AI-slop has flooded the template market

Source: Dev.to

Overview

Recently, I was sourcing e‑commerce templates for a client and ran into a frustrating reality:

• Expensive, locked‑down ecosystems like Shopify, which make customization painful and tie you into their platform.
• Broken AI‑generated templates, which promise a lot but fail on basic accessibility, performance, or even just working correctly.

Frustrated with these limitations, I decided to build something better: Estrocom, an e‑commerce template built with Astro, Tailwind, and TypeScript. My goal was simple: a template that’s fast, fully accessible, SEO‑friendly, and mobile‑first, while still being easy to customize and extend.

What Makes Estrocom Different

• Accessibility – Every page passes WCAG AA standards. Axe and Lighthouse tests report 0 accessibility issues, maintaining AA color contrast and semantic HTML.
• Performance – Sub‑1‑second load times and strong Lighthouse scores across performance, best practices, and SEO metrics.
• Mobile‑First – Designed from the ground up for mobile; works smoothly on screens as small as 360 px and scales seamlessly to large desktops.
• Atomic Design – Components follow the Atoms → Molecules → Organisms pattern, making it easy to scale, maintain, and reuse code.
• Full Shopping Flow – Integrated cart functionality, product categories, and dynamic product pages out‑of‑the‑box.
• SEO‑Ready – Includes JSON‑LD schema for products and an automatically generated sitemap to help search engines index your site properly.

How You Can Use It

Estrocom is config‑driven, so getting started is simple:

1. Add your products by editing src/utils/productData.js.
2. Replace placeholder images in public/assets/ with your own.
3. Update categories and product pages by editing the frontmatter in src/pages/category/ and src/pages/products/.
4. Customize the homepage at src/pages/index.astro to tell your brand story.
5. Adjust theme colors and typography by updating src/design-system/colors.js, src/design-system/sizing.js, and src/design-system/typography.js.

This makes it easy to get a fully functional, production‑ready store without starting from scratch.

Lessons Learned

• Performance matters more than bells and whistles. A template that loads fast keeps users engaged and improves SEO.
• Accessibility isn’t optional. Testing with Axe and following WCAG guidelines ensures your store is usable for everyone.
• Atomic Design scales. Structuring components properly makes future updates painless.

If you’re a developer, founder, or small business looking for a fast, accessible, and flexible e‑commerce solution, Estrocom is a strong starting point.

Live demo: https://estrocom.netlify.app/
Source code: https://github.com/VBproDev/estrocom