Week Ending July 18,2010

Number 1: Awake Theme

Notes: From the incomparable WebTreats, Awake is a premium WordPress theme that has all the makings of a long-term success story.

Awake Sales This Week: 105

Awake Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 5 out of 5

Price: $42

Demo Awake | Purchase Awake Theme

Number 2: inFocus Theme

Notes: Another one from WebTreats, inFocus is ThemeForest’s most popular premium WordPress theme of all time.

inFocus Sales This Week: 86

inFocus Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 5 out of 5

Price: $37

Demo inFocus | Purchase inFocus Theme

Number 3: Vulcan Theme

Notes: If you’re looking for a popular, minimalist premium theme, check out Vulcan

Vulcan Sales This Week: 80

Vulcan Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 5 out of 5

Price: $42

Demo Vulcan | Purchase Vulcan Theme

Number 4: Cadca Theme

Notes: Cadca is an elegant solution for your portfolio or business website.

Cadca Sales This Week: 77

Cadca Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 5 out of 5

Price: $42

Demo Cadca | Purchase Cadca Theme

Number 5: Awake Theme

Notes: From the arguably most popular author on ThemeForest, Krieis’ Avisio is an up and comer with a virtually unlimited number of skins

Avisio Sales This Week: 77

Avisio Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 5 out of 5

Price: $42

Demo Avisio | Purchase Awake Theme

Number 6: Complexity Theme

Notes: There’s nothing complex about this new premium WordPress theme. Built for the power of WordPress 3.

Complexity Sales This Week: 70

Complexity Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 5 out of 5

Price: $37

Demo Complexity | Purchase Complexity Theme

Number 7: Locus Theme

Notes: Like the one-page WordPress themes? Check out Locus but be sure to note the lower than normal rating for one of ThemeForest’s top themes (and also note that they have taken down the ability to purchase the theme for a while – or at least asked you NOT to purchase it – while they repair/update a few things).

Locus Sales This Week: 70

Locus Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 3 out of 5

Price: $32

Demo Locus | Purchase Locus Theme

Number 8: Unite Theme

Notes: Number 2 in popularity over the past 3 months, Unite is a VERY comprehensive WordPress theme from a VERY talented developer.

Unite Sales This Week: 64

Unite Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 5 out of 5

Price: $37

Demo Unite | Purchase Unite Theme

Number 9: WebStudio HTML Theme

Notes: As the only HTML template to make TF’s Top 10, WebStudio HTML is a clean, classy option for those who like darker colors.

WebStudio Sales This Week: 51

WebStudio Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 4 out of 5

Price: $17

Demo WebStudio | Purchase WebStudio Theme

Number 10: Echoes Theme

Notes: Wrapping up the ThemeForest Top 10 for July 18, Echoes is a venerable theme that is still chugging along.

Echoes Sales This Week: 44

Echoes Sales Previous Week: (N/A)

ThemeForest User Rating: 5 out of 5

Price: $37

Demo Echoes | Purchase Awake Theme

The first step is to create a localized site for the French market. Besides doing your research into the French mp3 market and what bands or producers you’ll need to feature, you’ll also want to do research into popular French websites in general. What’s popular, minimalist design or lots of shiny Flash animation? What colour schemes are prevalent? Is there a lot of copy or are the pages mostly text-free? What navigation tools do the other sites use? Use this research to build a profile of your average French music-downloader and then tailor the design and aesthetic of your site towards this profile.

Then comes the most important step – getting your copy correct. It goes without saying that you’re going to need a professional translator (working into their own native language) to turn your English copy into impeccable French, but it’s worth also getting a French copywriter to then check that copy and ensure that you’ve got the tone, style and slang absolutely correct for your audience. Consider the case of General Motors, who launched the Buick LaCrosse in Canada in 2003, then quickly had to withdraw it and find a new name, unaware as they were before launching the car that ‘la crosse’ is a popular slang term in French-speaking Quebec for, ahem…self-pleasure.

Embarrassing branding blunders aside, online consumers are savvy, and if they spot a phony – whether it’s through misused terminology, a misspelling or a false note in the tone – then that’s a customer you’ve lost. This applies to any language and cultural group, but especially so for ‘High Context’ cultures, such as Asian or Middle Eastern cultures, where much of communication is implicit and social interactions are governed by unspoken but mutually understood rules. The potential for causing offence with poorly considered copy is high, so making sure that your copy is absolutely word perfect and cultural appropriate for its target audience – before going online – is an essential step to success.

The next step to success, once you have those customers, is keeping them – being able to speak to your customers in their language at the outset is no good if you can’t then offer customer support in their language as well. The key steps to effective customer support are making sure your support team are quickly and easily accessible, making sure that any client issues or queries are quickly, effectively and truthfully dealt with, following up with the clients after fixing issues and then having clients provide feedback to measure the effectiveness of your support system and making changes, as necessary.

