Ciwan

Pre Built themes have come a long way since 10 years ago and there are 1000s to choose from. Picking one most likely won't convey your message 100%, but as a start I'll be happy with 80% of the message being conveyed, which I think is doable with the right theme.

I have little doubt that a custom theme for the brand I'm trying to build is better. What I am saying is, given that I am just starting out with zero customers, I have no data about my customers, I can't run surveys on them ..etc I think right now it would be better to start with a good theme, once I have a good flow of customers, I can then probe their desires and dislikes and know about their location and age group through Analytics, then I can make a more informed decision on the custom design.

Oh that is good to know. I'll be adding some call to action on the image. It won't be just an image

I can see this working nicely for me, but I don't know if I can get the shop to appear underneath that landing banner/slider.

Hehe yes that is eBay for you You always have to scroll down to read the descriptions The one might do the job, but it doesn't speak premium quality. It is like it was done by a n00b.

That is what I'm afraid of @Fisicx. I'm just starting out and don't want to be paying £1000s for something that will increase my sales by say 5%. Cause that wouldn't be worth it when you do the cost calculations. If a good $60 a theme would help me get established and get customers flowing and help me get big, then I can worry about paying for a custom design when the time comes. A time when a 5% increase in sales is way above the cost of the design. But if the pre-made theme is a terrible idea that won't help me land orders at all, then a custom theme is the way. Right now, I'm leaning towards finding a good pre-made theme, but still can't make my choice. Here is my eBay listing which I paid a designer a lot of money to make.

Thanks Fuzzy. Can you link us to some sites that do convey their message and do communicate through their design?

Thanks fisicx. I've never done any paid advertising such as Google AdWords. I'll look into that. I was thinking of using nopCommerce, but that doesn't have many themes, paid or otherwise. I know WooCommerce with WordPress is popular, but again, I can't find any themes that feel right with the brand I'm trying to establish.

What do you guys have in mind when you talk about "research"? I am a Web Developer by trade and I work for a large corporation. When they do User Research, they go to an agency and spend £1000s to get users sat down in front of the web application we've development and get feedback from them. Obviously I cannot carry out such research, so what is one in my situation ought to do? How am I supposed to research what design users like? I can't pay for multiple designs either. Any thoughts?

Do any of you have any case studies that have shown how a change in design from the standard theme to a custom designed one has affected business performance (backed by numbers)?

Thanks guys. I already have the content. I have my product pictures (I can take those myself too if need be as photography is a passion of mine). I have the descriptions and categories as well. The design needs to target health conscious people as the site will sell Yerba Mate, a beverage from South America. Yerba Mate is well known for its health benefits, so the design needs to have an organic, natural, authentic feel to it. I personally think it is the designer's job to come up with the Wireframes, after all he/she would know best no? @FuzzyLogic great pointers about what to ask for, thank you.

Hello Friends I signed up to Dribbble in order to contact designers and see how much they would charge for the design of an eCommerce website. Their prices are really high, to me at least. Like $120 an hour! Is that normal? And if so, how many hours would the design of an eCommerce website take? With hourly work I'm always afraid that the designer can lie about how many hours he / she has worked. He/She could have finished the work in 15 hours, but tell the customer it has taken them 25 hours! I'm sure you've all had this worry previously, it is one of the reasons I prefer a fixed up-front cost. I know you won't be able to give an exact answer to my question, but roughly what price should I be looking to pay for the design of a kickass eCommerce website? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

Is it a matter of adding everything that cannot be generated? If that is the case, then I need to exclude: node_modules public/dist Everything else I need, since those won't be generated. On a related note, say someone checks out my solution at a different computer. How would they get node to go through the `package.json` and download all necessary modules? What command should he/she run? Thanks

Hello Friends I am just starting out with NodeJS and Gulp. I have everything working as I want, and I now want to keep track of my changes via Git. What are the files and folder that I should add to `.gitignore`? Attached is the folders I have. Inside public I have two folders. These are `src` and `dist`. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Thanks Robby! I never really understood how to use Kuler. I now it is meant to provide me with colors that supposedly go well together. But what I find difficult is the bit where I as a developer decide what colors go where, and what texture to have .. etc. Still, I believe above, the issue isn't much in the color (maybe a little) but the shape / design of the wizard step is the bigger issue .. no?

Hello Friends I am working on a website that is an Admin Dashboard sort of thing, similar to the Admin Dashboards on WrapBootstrap website. Within this website, I have the following area where the user can walk through a wizard and perform a task. It is OK and it works, but I feel like the styling on the Wizard steps doesn't really fit in Can someone guide me in the right direction please? To me, the styling of the wizard steps do not conform and look ugly! Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

Hi Guys There are so many car / lift / ride sharing websites on the internet these days (BlaBlaCar is just one of them), and they all seem to offer free registration and free access to their data. So essentially they offer their major asset (info about people willing to share a ride) for free to those that seek it. My question is, how do these people make their money? What is their business model? I see BlaBlaCar is actually hiring .. so it isn't a really good developer, designer in his/her bedroom. How do they make their $$? Any enlightenment of the matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

Hi Guys There are so many car / lift / ride sharing websites on the internet these days (BlaBlaCar is just one of them), and they all seem to offer free registration and free access to their data. So essentially they offer their major asset (info about people willing to share a ride) for free to those that seek it. My question is, how do these people make their money? What is their business model? I see BlaBlaCar is actually hiring .. so it isn't a really good developer, designer in his/her bedroom. How do they make their $$? Any enlightenment of the matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

Hi Guys Apologies in advance if this is the wrong part of the forum to post this, but I was unable to find a place more suitable. Can someone please tell me how I can achieve the following in Photoshop? I don't know if there is a technical name for it, but due to not knowing what to call the damn thing, Google was of no help. Links to tutorial material would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

Hello Friends A client has asked me to develop an eVoting website with fully featured Admin back-end and a front end that is at the cutting edge of HTML5 / CSS3 and has to be super user friendly and localised to many different languages. The way the website will work is people in the community will be able to cast a vote (yes or no) on topics that the Admins have set-up and assigned to the users. So when a user is logged he / she will be shown topics and matter on which he / she can cast a vote on. Once the time has run out for a certain vote, the results are sent to all participants in an email in a nice, super friendly info-graphic like Email. Also the Admins can view live results as votes are coming in, again in a nice graphical way. How much would YOU roughly charge for such a system? I reckon it'll take me a month of solid, full day work. Thank You.

Exactly ! I just can't understand why this would happen. Thanks Léon.

Hi Guys When I visit my new blog, I see an issue with the header, it is overflowing to the sides a bit, like this screenshot, is it same for you ? Cause on Chrome on my VPS box, I don't get that issue, but on Chrome on my local PC, I do get that ! What do you see ? Thank You. Ciwan.

Cool, thanks. So let's say I created my storage variables the proper way, how do I then join them and return them ? Would the [ + ] work when done your way ? Thanks

Hmm .. what then is the valid way Spitfire ? Thanks

Hello Friends Can someone please tell me how I can return the content of two variables joined ? function foo() { var a = $('<div class="first"></div>')' var b = $('<div class="second"></div>'); return a + b; } The above does not work, what I want to return is: <div class="first"></div><div class="second"></div> I would greatly appreciate any help. Thank You.