It’s time to once again time to take a look at the state of the premium themes market. I last did this in late October 2009, comparing some of the developing trends and looking at the future of the market. It has now been more than three years since the beginning of the premium themes craze started, and it is time once again to look to the future.
Overall, there have been more start-ups in the past year than recent times, although fewer of them have been as successful than, say WooThemes, iThemes, StudioPress, and a few others (which are still leaders today). However, since the market has expanded, some of the traffic has distributed amongst some of the smaller providers that are able to offer some of the same quality and features.
On the traffic front, there has been a decline across most sites of about 10% for the month of July, with up to a 50% drop in traffic since last year. Is this a sign of things to come? No one can say for sure, but it may simply be a sign that the market is more saturated – the people who wanted a premium theme have purchased them and are not returning as frequently to the sites to purchase them. Otherwise, it could also signify a larger slow-down in these themes as people look to save money – creating their own themes or using the existing frameworks rather than purchasing new themes.
Overall Trends
- I cannot say whether there was an overall slow-down in sales, but if traffic is any indication, there has been a shift in where people are purchasing their themes. Most are searching for theme clubs that offer more themes for cheaper rates, or else they are looking for themes that aren’t quite as pricey.
- This slow-down has been taking place since March of this year, although there were quite a few drops in the time period before this. I can only base this trend off information from Compete, although you will notice that the sharp drops aren’t exactly normal, especially for the more trafficked sites.
- With more than fifty theme providers, this drop may simply be a sign that people have more choice now. Simply comparing some of the top theme designers may not indicate the overall picture unless there is more meaningful information. For example, I don’t have any exact figures from these sites.
Traffic Information
You can see the trend in the image below. I have included all the relevant information for reference, the entire graph can be found at Compete.
