Quality of the approved items (ThemeForest)

Envato Authors Author Hangout
1

Hi,

I’m one of those guys that are browsing the themeforest library (mostly themes and templates) daily and probably there’s no theme I wouldn’t know of (no…seriously), but lately I noticed that the quality of the approved themes has decreased dramatically.

And I am not talking about those themes that are too generic, that don’t bring anything new and are almost the same as the popular ones. The design is still ok for them.

There are approved themes that have issues with spacing, colors, typography… basic design concepts or they simply don’t look good at all. You know it’s a hard reject only after a few seconds, not even a soft reject… These themes may be approved on mojo jojo, but not here.

I don’t think ThemeForest has ever lacked high-quality theme submissions, and the nice themes that are approved, simply are lost among many others… let’s call them “not so nice” themes. Buyers still have where to choose from, there’s no doubt, but when you see a few “not so nice” themes before you take a look at a nice one, you start looking for alternatives.

There are 30 themes (templates) approved in the site-templates/corporate category in the last 10 days… So, after 10 days, you are on the second page (not the kind of exposure I was expecting). You can see that the “not so nice” themes don’t have good sales, they simply decrease the exposure for those nice themes, pushing them to the second page and so on. It’s a shame to see a full category (site-templates/corporate first page) with themes that barely have 10 or 15 sales. You know buyers love to see themes that have more sales. That’s why you display the number of sales for themes. This is one of the reasons ThemeForest became popular.

Increasing the approval requirements, could also solve the queue review time (an enormous issue these days). There aren’t lots of submissions all of a sudden, the reviewers simply started to educate the author through soft rejections. Themeforest shouldn’t be a learning service, you have the tuts+ websites and the item feedback category on forums for that. I don’t want to be the bad guy for some authors, but I think there should be more hard rejections… which will decrease the review queue…

Thus, I’d like to have the support of the authors that agree with me, and kindly ask you to +1 this thread so that the manager of the reviewers ( and reviewers themselves too ) will hear us and maybe they will re-think this strategy (wrong IMO) of approving more and more themes.

Choose Quality over Quantity and increase the approval requirements for design.

Thanks!

6 Likes
2

+1 from me but no hopes that they will listen

3

+1 Completely agree

4

Damn! I was expecting more authors to support this, but I guess you are happy with the current approval requirements. It’s easier for you to get your theme approved, isn’t it?

5

I actually agree with (some) of what you are saying but it’s the rule of quantity, and as a big buyer our purchase habits have slowed dramatically recently.

Given the sheer number of files being submitted, new reviewers, extra pressure to handle extended review times etc. more files which previously may not have made the grade will slip through. It would be the same with anything and I doubt it is a permanent sign of standards lowering esp. given that the balance of quality and quantity is what makes envato the leader that it is.

6

It is so damn true. I’m the only one tired of “wow animated” templates? I have a new kind and unique animations for websites used for UX, not for a good presentation (PLS STOP SPLASH ANIMATIONS), but I will reveal them in the next months after I bring some new themes. Animations shouldn’t be overused on section reveals, but more on technic side.

Also, you forgot to mention something. I saw A LOT OF TEMPLATES that have problem on small devices. I just wanted to check them with Chrome to see how they look on iPhone, and they are horrible and buggy.

7

yep, I’ve noticed this too. Its been 1+ month that quality of approved items baffles me, maybe they’ve hired new people who have less of a critical eye?

1 Like