Why an HTML theme will help you A LOT 👍
Hey Indiehackers. I wanted to talk to you about something.
Web development. It's fun... but can take time to learn and if you need a landing page or a website of some sort fast, then you either have to dig in your pocket for an expensive and low-quality theme or you just have to go solo. 😬
It seems that all hope is lost 😞... until BuildFaster comes to the rescue! 👊
BuildFaster sells easy-to-use HTML themes that can be set up in minutes.
Why would you use our themes?
I make sure that each theme is set up correctly for you so that when you buy it, the process is very smooth and quick to finish. 🏃♀️🏃♂️
I use comments in the HTML and a README file to instruct you on what to do.
Any beginning web developer can use our themes with ease.
Every week I strive on creating more themes to sell on Gumroad so I can target more audiences. 👨💼👩💼
Wrapping up...
I hope you understand why using BuildFaster's themes can help you a lot and that it will not take long at all to use.
To help, you can purchase your favorite theme on our Gumroad, spread the word about BuildFaster, and follow us on IndieHackers.
Thanks so much for all your help. Have a wonderful week. 😄
I don't know if other people feel the same way, but a friend and I were talking while he was looking for paid themes yesterday, and we both felt that most landing page templates are WAY over-animated! I think they're built by designers rather than people with a focus on selling, if that makes sense.
We were saying all these super-animated themes on ThemeForest and everywhere else actually detract from the message - it takes us more time to process what the site is about. Not sure if that's worth considering for you. We also talked about how, when someone is browsing for a template, the animated ones are more eye-catching so a lot of people likely buy them and regret it later.
Last: I'm curious, have you looked into options to make your themes customizable - like a user pays, and they get to customize text and images and download the result?
The problem is not the number of animations, is how they are used. Animations should help focus the user's attention, not to distract it. Animations should be used to stagger elements in order to reduce the cognitive bias, this doesn't mean adding a 200ms animation to all elements shown, but showing elements in order, so that the user actually has time to read each element before the next comes in. Animations should be used to emphasize user actions and to create a logical connection between elements on the page, or between the action a user takes and its result.
You could be right!
Do you have an example of one you really like? Where the animation helps, rather than detracting from the message itself?
Totally agree Andrew - this is something I have thought about a lot when developing my product as well, since it in the same realm. But I actually think the problem runs deeper - instead of focusing on selling the product (the end product the buyer is selling) the themes are instead trying to sell themselves (with animations, high level generic designs not appropriate for the end buyer, and unrealistic UX). They look good until you buy them and try to implement it to sell your product, and definitely regret it because so many aspects of the themes don't work in reality for your use case. Unfortunately the problems aren't obvious until you buy a few and start to notice these patterns and what to look for.
And, to some degree, it might even be a psychological problem.
Like, when you shop for a TV at Best Buy, they set the saturation and brightness way up because it looks great in the store. But once you get home, you have to make sure it has regular settings or it looks weird.
If I'm browsing themes, and I see a bunch with animations, once I click to one that actually fits my purposes well, it looks stale and boring when it's actually perfect haha
Interesting comparison insight to the TV aisle - so then the question becomes - how do we make themes that a. Sell well b. Work well for end users & c. Do not cause mini seizures (i.e. Webflow theme showcase page). These goals seem all seem to contradict...
BTW Congrats on the themes Brayden, lookin good and keep making cool stuff!
I don’t think that my sites have too much animations, but I see your point and I will work on lowering the amount of them. Thanks so much.
When a user buys an HTML theme, they get the source code with instructions telling you what to do. It will take only a few minutes once you add your own images (or stick with the unsplash ones given to you) and paste the text you want. I am not sure if gumroad gives a feature where you can edit the text and images, but if they do I will definitely check it out.
Yep! Totally understand. I was just mentioning it because of a general trend we noticed. I looked at a couple templates and they seemed a bit on the animation-heavy side, but that's absolutely just one random person's opinion, not necessarily a reason to change :)
I'm pretty sure gumroad doesn't support integrating an editor. I was more curious if it was something you had looked into, or if you think your buyers would like something like that.
Makes sense. I wanted to help any web developers create nice landing pages and websites with easy-to-use HTML themes. Think of it this way: If someone is trying to learn HTML but is always using website builders instead of editing the code themselves, they aren't learning anything.
Hope that makes sense :)
100% agree we still have 0 animations (some templates with it coming soon) on https://versoly.com/ and a lot of our customers love it because they have been burnt by TERRIBLE templates.
The template creators have one goal, to sell the templates.
With us we have to offer a smooth editing experience otherwise customers won't upgrade or will churn.
Might be worth looking at https://tailwindcss.com/ and http://tailwindui.com/ templates as the base code should be at a much higher level.
Love it! If you had an un-hosted version, I think a friend of mine would be interested. We're devops nerds, so we always host our own sites :)
In the future (not on the roadmap at the moment) we plan to have a way to connect to a git repo.
I hate seeing time wasted, that is one reason I created it.
So many developers, designers and marketers creating the same stuff over and over again.
They could be working on their products.
Very true. I will work on less animations.
Here's some feedback. It's pretty direct and it might sound rough, but I think this is the best kind of feedback I would like to personally receive.
I find the landing page of BuildFaster a bit confusing, it took a while to process what's going on, even though it's pretty simple. The main focus of the site is the word "minutes", which doesn't really help in undertanding with what the website is doing. Shouldn't the word "websites" or "templates" be the main focus? Also, everything animate in at the same time, really distracting. The main CTA is also missing the active (clicked) state, combined with the animation it feels a bit strange when you click it. Overall, although the site has many animations, it feels very static and not responsive. The layout also feels buggy in some places, for example the Fresh Themes section is almost empty when I scroll to it:
I would personally not even go through the themes, as I would expect the same style and not-premium quality as the main landing page.
Also, my main push-back against using premade themes is that I know I would want to customize them, and doing those customizations usually takes longer if I have to first get familiar with the source code. I recently started updated my landing page and realized that I will make a lot of constant changes and A/B tests, so I decided to write it myself in order to be able to quickly iterate over it.
Ok I totally understand. I am trying to work on it every day :)