understand design principles or standards-based code. They are made for the people making an impulse buy.

I had a theme on there for a while that I spent a lot of time on. Making it aesthetically pleasing while staying away from all of those "Top 10 Design Trends." It was minimal and because of that (I think) it didn't sell worth a damn. I don't think the people shopping on that site are looking for a great website that will last them years. They're looking for something that will look good enough right now for $20.

I don't know about you but that's not the type of web design I want to get into anyway.

Exactly, you have to be aware of what their target audience is. If you have a specific theme in mind and only want certain things then you might be better off hiring a designer. However, the people that go to Themeforest and sites like that are probably going to want the latest cool trends and if you are trying to sell your themes you almost have to cater to the largest audience.

Thank you Damon for starting the discussion here. :)

I was laughing while reading some of the comments until I realized you guys were serious.

I did not go to ThemeForest looking for a $20 theme. I am a consumer looking for A THEME. The theme on TymeSaid is a WooTheme (I own several of their themes). I have an account at Elegant Themes and I have purchases many pre-made themes that sell their themes individually. This trend has been going on for a LONG time. I think the most I paid for a pre-made is $150.00. I purchase what I like. But, since no one has decided to research this:

WooTheme's latest Elegant Theme's latest Smashing Magazine's latest freebie" TemplateMonster's latest WP theme"

This trend is EVERYWHERE. Of course, these sites are going to allow the designer to upload the designs. That doesn't mean they are going to sell or that if purchased, they will be used. I used ThemeForest in my article as an example because they show the amount of sales. They are tampering off and the ones that are selling allow the user to easily disable The Slider.

When you go to a car dealership, do you want all the cars to be Hondas, but different colors? Of course not. Designers are so busy copying they are forgetting the rules of supply and demand. When has it ever made sense, when there are 500 of something already, to make another one?

Exactly where are consumers supposed to go to buy themes? The community itself decided pre-made themes should be cheap (no idea why). I have credit card in hand TRYING to buy themes. I'm TRYING to support the community. Instead, I'm getting second guessed on why I'm at a specific site? LOL, that's kind of funny. :)

One of the keys of being successful in business is being able to spot an opportunity and capitalizing on that opportunity while it is STILL an opportunity. I have been following this trend since June 2009 (and it started before that because I purchased a couple of graphic intensive designs prior to that). That's why the market is flooded with these designs...because it's been going on for so long.

Why, as designers, didn't you see this? I mean, are ya'll going to continue putting Hondas on the lot in different colors or are you guys going to wait until someone else creates something new and cool to copy it (ride the wave) OR is someone going to BE the one that designs the hot new thing?

Capitalize on an opportunity, ride the wave or miss the boat? What's it gonna be? Which type of designer are you?

Look at the sites you use every day. How many of them have boxes flying around without any interaction?

If I'm a carmaker and I see red cars sell the best wouldn't it be wise for me to push out a bit more red cars until the market is saturated? Initially that's how I see these designers doing things. Consumers are buying up the slider themes so more designers do them. Unfortunately, maybe the market is now saturated with them so creating more might not make sense.

Indeed designers should be aware of these things and if they are making it their business to create and sell themes they should be paying attention to trends. Of course that requires them stepping out of their designer shoes and put on their business shoes. With that in mind I don't think the question is what type of designer are you, but what type of business person are you?

Point taken Scrivs.

I guess I'm thinking like this - selling the same types of templates is fine - you get a few dollars per sale, and its easy money if you can 1. Get the template approved 2. Get some exposure so people see it.

The people designing these templates are business people, IMO, and they are only going to continue following the next trend with their templates. Each time the market gets too saturated with a certain tool, their will be something else that takes precedence & we will see more and more templates using that. I see it as a recurring cycle.

@ Tyme

I have to give props to Collis & the whole Envato team, as they seem to continually see an open opportunity and take advantage of it.

That's not to say I agree with all of their practices, but that doesn't matter. Maybe Themeforest and the like will start putting importance on "uniqueness" perhaps?? That might provide a spark to the community of designers and customers that aren't looking for the same old template with sliders and cute jQuery effects.

