What Kind of Themes are Missing from the Theme Market?

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There are thousands of WordPress themes available to WordPress users, yet I couldn't help wondering, have you ever needed a theme for a particular niche and found that surprisingly very few themes catered for your needs?
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There are thousands of WordPress themes available to WordPress users, yet I couldn’t help wondering, have you ever needed a theme for a particular niche and found that surprisingly very few themes catered for your needs?

Let me start this off, a few months ago I was looking for travel themes, and I really didn’t find many specific ones that were designed for the travel blogging market. Of course, I could grab any of the generic themes and customise it, but there are many niches which require certain features and it would be nice to have off-the-shelf themes for them.

For example the restaurant niche is one which quite a number of theme developers have targeted successfully, so it’s not that hard to find themes which allow you to enter a menu quite easily, that being a feature specific to restaurants.

So what do you think? If you had to mention one niche that you wished theme developers would target more, what would it be?

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Jean Galea

Jean Galea is an investor, entrepreneur, and blogger. He is the founder of WP Mayor, the plugins WP RSS Aggregator and Spotlight, as well as the Mastermind.fm podcast. His personal blog can be found at jeangalea.com.

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34 Responses

  1. That WP Reviews plugin seems really nice. with that you don’t need to create a custom theme for that just install the plugin and that’s it. the plugin is already giving options for star rating, cool criteria bar, reviews details and summery and a lot more. I wonder why haven’t I heard about it earlier.

  2. I think there is a lack of restaurant review themes. There are a lot of recipe review themes and even restaurant themes but not many restaurant review themes.

  3. A theme that uses the homepage similar to , specifically the use of their front end form which will create a subdirectory multiuser site

    1. Indeed I think this is a rather unexploited niche. Have you found any good ones that we can check out as examples?

  4. Great idea for a post here Jean, as I often think about this as well!

    I think by far one of the most overlooked areas is financial/insurance based themes. There are probably less than 5 out there, and this is such a huge market that is completely untapped, in particular insurance.

    1. That’s interesting Chris, I think most people assume that financial and insurance companies will be covered by the ‘corporate’ themes out there. Are there any particular features that financial/insurance companies would be looking for in a theme? Maybe you could also show us a theme which works very well for this kind of company.

      1. You are somewhat correct Jean, if you really wanted to you could probably hack and tweak a corporate theme into what you want, but I’ve found that a lot of the newer corporate themes lack some of the features that would be needed in such an industry, for example calls to action.

        Many of the newer corporate themes have elegant sliders that take up almost 90% of the top fold. That means that the “calls to action” are not where the visitor can see them without scrolling. That is a big problem. There needs to be more calls to action in the navigation area. The newer corporate themes are almost trying to hard to be portfolio themes as well it seems.

        Here is a company who specializes in insurance based themes, however it is not built on WordPress.

        1. That’s a very valid point Chris, seems like ‘calls to action’ are going out of fashion lately, although they are still very much needed, maybe more than the fashionable sliders we see on most themes.

          And a most interesting link, I think there is a future for WordPress shops who specialise in this way.

  5. Very interesting discussion. I truly believe that the market is sooo far from being saturated. There are so many untapped areas that theme developers/designers haven’t touched yet, just as the ones mentioned at the comments. Hence, the opportunities are still there, so who’s for it? 🙂

    1. Indeed this is another interesting niche. Do you know of any themes which are great for speakers and coaches? Maybe some other designers/developers can use them as a source of inspiration when creating new themes for this niche.

  6. There is no good ‘out the box’ lead generation themes that are modern, clean and with easily editable forms. There is a lot of lead generation based themes but to me there is nothing on the market that really stands out and with all businesses feeling the pinch they are taking their design in house. This making it a style of theme i think is in need at the moment!

    1. That’s indeed true that it’s not easy to find lead generation themes. Do you think Premise would be suitable or are you looking for something else?

  7. In the past I had trouble with themes for a single rental property/apartment building – most are for multiple listings/real estate.

    Have also found travel difficult to find something that matches my needs.

    Freelance web developers could use more options too, but guessing they are expected to make their own custom theme.

    Overall I think that there is a lot of areas untapped actually.

    1. For freelance developers, Genesis is the number one option in my opinion.

      With regards to Travel themes, we’ve got some covered in our travel themes post.

      Did you manage to find any good ones for apartments/single rental property?

  8. We collected more than 2,000 WordPress themes. How can users find their theme? I think there should be a division for themes for beginners and themes for advanced users.

    Besides I think there are plenty of themes for creative agencies and businesses. Most websites however are made for freelancers and small organisations. These themes shouldn’t have too many options.

  9. Very interesting guys, it’s great to know there is still a lot that can be done in the Themes area. Keep the ideas coming!

  10. For sure. Pet themes. There are like 2 and they are 100 years old. Cannot think of others right now but I know there are many holes to be filled.

    1. You mean for blogs about pets? That’s a niche I’ve never thought about myself. What kind of features would you be looking for?

  11. Genealogy themes. Most of us like that “down home” feel sometimes called “vintage” or “antique”. While we might be selling something, more likely it will be about the various families we are researching and what we are finding. Galleries are important.

    Extremely hard to find. Note that for me, a three-column theme is preferable for this need over a two-column.

  12. I have a client looking for a bed and breakfast theme. Most of the themes are very modern feeling, but most bed and breakfasts are looking for that down home feel. Needless to say, this has been my most painful theme hunt for a client yet.

    1. That’s an interesting one Ryan. I’ve seen quite a number of hotel themes, but I understand why it was hard to find one with a more homey feel. It’s usually a bit more difficult to design such websites, and they might not sell too well, but there is definitely a lot of money to be made for those who can market a niche successfully.

      Just today I came across Foxhoundthemes, which target the band and music niche very well, and they do just that.

  13. WP needs themes for activists, ambassadors, evangelists.With built-in plugins for (like for example nationbuilder).

  14. We would love to see sports team themes. It can even be made as framework as to leave some flexibility and to support all kinds of sports. If anyone willing to create such for us, we woud like to talk immediately.

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