I’ve been asked a number of times what are the most popular StudioPress themes, so this morning I ran sales numbers for the past month to find out. While I had a hunch which ones would fall on this list, many were confirmed and now I have the data to back it up.
Here are the top 5 most popular child themes for the Genesis Framework which are currently available on StudioPress…
5) Outreach Child Theme
Believe it or not, this one kind of surprised me. While I know that the Outreach theme is well designed, I didn’t realize how popular it was. It’s quite obvious that folks use it for more than church or ministry sites, as it was originally designed for. You can see from the Outreach Showcase that sites such as paddle companies to floral events use it.
4) News Child Theme
With the popularity of news and magazine style WordPress themes, this came as no surprise. The News theme has been around for a while, and underwent a design update a few months back. Check the News Showcase to check out some uniques ways that the News theme has been used.
3) Enterprise Child Theme
I could have guessed that the Enterprise theme would have been on this list – as it was the very first theme designed by Copyblogger lead designer Rafal Tomal. You can see from the Enterprise Showcase that although this was built for businesses, many organizations have used it quite well.
2) Lifestyle Child Theme
I have to admit that the Lifestyle theme is my favorite theme – as it’s undergone 3 major design updates. Lifestyle was the first to utilize Google Web Fonts, and has 10 color styles. Check out the range of amazing sites on the Lifestyle Showcase which goes from financial planning to popular mom blogs.
1) AgentPress Child Theme
Some might find this hard to believe, but the AgentPress theme is the most popular one around. The real estate industry is ripe for choosing to build sites on WordPress, and the AgentPress Showcase is proof. With the addition of custom post types in WordPress, we have plans to develop some pretty amazing themes for agents in the near future.
Wow! This is pretty shocking. When you talked about this last night, I was positive the Prose theme would be here.
Fascinating.
Yeah – 5 through 15 were practically all about the same in sales, just Outreach came out on top.
I was hoping Freelance would be in there somewhere. It’s my favorite. So clean looking and prose-friendly.
yeah, i’m a fan of the Freelance theme too
@Martyn: I would have bet that Streamline would be there! Because it ROCKS.
That is one of the many themes that ran a close race to the 5th spot.
Can you get some figures like the number of sales for each theme over it’s lifetime, divided by the number of days since its respective launch?
Clearly, over the last month, it’s not surprising that the revamped Lifestyle and Enterprise themes are in there, along with the niche targeted AgentPress, so some normalized long-term data would make for interesting reading.
I could, but that would take a while to put together… I was moreso doing a quick one month tally to see the “current” top selling themes. I don’t think the updates to Lifestyle and Enterprise play a role in this, as those were in the top 5 months ago which is what prompted them to receive the updates to begin with.
Hey Brian, informative list of what I take it are most popular single sales. It would be interesting to find out what people with access to all themes use most frequently . . . people with the pro-plus accounts. I’ve been with you for going on a couple of years now, and I think it’s safe to say that I tend to use Streamline most often as a starting platform for building out site designs. I don’t know what percentage of people are at the pro plus level, but I’d be interested in how others use the themes, and why they chose those.
Maybe you could do a poll or comment solicitation on this?
PS – Please put Streamline on the update list . ..
Hey Jon – first off, thanks for being such a loyal user of our themes – definitely appreciate that.
Second, I do like the idea of a poll – perhaps in an upcoming post on the StudioPress blog, we can setup Poll Daddy for that. Would be interesting to see the results!
What’s a good theme for restaurants?
It depends on what you need it to do, but a great restaurant theme is done by my friend Jason Schuller over at Press75 called Cafe Press.
Hey Brian, thanks for sharing, and actually, I am not surprised at all. When it comes to my clients choosing a child theme from your site, or if I get called to help them with an existing site, these 5 themes come up a lot. Another one I see popping up is the Corporate theme, but gotta say I love the redo you did on that one!
Heh, the Corporate theme I think was #7, so not too far behind. Perhaps the recent update it received will help push it upwards.
Hi Brian
I give clients a choice.
I send them screenshots of the various themes and let them decide.
Most people choose… Enterprise.
Now that it renders with rounded corners in IE9, it looks even better.
And as an added bunus, it is super fast.
BTW – know what you mean about that lifestyle theme – gorgeous.
I suspected Agent Press might make the list. My other guess was going to be Prose – mainly because of it’s ease-of-use to the non-designer so I’m a little surprised it didn’t make the list.
And of course, my current all-time favorite is the Minimum Theme at present. So it’s a little exciting to know not as many people are using it I guess
I knew that Enterprise, News and Lifestyle would be in the top 5. Those are some of my favorites.