@Scrivs - Well, let's think about this a minute. You are assuming that the themes are selling because of The Slider. However, as I stated, I purchased my theme (which has a slider) and I disabled it. Purchased it months ago.

Big Mistake: Assuming The Slider themes are selling because they have sliders.

It dawned on you that these themes are selling but you don't see any. After thinking about it, you realize that Bill is the only person you know of that uses The Slider.

Big Mistake: Not trying to figure out what about the themes are selling...since it is obviously NOT The Slider.

Which leads to the huge Big Mistake:

Not being the one to look past The Sliders to see what people are "really" interested in and what the NEXT upcoming trend will be.

So to answer your question: no, in this case, it would not have been wise to follow The Slider movement because they were following the wrong thing from the beginning.

@Damon - I doubt ThemeForest will change their policies. From their standpoint, if a designer wants to follow a trend it is perfectly within their right to do so. Even if the market is saturated. In the end, the consumer purchases what he or she wants.

The big mistake here was the assumption that sliders were the reason why themes were selling. And not realizing that if they tapped into the real reason WHY the themes were selling, they'd make more money. :)

How can we assume anything in regards to why they sell? Do they sell because of sliders? I'm sure some do. Do they sell in spite of having sliders? I'm sure some do. I never assumed one way or another.

I am assuming though that a designer goes to these sites and sees the slider type of sites being premiered and they have the assumption they are selling because of the sliders and because of that they make their own. Without them doing their own research they are failing themselves from a business perspective.

I'm not the one buying them and I'm not the one selling them and they don't interest me so I don't know the numbers or logistics behind why people sell them or buy them.

Let's remember that these are just themes for WordPress. Usually (is that a safe assumption?) these are just used for blogs. Not full fledged sites that require deep CMS features so how do you predict the next big trend in a niche that doesn't really change. Only so many ways to display content on a site.

Matt Brett's themes are nice, but in the end they are just rearranging the way blog content is being shown.

Do you happen to have numbers of how well/poorly some theme designers are doing and how varied their themes are?

I'm not sure why my points are being argued when they go along with yours. I'm simply putting out why I think some designers follow what they see on these sites. From a business perspective if you can be one of the first to put a theme out like that I think you should, but otherwise it doesn't make sense to be another copycat.

Wouldn't you agree that if there was just one theme with a slider that it would make sense to put another one out there if they sell a little?

This is why I consider this a business issue and not a design issue. You want designers to work on the next big trend, but how many should? Because once the next trend hits and 5 people apply it on a theme site then we are back to the same argument again. It's a circle much like the clothing market.

Ed Hardy and its ilk were big not too long ago, but now there is a major thrashing towards painted shirts and sequins. Now it's up to the next clothing designer to find a trend or create a trend.

Most people I know that purchase templates with things like the sliders have a lot of trouble finding enough meaningful content to fill all the boxes, the tabbed sections, etc. I think some designers are missing out on a lot of money because of that.

They focus on making their templates as feature-rich as possible, because (I presume) they think that lists sell. If your template's list of features is smaller than your competitors, you'll sell less. I can't think of any other logical reason for them to do so.

Every time I have to change something on one of these pre-made templates I'm overwhelmed by their complexity. It's a huge "me too" war, and it will never end as long as people continue to purchase them, or a good-enough designer is brave enough to step up and change the industry.

Examples:

http://demo.rockettheme.com/apr08/ http://demo.gavickpro.serwery.pl/joomla15/nov2009/

This is a bit off the record, but if anyone here sees me following a trend like the sliders without a proper reason to do so, please slap me hard; and I don't mean in a kinky way.

My $0.02

That's always been the problem with templates vs custom design.

With templates you get the design you need plus the kitchen sink. In a custom design, you get a solution tailored to your needs, in some cases that might included the dreaded slider :)

From a template customer's perspective, its much easier to remove a feature you don't need than have to add something. There is also the possibility that you may need that feature in futures uses of the template, even if you don't need it for this project. Better to have something you don't need, then need something you don't have.

