WordPress theme soft rejected, advice needed

Hi guys,

My theme is soft rejected and there are some comments I need advice on:

  1. Theme needs to work properly without featured images. https://envato.d.pr/r8S0Ni/rbppi6SRaW

How could I improve the look in this case? I have an idea to switch from a grid layout to the masonry layout. In this case there will be no white space shown on the screenshot and all post titles will have the same vertical spacings: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hpcvmak6fbde1aa/Screenshot%202020-11-03%20at%2017.43.57.png?dl=0

  1. Nothing should display unless a menu location is set: https://envato.d.pr/P6d72w/qMPr3k3zfN https://envato.d.pr/fWDhzh/ZOMNIMsTVN https://envato.d.pr/KcBOxs/dU8VXWQIN3

I reviewed a couple of recently added to the marketplace themes to understand the requirements for the Theme Unit Test content styles. By default, after unit test data is imported there was a logo in the header and menu like this (in all themes I checked) https://www.dropbox.com/s/uz4fgmu3dudxisu/Screenshot%202020-11-03%20at%2017.52.20.png?dl=0
So in my theme we applied the same approach, added a logo and the same menu as shown on the screenshot above. Any ideas what’s wrong here? Should I remove and not show any menu by default?

  1. WooCommerce needs attention: https://envato.d.pr/3v2BS6/WkGjUS2ukJ and more. Any ideas what’s wrong with the shopping cart icon? There is one item added to the shopping cart in the case shown on the screenshot.

Thank you in advance, your help is much appreciated!