Working With Web Design Templates

If you don't want to engage web designers and you don't want to design a website yourself either, then there are plenty of websites that would just love to meet your needs.

Anyone can buy web templates which is an easy way for anyone to apply already-existing design to their website.

Free Web Design Templates

Do a quick search for 'free website templates' or 'free web design templates' will turn up a lot of offers. You have to realize, though, that almost any template you get for free is either going to be really very amateurish – looking through the results, in fact, a lot of it is downright nasty.

There will also probably be some annoying conditions of use, such as not being able to use the design commercially or having to link back to the designer's web page from your page.

If you really decide to use free web templates, a better way of doing it is to use the ones that come for free with whatever software you're using. For example, WordPress, has some very clean, attractive templates.

However, you have to realise though that free website templates will never be unique: your website will look just like hundreds of other websites out there that found the same free template like you did.

Cheap Website Templates

Once you start to get into the paid-for templates, things will start to look good. The idea behind sites that sell templates (templatemonster.com is the market-leader) is that they can pay website templates designers a proper rate to design something good once, and then resell it as many times as they want for a relatively low price.

This lets designers be paid for as many designs as they want without ever having to deal with customers, and customers can buy and use the designs for a much lower price than they would usually pay for. The other advantage is customers can see the design in advance.

Although the effect isn't quite as bad compared to those free web templates, you still have to understand that other people out there are going to have the same design as you.

This can be a problem, especially if you use one of the big template sites and pick the obvious design for the type of site you're running. However, when used carefully, it can be one of the best ways to get a good-looking site up without breaking the bank.

Exclusive Web Site Templates

Now a days, many template sites started offering exclusive we site templates – this means exclusive templates are sold only once, to one website, and then taken down. They found themselves with a runaway hit on their hands.

The reasons for this might not be immediately obvious, as buying exclusive rights to a template are often more expensive than just paying a designer to do it to begin with, and you get less say in what the site looks like.

The popularity of exclusive web site templates is down to removing the often-fraught relations between a web designer and the customer. All too often, customers come into the design process with all sorts of requirements and preconceptions, and designers will fail to understand what customers care about and what they don't.

This way, designers are free to create something great, and customers can take it if they like it or look at hundreds of alternatives if they don't. It takes all the uncertainty and negotiation out at both ends, and leaves both the designer and the customer much happier than they would have been.

Of course, if there is something small you want changed, most sites are happy to get the designer to do it for you for a small extra fee.

Putting Text in Templates

Once you've got a template, the only remaining step is to put your text into the template. The designer might be able to help you with this, or you might prefer to add the template to whatever software you plan to use so that your navigation and content can be added automatically.

 Back to Working With Web Design Templates Index