CS-Cart is realy one of the easiest platfroms out there to customize the look
You only need to work on the hooks system and css. you can literaly do what ever you want with it.
- Change buttons with icons
- change grid look with more data like descriptions, availabitliy, hover effects on butons and images
- multi size blocks for the first page with banners
- footer look with many rows and columns
- fullwidth blocks
etc
you have so many differnt menus at the moment so this is also not a problem anymore.
Banner sliders awith fullwudth is also no problem any more with so many third party addons
And after all with layout manager you are abel to cutomize the look of any page, even for a specific one.
I think if you just invest a bit more time on default theme and work only with css you can realy have a very different result
Thats not an option for a novice user, but then again CS-Cart is not for novice eshopers. They go woocommerce or anyother free platfrom.
CS-Cart is a complete solution and you need to know your staff before you use it. If you are new in e-commerce you will not use more than 10% of its capabilities ending up complaining about the themes, when this is not a major factor.
Most of the major shop out there (see amazon for example) have a very simple almost plain design.
Its the ease of use and navigation, that makes the difference. There is also another 25% from banners and overall graphics. The rest is the theme,
I beleive CS-Cart can continue with the advanced theme and layout manager, but give more tips on how to achieve niceandclean results.