Why Cs Cart Lacks Of Good Looking (Modern) Themes

I am planning of migrating a quite large eshop from Magento to CS Cart.

Although I have been convinced from the CS Cart usability, built-in addons etc, I think that it lacks of really good designed, modern style themes.

Of course, this is a matter of taste, but really I believe that most of the themes available (as far as I have seen at least) seem too "outdated" and "old-fashioned", compared to the ones that are available for other platforms (Magento, Opencart, Prestashop, Woocommerce etc).

How can I deal with this?

I think you can hire someone to create new theme which will be similar to the one you like for other platforms

I am planning of migrating a quite large eshop from Magento to CS Cart.

Although I have been convinced from the CS Cart usability, built-in addons etc, I think that it lacks of really good designed, modern style themes.

Of course, this is a matter of taste, but really I believe that most of the themes available (as far as I have seen at least) seem too "outdated" and "old-fashioned", compared to the ones that are available for other platforms (Magento, Opencart, Prestashop, Woocommerce etc).

How can I deal with this?

Have you looked at these two themes ?

https://www.ecom-labs.com/themes/cs-cart-youpi-theme.html

https://cs-cart.alexbranding.com/en/template-unitheme.html

I can't say these are old-fashioned but then again I maybe biased.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder :)

While many of the themes on marketplaces look nice, it's mostly the photos that make them so good. I see very nice themes being ruined by shopowners all the time. I also see shops all using the same theme, creating copy cats of one another.

My advice is to start with a very basic theme (cs-carts default theme will do just fine) and adjust it to your liking, with your own images, to make something unique, instead of a copy of someone else.

@Johnbol1, now those were the days, playing that game on my 8088 4.8 Mhz I believe it was :)

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder :)


@Johnbol1, now those were the days, playing that game on my 8088 4.8 Mhz I believe it was :)

Good spot Flow :)

legend of dark moon even, commodore ?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder :)

True...

Also keep in mind I have seen parties develop themes for other platforms that cost alot more than IMHO a decent responsive theme for CS Cart.

Something that I think should be more of a priority wether CS Cart can be a just as competitive as a platform as Magento is in the checkout area where it could be improved upon, finalizing each order can be nuisance if you do not have 20 plus inch desktop monitor and are trying to checkout. I have spoken to several customers who claim not to know how to checkout in our store. They say: "your checkout process so difficult, I keep adding products to the cart and then I leave ... your store just is not friendly enough". Then they leave and I am missing out on revenue.

Not sure what by the way the experience is with other store owners/admins here but I do like to hear from you.

I am planning of migrating a quite large eshop from Magento to CS Cart.

Although I have been convinced from the CS Cart usability, built-in addons etc, I think that it lacks of really good designed, modern style themes.

Of course, this is a matter of taste, but really I believe that most of the themes available (as far as I have seen at least) seem too "outdated" and "old-fashioned", compared to the ones that are available for other platforms (Magento, Opencart, Prestashop, Woocommerce etc).

How can I deal with this?

I guess cs-cart is not that popular compare to other platforms, and this is the reason why developers are not motivated.

What is the point of creating a theme for Cs-Cart if they will only sell 100, compare to 1000 for platforms like Magento, Open Cart, Presto or Shopify.

I fully agree, 95% of themes available for cs-cart today are from the last century. ))

Cheers,
X

Totaly agree, just few decent themes available in marketplace.

This might also have to do with the fact that China got all the big foreign investments in the IT sector while The Russian Federation got parasite banks and MTV media plundering Russia back in the 90's while China got the real foreign investments. OpenCart is Chinese as far as I know.

I am sticking with this platform

Good spot Flow :)

legend of dark moon even, commodore ?

I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum actually and one before that, but I don't remember its name.

ZX81, showing your age

This might also have to do with the fact that China got all the big foreign investments in the IT sector while The Russian Federation got parasite banks and MTV media plundering Russia back in the 90's while China got the real foreign investments. OpenCart is Chinese as far as I know.

I am sticking with this platform

Open Cart is a Chinese company located in Hong Kong. I don't really think it has anything to do with a country of origin. The world is getting smaller and smaller every day. The only reason I'm still with Cs-Cart, is because of a great community we have here.

But seriously, Cs-Cart needs to evolve and walk with time.

Cheers,
X

IMO the only reason opencart has more themes, is that the software is free. Of course many will try it and purchasing a theme they like is the first thing they do.

