Monday 31 December 2012

How To Avoid Mistakes When Choosing Website Templates

By Jemser Reik Bary


In the past, if you needed a web site built you either had to hire a website designer or learn how to design and build your own site. Either way, you ended up spending lots of time and money. With more recent technology, you can instead easily install a content management system (CMS) with all the technology and facilities built in. So how do you distinguish your website from your competitors? By making it unique in appearance with a nice theme.

Website templates are really just stick on designs. The most simple designs are built with the language of the web - HTML, and you need to add in your content piecemeal. More complex designs are designed to fit on a framework such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal so that your site has all the capability of the framework as well as the beauty or utility of the design you select. These ones are usually easy to install and include the ability to customise them with your own images and text. You can often get as good a result as from a custom built website.

Generally speaking, website templates are quite cheap, especially compared with the cost of hiring a designer. So you can get a nice looking website while saving yourself quite a sum. However, to get the desired result, you need to carefully choose your design and its features before you buy.

To get the best out of your design there are things you should be careful about. While you want to choose an attractive template, try to make sure that the design is not being used all over the web. As much as possible, you want to leave your visitors with the impression that your site is unique.

Don't allow yourself to spend too much time customising your site. Though you need to be able to insert your logo and edit the header, other items are not that important if the basic template is attractive. It is best to take the time to get a web site template that is close to the exact appearance you require. Understand that visitors come to your site for it's content. Using a template is meant to save you time, not swallow it up.

You need to be absolutely sure that a template will work before you buy. You should never assume that you will be able to customise it to look the way you want after you purchase and install it. So, check before hand that your template is suitable and works. If you can, find out if previous purchasers had any issues with it. Look at 'frequently asked questions' and the template description to find out what it supports and what versions of your framework it works with. It is better to take the time to get in touch with the designer before you make a purchase, rather than afterwards.

Choose a template to suit your audience and your industry. Even though in practice you can use almost any template, ideally, use ones intended for your niche such as real estate website templates. Niche specific templates often include facilities that visitors expect, or which can enhance their experience of your site. For example a Real Estate template could include facilities to showcase floors, rooms, maps, video etc.

Lastly, check before you buy that you are purchasing the correct website template for the framework you have installed on your website host. If you buy an inappropriate template you won't be able to install it and you won't be able to get your money back either.

In conclusion:

Website templates are carefully crafted to enable you to build a high quality professional looking site with minimal effort. Be sure to choose your template carefully so as to avoid problems afterwards. Meanwhile, you should avoid getting bogged down in customising your site, rather address the issue of ensuring you provide your visitors with fresh interesting articles.




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