Just today I was looking for a quick way to build a marketing site for my startup that would allow my not super technical co-founder to do the majority of the building. It has been a while since I had used WordPress regularly so maybe there are new sources out there, but I defaulted to checking out ThemeForest to find a decent theme to start with.
I consider myself fairly decent at design (though I'm far from an expert), and I was amazed to see how at odds virtually every theme on there was with what I consider good design, particular from the UX perspective.
Most of them are so bloated they take forever to load and they have an absurd amount of animations.
I've just given up on the idea of taking the easy route here, I can't in good conscience have the first look that people have of my business be a bloated, over-animated mess. Gonna have to build it from scratch.
If anyone has found themselves in a similar situation I'd love to hear what you did.
Carrd and Webflow are popular for non-technical founders who want a basic marketing site these days. WordPress or DIY are not even close to your only choices, there are a huge amount of platforms out there for this.
Developing a marketing site by hand is almost never the right choice for an early-stage startup. Pretty much everything else on your to-do list is a more useful thing to spend your time on than hand-crafting a marketing site.
Why would I choose these niche alternatives, when I have an huge wordpress developer ecosystem at my fingertips? At least here in Europe Webflow is virtually unknown.
Niche? They are both well-known successful unicorns.
As for why you would choose them over WordPress, please just read the conversation. I was replying to somebody who had already tried to start with WordPress and gave up on it.
You could use Blocks.app for that, its a visual site builder. It can even generate a WordPress theme. There's other similar tools like Bootstrap Studio or Coffecup Designer — or Pinegrow, if you are a little more technically inclined.
I was recently in a similar boat, I didn't like the themes on Themeforest, so finally I used the Blocksy theme (free version) and it was perfect for what I needed. Really recommend it: https://creativethemes.com/blocksy/
I consider myself fairly decent at design (though I'm far from an expert), and I was amazed to see how at odds virtually every theme on there was with what I consider good design, particular from the UX perspective.
Most of them are so bloated they take forever to load and they have an absurd amount of animations.
I've just given up on the idea of taking the easy route here, I can't in good conscience have the first look that people have of my business be a bloated, over-animated mess. Gonna have to build it from scratch.
If anyone has found themselves in a similar situation I'd love to hear what you did.