CS-cart is not free, but offers much, much more out of the box. It's also much more easy to build on the platform, making it a good choice also for bigger projects with customization - which every store wants at a certain point. Just like having a unique theme.

To say the truth, xmaster007 is right. Magento, OpenCart and other free e-commerce CMS are popular as people tend to save money at a business start. So, it is supposed to be more profitable to download a free platform, make a simple store on it to learn what e-commerce is and how it operates. Some small money investments are also acceptable in this way. Here is a theme purchase. It's possible to buy a ready-to-use theme on $180 and it can't be compared with the price on custom theme development. It's much more expensive. Then, when entrepreneurs understand that a free platform can't cover all business needs and the further development costs a lot, customers are ready to move to the paid platform like CS-Cart and more often they have already enough money to do it.

As CS-Cart is not so popular as free shopping cart platforms, the aim auditory is less. Analyzing the cs-cart marketplace, there are only 384 themes on sale. 31 themes have reviews, these means that these products are possibly in favour. Otherwise, it's just around 8% of all themes on market. It's a poor result. Most of the ready-to-use themes for CS-Cart are not stylish or in trend. And, it's a puzzle how to make a theme that will be in demand by customers. You may guess or lose. Taking into consideration the number of CS-Cart users, It's economically wise to develop the theme for a special customer, that provides you with clear specifications.

It's economically wise to develop the theme for a special customer, that provides you with clear specifications.

Most of my attempts to have a unique custom theme was disappointment. Unfortunately if you want to stick to cs-cart you must be with responsive theme with own css modifications. Basically all paid themes offer only slight color patterns, nothing that would make cart not recognizable same old cs-cart..

I gave a lot of tips to developer what could help making cart look more unique but nobody cares..

They should start first of breaking product page content block in to smaller segments, to have more control of where each should appear. More control over block over layout size, like limited width unlimited width backgrounds or content.

I am pretty much lost with ultimate version and unique block names, no way to put a description for the block so I would know what does this block do, there should be separate fields for block title and name..

Most of my attempts to have a unique custom theme was disappointment. Unfortunately if you want to stick to cs-cart you must be with responsive theme with own css modifications. Basically all paid themes offer only slight color patterns, nothing that would make cart not recognizable same old cs-cart..

I gave a lot of tips to developer what could help making cart look more unique but nobody cares..

They should start first of breaking product page content block in to smaller segments, to have more control of where each should appear. More control over block over layout size, like limited width unlimited width backgrounds or content.

I am pretty much lost with ultimate version and unique block names, no way to put a description for the block so I would know what does this block do, there should be separate fields for block title and name..

you are right

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.

This is exact reason no themes available :slight_smile: because developers like yourself do not know what it is :slight_smile:



Seems there is a market gap, people got money need a product but none got the skills or will…



I am a salesman. I am mainly interested in ease of describing products as admin and my customers have best virtal presentation of the product. Cs-cart.com face changed many times but demo sites is same for ages. Why cs cart does not sell their licenses is clone of demo site?


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.

Well as I am a financial advisor and not a developer, you need to consider that in order to develope a product you need to have a kind of Market research. The results should help you in the decision of making this product or not.

At the moment a realy nice theme will cost a lot of money to develope, support and upgrade.

So price wont be in the area of 60 USD. It can easily get up to 200 USD if not more.

And looking at the Market with around 35.000 licenses, with an average cost of 300 USD per license, you can very easy understand that people looking for a cheap solution wont pay that money. They have already invested into the license and hosting, so spending a similar amount for a theme that needs also a kind of customization- like menu, blocks, banners maybe color- is not an option.

So you end up selling maybe 10 or 20 themes and getting yourself supporting and updaring those installations for penauts as you initial cost can not be covered or even make some money.

Its not so simple as you present it. You only think of your side not the big picture.

You need a big Market in order to make money out of Themes.

If your clients are willing to pay around 400 for a theme you can always let a Dev transfer a design from another platform. We do it as also many others in here.

Works fine for our clients and they are willing to pay for it as they get exactly what they want.

So there are solutions to you problem. Just need to sell them.

And dont take my word for it.

just read this quora article on selling Wordpress themes (the most popular platfrom in the world and easy to code for) as they are asking themselves "Is it still possible to make a living selling WordPress themes and/or plugins?":

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-still-possible-to-make-a-living-selling-WordPress-themes-and-or-plugins