Comments on: iA.jp’s US$2500 Wordpress Theme

By: Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 06:17:06 +0000

@Oliver – sorry the commercial idea didn’t work out. I personally think the concept was right, but the market (WordPress) may have been wrong. The sort of dollars you were thinking are probably better focussed on the near-enterprise CMS space.

By: Oliver Reichenstein

Oliver Reichenstein — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:50:52 +0000

In the mean time we decided to offer it for free.

By: CPinho

CPinho — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:30:51 +0000

Hi,

It doesn’t surprised me the price. Don’t forget your are talking about Japan. The country where people just spent one ore two weeks max. in holidays per year, usually in Europe spending the money that they don’t have time to spent during entire year. Moreover, Japan is known as one of, or the most expensive country in the world. It is indeed a different reality. However if iA.jp intends to go over borders, for sure the price it will have to change, otherwise, i doubt that they will be successfully selling their product.

Brgds,
CPinho

By: Justin

Justin — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:09:19 +0000

I bet people WILL buy this. Do you know how many non web people (potential clients) Know what wordpress is or how easy it is to use? I’m going to guess about 4%.
Most people think of web design and development as “magic” and have no idea whatsoever what a CMS is or how to use it. So power to them. I think with the right presentation and pitch it will sell.

By: Ozh

Ozh — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:25:03 +0000

$2500 and there’s not even a demo of their theme ? lol.

By: Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 03:38:49 +0000

Chris – thanks for the info. I admire what you guys are trying to achieve – a good looking, standards-compliant theme with ongoing pro support, extra features and updates. I remain doubtful that you’ll be able to sell volume though, my feel is that you’re maybe as much as an order of magnitude over what the market generally will accept. That said, there are probably corporate clients who might be willing to pay the price you have set.

By: Chris Marmo

Chris Marmo — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 03:02:16 +0000

Hi Stephen,

Some fair comments there, we understand completely that this hasn’t been done before and the price has been a bit jarring to people – I guess we just need to do a better job at communicating what we are actually offering.

The main idea of this package is that it will be continually updated and tested, and that for a whole year you will be receiving updates that iteratively improve on your site. These updates will be both big and small – things like improved accessibility features, navigation tweaks, or the integration and design of an image gallery, forums, etc.

In terms of appearance, the theme is “skinnable” to a degree (we’ve seperated the font/colour css out from the layout divs) and we will be doing a lot of visual tweaking for each individual client based on existing brands and/or client requests.

The layout/grid structure itself is the thing that will be consistent across all client sites, but we hope that once people become more familiar with the product they’ll see the value is not just the layout or the colours, but that it’s a proven usable template, and it will be constantly added to and improved.

Looking forward to hearing what you think!

Cheers,
Chris