Hi guys, here’s an idea 
It’s a bit funny that Themeforest’s themes look 20x better than the market itself. It’s like Envato is pushing Authors to be trendy, edgy, and up-to-date but cannot do the same thing with it’s own brand.
Themeforest has a fast growing competition everywhere. They are still the leader but I’m sure that [Competitors Removed] and a bunch of others are slowly nibbling away the sales and customers over time. Especially considering the fact that most of them now offer hosting with templates, some are ridiculously user-friendly with easy block based Page Builders and great support systems.
Do you guys think that Themeforest (especially since it’s making a lot of money) and all other Envato markets need a complete overhaul in concept, branding and design? [Competitors removed] have a much stronger, eye-catchy design. Envato markets look like 2001 while the competition looks like 2016. Also, usability is very bad, search is a mystery for me still and profile and theme pages are extremely dated in concept and design.
So, why doesn’t Envato make a huge contest for the redesign of everything? It could go viral, get stunning designers from the market itself and I’m sure serious designers / teams / studios outside of the market would join because it’s a huge, impressive task.
Also, does anybody relevant from Envato reads these topics? What’s you experience on this forum?
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The first most important thing for Themeforest is USABILITY - and not usability overall but usability for existing users. Believe me, I had few communities, that every changes of design and You got thousands email “WHY YOU DO THIS” ," NOW I CAN’T FIND ANYTHING", “BACK TO OLD DESIGN” … etc. Changes on that kind of site must be made very very slowly …
ps. and I do not thing that design is bad - usability of TF is much better than any other store like this - I was almost on every shop and now back in here … there is no better place.
I agree with the idea of an update BUT very much in airing on the side of caution - just look at the forum change…
I think @WordicaThemes comment on UX is relevant and brings up some bring else:
Themeforest (or other envato markets) may be similar to the competition but it has one crucial difference from almost all the competition - envato do not own the files for sale here. They are only a marketplace for others to sell their items.
This is not the case with most competitors (a few exceptions) which means that envato can offer more /generally higher quality items in a week than some other sites do in 6 months (plus a bundle of other benefits), however this daily changing and vastly wider range of items, authors, files etc. opens a whole new dimension to the necessary UX of the site
On top of this the site design needs to work for multiple marketplaces selling multiple file formats (again not something many competitors have to deal with).
For what its worth the idea of a competition among authors has been discussed a lot before but did not come to anything (can’t remember why exactly).
Again I am not against the idea of a face-lift but I think that this is a much bigger job than it may appear
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@wordicathemes I think you are comparing the usability of Themeforest with it’s much weaker competitors like Mojo, Creative market etc. They are not leaders and they will probably never be because they are copying TF and making it much worse. They are not developing their own user experience and brand but are trying to repeat the same thing TF already did years ago which is quite frankly - stupid.
@charlie4282 Of course the difference is that they are selling other people’s stuff but that’s why I think it needs a really modern, completely minimalistic, sleek look, with plenty of white space that will allow other people’s designs and brands to really shine. The way it is now is that there are thousands of completely different themes that are all packed inside of a bit goofy looking old design 
Yes, it is very very hard but that’s just a mountain that i sitting right in front of your nose, every day and all it needs is for you to start climbing it until you reach the top. If you never start walking you will never get there.
What I see as completely lacking are impressive front page presentations of markets themselves. The first time I saw Squarspace or Semplice I knew exactly what it was, what it’s offering, what I can expect. The first time I opened Themeforest I was like ok, there’s billions of things here because it says so and I am going to click my ass off. So the task is hard but it’s within the grasp of human intelligence, especially considering the fact that Envato has industry experts working in their company and has industry experts selling some serious items here.
You might as well look at it this way - when someone first sees TF homepage they will just see a ton of small squared illustrations with little context and organization to them. They need to hover each one (and there are a LOT of them) to see what they actually are. Also, a homepage like that doesn’t scream quality, beautiful design, perfect code etc, it screams “Billions of things inside”, “This looks ugly here but if you search and click around maybe you will find something beautiful inside” if you get what I’m saying. Just a simple beautiful slider with an inviting video montage, graphic or something with an inviting, branded message like “Create something you love” or whatever with a nice, juicy search bar in the middle. And below it, well organized, narrated content e.g. “Create a shop” section with featured shops, “Fire up you Blog” section with featured blogs, “All in One” section with multipurpose themes etc. It’s just products it’s not rocket science, there are far more complex websites that guide their visitors precisely to the product that will fit them best.
I guess what I’m saying is that now there is Semplice - they offer designers and photographers EXACTLY and ONLY what they actually need. Soon, someone may create a market dedicated to Shops and create perfect layouts just for that with dedicated Shop builders. Then, someone might make an amazing solution for blogs and Magazines only and brand it just for that. So, many dedicated markets with the right, universal designs, centralized support and hosting might take bigger and bigger bites of Themeforest’s shares. I already know 7 close friend designers that switched to Semplice because it’s simple, easy, minimlistic and above all - it does one thing and does it really well.
I can say only from my experience ( but also from other business - dating site ) - change layout == lose many users.
Shop don’t need to be “trendy”, shop must be easy-to-use. Why FB doesn’t change - they make changes very slowly but the layout is almost still the same and also no longer keep up with the design trends …
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I like the themeforest design just as it is
The forum needs to have the same layout style as themeforest
That’s my point - these others are small and dedicated to one niche. If that was the case with envato then they would be the same.
Consider any big marketplace e.g. ebay, etsy, notonthehighstreet, even web template competitors like ******** monster and ******** market - they all use the more or less same tiled look (some better than others) because as you said they are catering for a multitude of items and interests.
I am not a huge fan of any of the big marketplace layouts but it obviously works or they would not all do it.
For what it’s worth they altered a few colours and fonts a year or so ago which in itself took a long long time