If I'm a carmaker and I see red cars sell the best wouldn't it be wise for me to push out a bit more red cars until the market is saturated? Initially that's how I see these designers doing things. Consumers are buying up the slider themes so more designers do them. Unfortunately, maybe the market is now saturated with them so creating more might not make sense.

I wasn't disagreeing with "you" but you used "you" (by saying "I") in your scenario so I was responding to the scenario you set up.

Wouldn't you agree that if there was just one theme with a slider that it would make sense to put another one out there if they sell a little?

I could see someone doing this if they were sure the reason why it was selling was because of the slider. It is not my approach because I'm more of a leader than a follower. Instead of the slider, I'd attempt to start a new trend among bloggers. Remember with Not Too Geeky I had subdomains and each subdomain had a different look? I'd do something like that except for guest posts. That way if I had a guest entry on my site, visually people would know it was different Similar to Jason Santa Maria. His site is so sexy. Another implementation would be for sponsored posts - to be over and above the FTC guidelines).

Of course that requires them stepping out of their designer shoes and put on their business shoes. With that in mind I don't think the question is what type of designer are you, but what type of business person are you?

This is why I consider this a business issue and not a design issue.

Remember how when we blog we are ourselves? We didn't create a persona - what you see is what you get? People attract to us because we're keeping it real. It's hard to compete with that because there is only one of each of us and no one is better at being us than us.

Monarch taught me at a young age that if you have to change shoes (she used hats) they don't fit. If the person is an entrepreneur (design) when he/she goes into "design" mode that should be "business mode". Design "is" business.

The business shoes (for them) don't fit.

@iisbum - Actually, their core customer are designers who take that stuff off, hack it up, and resell it for much more. I know this from the profiles of the people who purchased the designs. They convert it to the type of templates we see all the time (it saves them from starting from scratch, IF they can do it from scratch). Essentially, if there were a template that didn't have the extra crap they have to take out, they'd sell more from both ends: the consumers (like me) looking for it (can't find it and bounce) and the designers because they have to hack it less. Time is worth more than money.

@Scrivs - That is why I picked ThemeForest to use as an example because there are numbers. The most sold themes on the site were uploaded 5-9 months ago. Several designers (like Matt) have a couple of top selling themes. They hit the wave at the right time (Matt's designs don't have sliders).

@Marco - They are looking at the car lot and seeing the red cars sell, so they make red cars. Unfortunately, the reason why the red cars are selling aren't because they are red, but because they have a better warranty (for example). So they might sell some red cars but not nearly what they thought or enough to make it worth the investment.

@Tyme: Maybe we're talking about different things, but the most popular stuff (Matt Brett's stuff included) seems to be pre-coded HTML/CSS and Wordpress Themes.

Whilst I'm sure these are still modified for their needs, having the coded Javascript sliders and integration with WP is probably still a draw, even if its not used by everyone.

Look at this video It's short (34 seconds). Then read the rest.

My friend Bill is a video editor. He got a mobile camera a couple of weeks before Scrivs got his. He was looking at a Kodak, a Vado and the Flip. He was pouring over video looking at videos taken from people who had these cameras to see how they did in different lighting situations. Bill found the above video. I thought the Vado took better pictures and when I saw this video, I raved about how great the video looked in low light. He said, "I'm not getting the Vado" to which I was like "WTF?" because, to me at the time, the picture looked great.

Then he explained that as the cameraman walked around the guy playing the bottles, the bottles turned black. When it turns black, those are dead pixels he can't edit. The Flip would change them to red or green, which he could edit (but the picture looks worse prior to editing it). He bought the Flip because it handled color better. From that experience (since I didn't notice the bottles turning black in the first place) I look at video differently. It bothered me we saw the same video at the same time but I didn't see the bottles turn black initially.

When I look at the ThemeForest list sorted by sales, I see:

1) The sales with the sliders are for COMPANIES, not blogs. 2) The ones for blogs do not have sliders (including Matt's).

More and more companies are using WordPress as their CMS (instead of HTML pages) and those are the themes that are selling. That's the slider trend...so they can show their products on the front page.

I confirmed this by viewing the comments of people who purchased the theme. They linked to their sites. Sure enough...they are businesses.