Currently using Agency for my business site. It’s by far my favorite, it just pops. Also, I use Church for my bartender blog. I used Enterprise for a local salon. I get alot of compliments on that one so it’s no surprise that it’s on this list. Thanks for these incredible themes, Brian!
I bet Agentpress is so popular because there are so many real estate agents and WP is finally getting discussed in the real estates trade magazines, training seminars and being mentioned in sales meetings. Yes, I am a real estate agent.
And a 3-4 year fan of Studiopress.
WP being discussed at sales meeting is kind of like having your mom on facebook. A little uncomfortable.
AgentPress doesn’t surprise me at all. It is the reason I am getting ready to buy the Pro Package. It is perfect for not only creating a real estate theme, but it can also be used for an interior design theme, a car dealership theme, and for any small biz that wants to showcase products or services (aka “properties”) that they sell, without actually running an online store. For small businesses that need to get customers in the door to sell custom items, then this theme is perfect for showcasing work. The property search feature using pre-set criteria is especially important for these type of businesses, and AgentPress is able to list specific search options for the visitor, versus letting the customer choose their own generic search terms. For example, an interior decorator would want to allow future clients to choose living rooms, dining rooms, or bedrooms as search criteria. But someone might type in ‘family room’ or ‘den’ instead of ‘living room,’ if the search box were the usual empty ‘guess the keyword’ type. By specifying the property search criteria fields, it makes products much more searchable for businesses. So AgentPress isn’t just for real estate–it is a great theme for other small businesses too.
If I have anything to do with it, Minimum will be on the list soon, though it won’t show on sales – only usage stats – as Pro/Plus members can’t affect the sales.
Believe it or not Jesse, Minimum was in the hunt for 5th place…. and I have to admit that makes me feel good because that is a theme that I designed completely by myself!
Glad to see Enterprise up there since I use it for my own site.
It’s the only theme I’ve used but I can’t believe that any of the others could have met my needs better!
Wow… what a shocker that my favorite two themes, Agency and Education theme did not make the cut. You are truly inspiring. I am happy that I found your blog. Lots of great content. Thanks for sharing.
Definitely: Agency and News. No other theme is so clean, so easy to use and navigate. Thank you Brian!
I notice that a lot of your showcase sites are designed by professional designers and refer to Custom as the child theme, instead of for example, Lifestyle. I have customized one of your child themes for which there are very few example sites yet when I have submitted it on two occasions it never gets approved and I don’t get any feedback. I am assuming that my theme mods aren’t up to scratch given mostly designer’s sites are showcased. Are there any prerequisites to being accepted into the showcase, e.g age of site, professional customization, etc? I would love to take my site to that standard providing it doesn’t mean I have to pay a designer to do what I think I have done a good job doing myself. Great to hear your advice. I love my selection of child theme…midnight.
I’m a faithful AgentPress user and have absolutely loved it! Easy to use, change, and plenty of online “help” when it is needed.
I want to customize my sub-nav in news child theme of genesis and do something as shown in the image below. please help me, as i have been all over the web, but cant find the solution. below is the image attached and what i want to do :-
http://i.imgur.com/maRrl.png
thanks a ton in advance.
please solve it, as its kind of urgent.
Best thing to do is to post this in our support forum as I don’t personally support themes here on my site.
Quiet shocking to see Outreach at the top of the list. And I miss the Magazine theme from the list.
I like the older version of Lifestyle and News Theme, The newer versions of both i think its less impressive.
I love the news child theme. Nice site BTW
Hi Brian,
Your Showcase links go to 404 pages. Can you correct it?
Ah, thanks – yes just corrected it.
I tried the Genesis framework but with little web design experience I found it kind of frustrating. I want to try it again and was wondering about the sleek theme what do it mean for a theme to not be mobile responsive. Thanks. Great Blog.
To be honestly, I’d suggest away from using the Sleek theme, as it’s a bit outdated for us and not responsive as you know. More than likely if we update it, we’ll give it a whole new look and it’d still be a while before we even get to that point.
Which one would be a good starting point learning wise…one for tech news I start web design school next month so look out here I come jk
Probably the News theme, in my opinion.
Eleven40 child theme looks great in my opinion.
I love the design of Enterprise child theme.
Can you please update this list for the year 2012-13 with elegant design and responsive layouts.
wao these themes are awesome thanks for sharing this usefull post
We used to use the enterprise theme before moving away from wordpress. Excellent theme and had everything we needed for design and functionality.
The over themes seem great and nice to see them shared here.