Obviously, unless you’re already bringing in massive profits, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to afford a dedicated customer support call-centre for each specific language group. There are some simple strategies you can employ, though, such as hiring a full-time translator or maintaining regular working relationships with a team of freelance translators to field incoming and outgoing emails, as well as translating and checking the copy for your online marketing tools including newsletters, tweets, and all other business to business and business to customer communications. It’s also a good idea to think through the range of potential queries or situations that will arise and then have a series of FAQs and template emails written and translated, so that the majority of basic issues and queries can be dealt with automatically.

Finally, consider the peculiarities of customer support services in the specific market. In the case of an mp3 download site for the French market, for instance, the customer demographic is likely to be young and tech-savvy, and also impatient – in this scenario a good option is to provide customer support via an instant social media tool such as Twitter.

Customers with queries or complaints can then seek help directly from the company and receive feedback almost immediately – in this scenario the downside is that criticism will be exposed to the entire client base, but it also means a boost to your reputation as an honest and open company.

Running your customer support service via instant messaging and social media would necessitate hiring a full-time language specialist, but would be less extravagant than running a language-specific call centre, as you would likely require if you were an international electronics company or a bank.

Your third option is to field all issues and queries via email, which would allow your company to keep a team of freelance translators on stand-by to deal with email problems as and when they came up. Either way, the key to a successful expansion into a foreign language market is to offer a specialized service in their language – if you speak to a customer on their level, then it’s likely they’ll listen.

About the author

Christian Arno is founder and Managing Director of translation and localization company Lingo24. With operations spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries, Lingo24 achieved a turnover of $6m USD in 2009. Follow Christian on Twitter: @Lingo24.com/Chr

I wanted to let you know about a new site that has become one of my favorites to visit. It’s one of those sites that once you know about it, you find yourself going back to it every day.

Sometime in 2008 I stumbled across Theme Forest for the first time while searching for the best wordpress themes. At first I wasn’t that impressed, but I remember not spending very much time investigating just what this “Theme Forest” was. We all know there are a never ending supply of free and premium Wordpress Themes online today, and at first glance this seemed to be just another choice in the virtually endless sources of Wordpress wares.

Well fast forward almost 2 years, and let me tell you about the Theme Forest of 2010.

Theme Forest In 2010

Theme Forest is a marketplace in the Envato network that is specifically for Wordpress Themes and HTML Templates. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering just where you could find high quality Wordpress themes or website templates, Theme Forest was created just for you.

There are many of these so-called “marketplaces” for just about every type of product or service you may need when doing business online, but I’d like to explain why Theme Forest is different and why they have become the first place I turn for just about everything I need to run one of my many websites.

The Theme Forest Difference

Simply put, they are a destination for Wordpress and web developers to list their themes and website templates to people just like you and me. The reason this is so powerful is because it totally goes against the “norm” when it comes to purchasing a Wordpress theme or html template.

Typically, you go to Company A’s website where they offer Product 1, 2, and 3. You can buy their work and their work only.

Now imagine if you had the opportunity to brows the work of hundreds and thousands of different web developers? Imagine if you could preview any website, template, or theme before you pruchased it? Imagine if you could read the comments from others who have purchased it, see which themes or templates are most popular, and even rate the work for even more transparency?

This is exactly what you get with ThemeForest, but there is so much more…

Not only can you browse, purchase, and interact with thousands of developers and customers from across the globe, you also have the chance to sell you themes and templates to a dedicated and growing community.

As proof to how large and powerful this community has become, in February 2010, ThemeForest’s top author (handle: Krisei) just surpassed the $250,000 mark for sales of his Wordpress Themes and files.

That is no small feat, but I have no doubt it will soon be broken by one of the thousands of other members contributing to this community on a daily basis.

The Best Part About Theme Forest

But do you want to know what I love the absolute most about Theme Forest?

Envato (the company behind Theme Forest) has not only built the best marketplace for Wordpress Themes and HTML Templates, they have created similar marketplaces for video files, pre-built coding solutions, web graphics, and flash files just to name a few.

Imagine being able to have just one account that let’s you buy and sell everything from stock audio to fully developed web templates that are both HIGHLY professional, focused on web standards and usability, and at absolutely rock-bottom prices!

Theme Forest closely examines each theme or template uploaded to the marketplace to ensure that only quality authors with quality work can list their work.

As the end user, you have the ability to quickly and easily access just about everything you need to run a website from a network of developers, coders, artists, and audio experts…and you can do it all from one account!

It is completely free to setup an account with Theme Forest, and this one account can be used to browse all of the other sites in the Envato Marketplace.

The Bottom Line: I’ve been doing business online for over 5 years now. Rarely have I been so impressed with a product that within a matter of a few weeks I can’t imagine doing business without it.

This is the type of marketplace Envato has created. If you are looking for professional, high-end products for your website at beyond reasonable prices, I encourage you to head over to ThemeForest and see for yourself first-hand. Visit Theme Forest.