Thread: An Open Letter to AppThemes from Chris in Iowa

An Open Letter to AppThemes from Chris in Iowa

Dear Appthemes,

It is currently 1:30 AM here is Iowa. I am rather disappointed to see that Vantage hasn't been posted in the themes area with a demo + information page. I do see that you have added it to the demos.appthemes.com area. Based upon what I have seen thus far these are some suggestions that I really hope that you take to heart.

• First off, you obviously have made high quality products before, and I am about to purchase Classipress. However, I must say that the delay with Vantage is really just an unfortunate situation and I think that in order to foster some goodwill with your customers, you should start being open and honest about issues you've had and specifically how you hope to change them.

I suggest the following:

• Hire a dedicated person in charge of customer service, not a forum moderator but someone who can seriously & specifically answer questions and really keep people more updated with regards to issues you may be having or just update people. Your Blog, Twitter, and Facebook accounts don't get nearly updated to the point of where they need to be. If I wasn't in school right now and had some time this would be something I'd probably love doing because I am a true believer in good customer service & while you may have issues currently, you're past products have been great and nothing says these issues aren't fixable.

• Look at competitors like WooThemes and how they handle customer service and updates.

• Vantage is definitely not where it needs to be, I'd suggest waiting until it's at the level of where it is a $99 theme because right now I think this release is most certainly not where it needs to be compared to what your previous blog posts suggested it would have in terms of features.

• I think once Vantage is at the level of where it needs to be at, you really need to focus on some of your core themes, especially Classipress which can be argued to be your most important one. It seems lately that it has been ignored and also seems to be on the bottom of the list for future updates. Features such as multi-region capabilities are prevalent in many other competitor's themes but somehow the supposed #1 WordPress classifieds theme doesn't have it. I know that you'd most likely gain more business from this feature alone compared to any sales of Vantage you'll have. I know a lot of people that would pay for that feature separately as a plugin and I think that you should most certainly put a lot of effort into that plugins area that you have talked about.

I really believe that your company can vastly improve when it comes to critical areas such customer service. You make great products & I want to see your company succeed, I really do which is why I've drafted some constructive feedback that I have come up with after having seen things play out the last few months. In order to be truly great, I believe that things such as honesty and taking responsilityare needed for a company to thrive. If you look at what happened to WooThemes recently with their website going down, most people would be pissed & very angry for a site as crucial as theirs becoming offline for not just hours but days. Instead of ignoring customers they updated them every few hours, by the minute on twitter, and acknowledged their mistakes openly & as a result they've probably increased their customer base not decreased it. You'd think the opposite would be true but it isn't.

You still have time left AppThemes, to change for the better before your competition on ThemeForest and elsewhere overtakes you by getting into the same space of App-like themes. While I'm only a college student from Iowa, I feel as if the feedback I'm giving you can be really beneficial to not only you but your customers as well. Hopefully you take it to heart.

Sincerely,

Chris from Iowa

Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful post and constructive feedback. At the time of your post, our team were likely still working on finalizing the Vantage demo and theme information page, but they were available from the release date, 27th April (pacific standard time).

Yes we wholeheartedly agree that the initial delays with the Vantage theme were most unfortunate, and we have certainly learned a lot from the experience overall. We were excited about the idea of this theme and simply wanted to tell the world about it then and there! Unbeknownst to us at the time, it was much earlier than we could actually deliver it. We soon realized that Vantage was something that our community was also very excited about when the original release dates could not be met, and the fallout began.

We also agree that changes needed to be made in relation to the way we communicated with our customers, and I say this as past tense, because we did acknowledge this, and began to implement these changes last year. Yes, we can definitely always find ways to do better, and intend to do so, but I believe also that we have come a long way since then.

To address your comment specifically about ClassiPress, we assure you that it has not been ignored. In fact, our efforts are better than ever when it comes to ensuring that releases for all of our themes are made more frequently. You can view the release dates on our ClassiPress version history page for a better idea of the frequency we are looking to maintain.

There are various reasons why certain features are not yet implemented in a theme, and in the case of multi-region capability, we did provide some feedback for this specific feature request on the actual Ideas Exchange submission. This of course will be updated now that Vantage has been released and we have a better idea of where we are with it.

We stand behind all of our products, and believe that Vantage is at a standard by which we are confident is worthy of a public release. As with all of our themes, we will continue to develop it, and implement new features and functions with each release. The possibilities are endless, and we continue to be excited about Vantage as well as all of our other quality themes.

Regards
Yumiko

Yumiko,

I appreciate your detailed response. I'm really glad that you're viewing this as constructive because that's what I meant it to be & I truly support your company and only want to see it succeed.

I don't think anyone would disagree with the idea that Classipress is a great theme, I guess my main points were that the multi-region feature is not only the highest requested Classipress feature but also the most requested feature of all by more than 300 votes compared to the 2nd most requested feature and we really haven't received an update lately on a possible timeline.

I was also going to note that the releases page should really be updated more seen here: http://www.appthemes.com/releases/

I agree that Vantage is a promising theme and I know that it will become a very successful theme in the near future considering the need in the marketplace & I hope to eventually use it myself.

Thanks again for responding and responses like this really go a long way in showing how much you and the team at AppThemes show your commitment towards making positive changes.

Even with the constructive feedback, I love the products you offer and will be sure to make future purchases down the road.

Sincerely,

Chris from Iowa

Thanks again Chris, we appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. I will personally follow up on the status of the multi-region feature request and will provide an update on the Ideas Exchange submission this week. I believe the theme release status page is due to be updated shortly, but I will also follow up on this.

nice & healthy conversation

you both (cjc790 & pepsi) are sincere on what you are saying.
I agree on cjc790 and he seems well wisher of appthemes.