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UnionForever
UnionForever

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AI-slop has flooded the template market

#webdev #astro #lowcode #a11y

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.

You can check out the live demo here:

https://estrocom.netlify.app

Or browse the source code on GitHub:

https://github.com/VBproDev/estrocom

What Makes Estrocom Different

Here’s why I think this template is worth checking out:

  • Accessibility: Every page passes WCAG AA standards. I ran Axe and Lighthouse tests, and the template came out with 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, it works smoothly on screens as small as 360px 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, sizing.js, and typography.js.

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

Lessons Learned

Building Estrocom reinforced a few key lessons:

  • 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.

Check it out, fork it, or contribute:

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