The handful of readers of this blog may by now we familiar with my penchant for changing the look of my blog often. Why do I do this? Primarily because there are only a handful of themes available that I am truly satisfied with. If they have the overall layout right, I may find the font not to my liking. Or there will be some quirk in another page or how the comments are formatted. I am not fussy by nature (or so I think) but when it comes to things that one is deeply involved with, some fussing around is OK right? Does that explain why I have 8 laptop bags for my one Macbook? Anyway, I am digressing.
The point about this post was on Thesis – one of my favourite WordPress themes. It’s a premium theme (meaning, one has to pay for it), developed by Chris Pearson, the guy behind the popular Cutline theme for WordPress (free). Cutline is perhaps the most downloaded WordPress theme, ever. When I first saw the Thesis theme, I was smitten. I loved the clean layout, the font. I promptly bought it but had severe post purchase dissonance. I found minor & major irritants – the header image on the front page was stand alone – it had nothing to do with the first post. I found that irritating. Changing features would mean some code crunching which was time consuming. I was also in two minds about using a serif font (I lean towards sans-serif). So I kept changing my theme – imagine paying good money for something and not using it.
But one thing that stayed in my mind was this: the author of this theme, Chris Pearson works damn hard at keeping customers happy and is a great marketer, to boot. Dream combination? Absolutely. Chris has been improving the theme constantly, taking into consideration customer feedback. And boy, does he write well! A classic example of ‘salesmanship in print’! Even when I switched to other themes, I suffered from Thesis-pangs. The author’s efforts to improve his work and importantly let his customers & potential customers know about it – is the difference between choosing this theme versus others. Even as we speak, Chris is talking of the next version of the Thesis theme!
Aren’t there parallels to this in the brand world? Imagine switching to a ‘competing brand’ but having guilt pangs?! I guess a great product and great service (and making sure that the message gets through) is the key. And oh, about the C word – its Chris. Or is it customer?
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