In reply to Dev.

Thanks for commenting and giving your perspective Dev. I think you're right that a lot of people implicitly understand what's happening on the best list sites and simply use them as a starting point for their research. Most people know to disregard hyperbolic claims on the internet.

And you're right to read up on reviews wherever you can. It's a real shame that, outside of the marketplaces, there is nowhere for customers to leave reviews on themes from independent shops.

I'll give you a few thoughts, from my perspective, on how the theme discovery process you describe might not be best for the end customer (ie - you). I suspect most people (including you) are aware of and look out for at least some of these issues:

1. You're missing some of the most widely respected themes in the business. WooThemes, for instance, no longer offers an affiliate program. Several other well-regarded shops offer an invite-only affiliate program. For that reason, they frequently don't appear on these sites. You know about Genesis themes. But what about all the people that don't? I never see Genesis child themes on these sites. What about the WordPress.org repository? Lots of themes there have up-sells (Pro versions) with support.

2. When your Google results for "best [niche] theme" are clogged with long lists of seemingly identical products with nothing but style variations, the "look" becomes the dominant factor for your purchase. There are definitely some niches, like restaurants or creative portfolios, where character and branding are important. But what experienced web developers will tell you is that the flashiest themes are often the worst websites: they load slowly and employ techniques which confuse and frustrate web users (scroll-jacking, poor touch-screen support, unnecessary repaints and performance issues on mobile). What good web design does, at the end of the day, is convert visitors into customers. Poorly maintained "best themes" lists lump the good in with the bad, which makes it harder to distinguish anything beyond whether you like the way it looks.

3. In theory, a marketplace like ThemeForest should control for quality in this way, and help differentiate their products. Unfortunately, ThemeForest is more of a designers' playground than a place where good web design is rewarded (consistently -- there are some good developers on TF still!). ThemeForest has catered to the market's tendency to choose style over substance, and dropped the ball when it comes to promoting other aspects of good web design. As a result, the ThemeForest marketplace has coalesced around a very particular type of product, rather than being a tool for discovering and differentiating products. Because ThemeForest dominates the "best of" lists, they tend to reproduce this problem.

I'll give you an example from the niche I know: restaurants. Nearly every restaurant theme will tell you they handle online reservations. But when they say that, they actually just mean that you can create a contact form on your site where people can send an email. Very few of them actually integrate with a good, well-rounded tool for handling reservations (a few are starting to, though). Several also tout their restaurant menu features. But many (not all) of them don't replicate traditional menu designs or rely on you learning how to use a page builder to construct your menu. If you've ever had to construct a 100+ item menu, you know how tedious that is.

But differences in capabilities, cross-device performance, and user experience are just not getting communicated well at any stage of the theme discovery process. This is not your fault. It's ours -- those of us who sell in the marketplace and are supposed to be the developer "experts" customers rely on.

The reason that "best of" lists come in for criticism is that they occupy a very powerful position in the theme discovery process (Google). And by caring very little about the content of their list, they're reproducing the problems in the marketplace that some of us are seeking to move away from.

I'm glad you brought your perspective as a buyer into this discussion. We too rarely hear from the people who are driving the market. And as I said, I think you're right that they offer a portal into the theme marketplace that is effective, even if I think it carries with it some of the issues I described. But as you mentioned, what we really need is a third-party site where themes and customer reviews can be listed for all themes, whether they're in a big marketplace or not. Google is the only central location theme shoppers really have to help them make the best choice possible.