Market Fads & Fashions

Unarguably, the most important part of your website is content.
To draw in clients or customers, you need captivating content
and search engines are blind to web design. They only see
content. The images, structure and colors of your website go out
the window when it comes to search engine placement, which we
all know is the single best traffic generator. Your web design
is really only a shell that makes your content look
pretty. Don’t get me wrong, your site’s design can be very
important. People are influenced by colors they see, and the
quality of your design lends credibility to your brand-image.

So why are so many people spending hundreds or thousands of
dollars for someone to build them a custom shell for
their content? The answer is simple: because they don’t know
about web site templates. Or maybe more accurately: they know
about templates, but don’t know how to utilize them. Did you
know that many web designers actually buy web site
templates that they then customize to meet their clients
needs?

A website template is the fastest, easiest, and most cost
effective path to building your website. Where custom design can
take weeks or months to finish, and can run you in the thousands
of dollars, web templates are relatively inexpensive, and can be
ready to publish in a matter of days. Many high-quality
templates are available for under $100.

There are a few different options for finding web templates.
There are membership based dealers that offer a ne-time or
monthly subscription fee which buys you the right to download
their entire collection. Then there are companies that deal on a
one-by-one basis, selling a single template for use with one
website. Personally, I find the one-by-one type companies offer
much higher quality designs. Not to mention the aspect of
exclusivity. If ten thousand people subscribe to a membership
based template company, and one thousand of them like the XYZ
template, how many websites are going to look exactly the same?
You do the math.

Many of the single-sale companies offer two separate ways to
buy. The first and most common is the general purchase. This
gives you the right to use the design to build one website,
whether you’re building a website for yourself or for someone
else. Then there is the unique price. This not only gives you
the right to use the template, it also means the company will
stop selling the template to other customers. You will be the
only one out there with that design.

I know what you’re thinking, “Even if I did get a template, I
wouldn’t know how to edit it.” The great thing is it’s not hard
to find a company that will sell you the template, and then help
you edit the template for a nominal fee. Basically, you’re
getting professional web design at a fraction of the cost. There
is really no reason not to buy a web site template.

Visit your local template shop and have a look around. You may
be pleasantly surprised to find exactly what you’re looking for!