Why does 99% look the same?

Hi there,
I´m a customer of Envato now since 2,5 years and bought quite a lot of stuff for my work here.
The last few months I was wondering, why nearly every single website template looks the same.
In my work, I love to design different styles… I think every project should be unique somehow.
So I often spend my time searching for new ideas.
BUT its so boring here on themeforest because there is no real creativity. Its always the same: just (hero-)slider, some stuff in between and common footer. Thats it…
There is no “out of the box” and I guess a lot of customers here on Envato would love to buy templates that does not look like billions of others.

So… my question: Why is that?

When I just have a look at http://www.awwwards.com/ than I see lots of great ideas that would make our internet so much more interesting.

So why don´t you (webdesigner) dare to create some more “unique” creative projects?

1 Like

It’s been discussed many many times and experience shows (even from the biggest authors on here) that right or wrong, more creative does not sell as well as the common style.

Aside from that these are not intended to be out of the box complete sites - only building blocks that should be customized and edited to be uniquely suited to the project.

Anyone who wants heavily creative or individual should be avoiding stock marketplaces which by their nature will be less unique, and instead seek custom developers or designers.

For example many of those that you see on inspiration sites (awesome though many are) look very distinct because they are a completely different proposition to what makes a stock site successful i.e. versatility, options, flexibility and so on.

8 Likes

On Envato there are creative artists who exhibited their work at Awwwards.

Because this style adapt, and looks elegant.

I guess the idea is to sell as much as you can, so if you go a bit too crazy, then people might not go for it. Like Transformers. Transformers made a bunch at the box office, so what’s a guy to do… make Transformers 2, or go for some ‘foreign language’, black and white, arthouse film full of unknowns? It’s show business after all.

Sure, it could be better, it might be a lot more creative, but is it going to put giant wads of cold, hard cash in the back pocket? Probably not.

When you’re making stock it’s all got to be pretty generic. Like if you have a crazy house interior, purples and reds and rubber walls with diamond staircases… it may be great, and it may be perfect for certain buyers, but it’s always going to be wiser to paint it white and fill it full of IKEA stuff before you put it on the market.