I choose my three or four favourite, and show them to people:
- Whose opinion I respect
- Who know about the business/product the website is for
- Who are not scared to tell me that all my choices suck
Mainly because after you've spent hour after hour staring at a million generic templates, it's easy to get lost and lose sight of the bigger picture. Also, if you spent 2 hours staring a sucky templates, the one that seems the least sucky tends to register as really good in your mind, when in fact it's still pretty sucky.