Hi guys,
Our team is in a bit of a situation here. We’ve invested a lot, and I really mean a lot of time into developing a WordPress theme in the directories niche, adding quite a number of features that make it considerably more advanced than comparable solutions available in the marketplace. We’ve got a bunch of design variations, unique tagging feature, advanced search, full built-in booking and inventory management solution, support ticket system, supplier and customer dashboards, order tracking and even supplier payouts, etc.
Today we received a notice of soft reject with the usual generic explanation saying we should make changes and resubmit. The theme is huge and has dozens of unique pages. We don’t even know if reviewers looked through the entire theme as soft-reject came in within a couple of hours after submission. It almost seems as if they just looked at the first screen on WP install and gone - “nope that’s not what I am looking for”.
We just don’t know where to start changing things.
Would someone please have a look at our theme and offer suggestions?
Theme demo is available here: wpdemo.dartsimple.com/uplist
You should work on your typography, right now it looks a bit odd and it is hurting the design a lot. Improving that alone will make a huge difference IMHO.
The grid in the “What are you interested in” section looks weird. Why are the icons so small and numbers in circles so big? That does not make sense.
The “See How It Works” section looks very uninspired and there are margin/paddings all over the site.
I can go on and on. This design just looks very rushed. You need to put much more attention into details.
“We’ve invested a lot, and I really mean a lot of time into developing a WordPress theme” - and now you should put some time into designing it as well.
Hi there,
Thank you so much for your feedback. This is very helpful.
Just to clarify though, I have no issue with having to redesign the theme. As a matter of fact, there is nothing more I would like than to improve it. The problem is different. Theme has 8 versions of the home page and 7 different blog variations, and I am almost sure that reviewers haven’t seen all of the versions. As a matter of fact, I am not even sure they’ve seen any of the home pages, as previous comments from them included screenshots of the blog pages only.
In other words, the problem is I don’t know where to start and what to prioritize. What if I change the home page, and they actually emphasized issues with the blog? What if it’s the other way around? Should I just scrap everything and start from scratch? Well, it doesn’t make sense to redesign the entire thing, just because I just know there are so many awesome sections and elements to what’s already there. You see, with no specifics from TF, revisions become all about mind-reading, with design per se being secondary.
Have you ever received a generic soft-reject from TF? Which pages do you look at first? Which design elements do you prioritize?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I do no have to see all your homepages to tell that this design is not ready and nor do the reviewer. It is not problem of just home page or just blog. The design as whole is not good enough. I don’t think you have to start from the scratch, you just need to improve everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Just compare your design to any other top new directory theme. There is a huge quality gap there. The best thing you can do is to take few days off and come back to it with a fresh eyes and hopefully you will see what I am talking about. The designer who designed this have to seriously step up his game for this theme to not be just approved, but more importantly to be competitive. Because what’s the point of passing the review if you won’t make any profit.