wtorek, 28 września 2010

Are Web Templates Bad?


In short, web templates are bad for business. If asking for a personal or family website, go web template all the way and never look back. We deal with businesses and like I said, web templates are bad for business. Before I explain all of the different components and characteristics that make web templates so horrible, let me clear something up first. Often when I tell people that web templates are their worst nightmare, they stop me and ask, "Then why do sell them on your web design company's website?" The answer to this is two-part. The first reason is simply a cost issue. Many new businesses and a select few established businesses simply either cannot afford completely custom website design or they cannot justify the price. Our templates afford them an opportunity to present an effective web presence at much lower costs. The second reason requires you to understand the nature of our web templates. Our web templates still require you to possess graphic design, slicing and web programming skills. By purchasing a template from us, you can save a lot of money on a website because you've cut out the bulk of our graphic design department work. However, we still customize our web templates to cater to your business and our programmers will ensure that a template based design from us doesn't lack functionality like other web templates do.

With that said, let's focus on the reasons why web templates are bad for business:

Web templates poorly represent your business.

Life would be excellent if competition didn't exist and you were the only business around offering your products and services. However, we know that isn't life and businesses have to communicate to potential clients what differentiates them from their competitors and why the potential clients should choose them. Templates don't effectively communicate your brand and competitive advantages due to fact that they are pre-designed and have no association with your business. One of the best ways that I've heard this put is like this, "Template web sites are designed to be sold to you and not to your customers, and many business owners get into the trap thinking that if the template looks good to you it will look good to your clients." The problem with this thinking is it's too singular. The point of effective website design is not only to look good, but also to look unique. If you're working from a template that has been resold to thousands of other businesses, you complete lack uniqueness and regardless of the number of times your web template has been resold, a web template will never set your business apart from your competition. Period!

Web templates are often over done to make them more appealing to you.

Remember, the he designers of website templates are designing a product to sell to you. That's why they over pack them with flash, sounds, graphics, icons, and bullets which may in the end actually detract from the usability of the website. Yes, all of these things seem cool and they may lead you to believe that the template is going to make your business look great but think again. You don't need your website to be the most graphically designed website on the web. You need your website to be functional first, and then professional. 90% of the time, anything other than is simply excess.

Speaking of flash, what's with all that flash?

Once again going back to the the idea of template designers designing them to sell to you and not your customers, they often jam pack their templates with tons of flash design elements. I mean, who wouldn't want their website to be a super cool flash site? That'll impress your customers right? Well, not if they can't find your website. We only recommend flash website to well established companies who have no need to be found. Everyone knows who Pepsi is and there aren't many people searching the internet trying to figure what Pepsi is. Bottom line, flash animation is not good for search engine optimization (SEO) and the often most often flash animated sections of web templates is the navigation menu which is a crucial SEO component. So by choosing that beautiful flash animated website, you in the end could be costing yourself traffic to your website.

The Logo Space

It's actually pretty easy to spot a web template when you see one by the logo. The logo believe it or not, is one of the most critical parts of your website design because of its branding power. You can always tell when the logo design and placement was an afterthought which it is in a website template. The design was not created for your logo, and your logo most often won't fit in without it being resized, the colors changed, or done away with and replaced with text.








Sparxx Design Provides affordable professional website design and development, ecommerce development, internet marketing, search engine optimization and business development, and custom application development. We grow your online business! - (937) 660-3499 Sparxx Design, Dayton Ohio Web Design - http://www.sparxxdesign.com


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