But let's say I didn't notice that. In this thread alone Chris said:

Look at the sites you use every day. How many of them have boxes flying around without any interaction?

My brain naturally says, "WTF, if sliders are the selling point (for BLOGS - which is the topic here), why don't I see any?", which would have prompted me to research it. I would have come to the same conclusion. They aren't. Yet designers are uploading them every day because they are following the wrong trend. The design with a slider for a blog (with the highest sale) had their last sale three months ago.

I've given enough information on Scrivs' site and on my blog (last couple of entries) for a designer to easily rise to the top. If they were true business people, they'd spend some time trying to spot trends (there are three obvious ones on ThemeForest I have not mentioned let alone the ones I did) and use it to their advantage (and continue to do so). That's business. Designing is only one part of the puzzle. Finding real solutions for clients is another.

Indeed designers should be aware of these things and if they are making it their business to create and sell themes they should be paying attention to trends.

Exactly.

I've read your response a couple of times and I must say I am a bit confused. I understand that before the main subject was concerning blogs, but if companies (and man don't get me started on actual businesses buying themes to use for their website) are buying the themes then it means they are selling which could be a reason why designers are creating them.

You are correct you rarely, if ever see the effect on blogs because I don't think most blogs have enough content or fast content to pull it off. Maybe the people find them cool, buy the theme and when they try to apply them realize that it just doesn't fit their needs. Like buying the car with the extra features that you never end up using.

Isn't this another issue though when you are designing a theme? You aren't really designing for everyone, but a certain subset that will find your theme useful. So before you even find your "trend" (I only use this because you do) wouldn't you have to find out what type of site you are trying to design your theme for?

I is a blog with a lot of pictures? A blog that updates a lot? A blog that is rarely used?

We might have to start a whole other discussion on trends, but are you saying there is a definitive way to know what your theme should feature when you are designing it for sites like ThemeForest?

The top slider selling themes (based on total sales) were uploaded a minimum of five months ago (and sales have tapered even for those). These slider themes are for businesses. Someone saw the slider and decided to put them on blogs. You are 100% correct. Most blogs have a hard time coming up with pictures for a blog post let alone ones to put in the slider. Why make someone's elses content the focal point of your site (pictures in a slider)? The content isn't there.

As a designer, why make something most people can't use instead of making something people can use?

With designers making slider themes for blogs (which aren't selling well because people can't/don't/won't use them) it makes it easier for the company slider themes (best selling ones) to stay on the charts (even with their decreased sales) because their competition followed the wrong trend. If more people designed and submitted properly, the Best Selling list would have changed by now.

Isn't this another issue though when you are designing a theme? You aren't really designing for everyone, but a certain subset that will find your theme useful. So before you even find your "trend" (I only use this because you do) wouldn't you have to find out what type of site you are trying to design your theme for?

If someone is creating a design for profit, then designing blind isn't the optimal way to do it. Especially since spotting trends is super easy in the design community, unlike other communities. Simple supply and demand. See what people need, create it and fill that void. Bloggers don't need themes with sliders (which is proven by the lack of sales). Companies like them (they buy them). Bloggers don't. So does it make sense for a designer to upload a slider template geared to a blogger? No.

We might have to start a whole other discussion on trends, but are you saying there is a definitive way to know what your theme should feature when you are designing it for sites like ThemeForest?

Yes, based on supply and demand. For example, we know companies are buying templates. They aren't buying the blog templates. The slider solves a problem for them (the ability to show their product on the front page for a better first impression). That is a solution to a real problem...but it isn't the only solution, is it? Give people what they want, they will buy it.

So have we drawn the conclusion that the majority of these designers are just bad business people or don't see the importance of understanding simple business concepts?

Both, IMO. It is common to think that being able to do the skill properly (ie: design) is the only thing needed to have a successful business. The better the skill, the better the business. That is not true. Also needed, is the ability to properly run the business, spot trends, price the product/service properly, etc. Without those skills, the best designer in the world would not be able to thrive long-term and can only have so much success. Eventually, as with all things, the competition that has the business skills plus the designer skills will win out.