08 Apr When to Use a Template Website
Advantages of template based websites.
Template based websites are becoming very popular and there is a good reason for it. Installing a pre-made template gives you a huge head start in getting a great looking and functioning website. Most of the features you would want in a website have already been built and are in widespread use, so building a site from scratch can turn out to be a giant exercise in ‘reinventing the wheel’.
A popular website for commercial templates is themeforest.net It has over 19,000 website templates, over 5,300 of which are specifically built for WordPress. Most commercial templates from Themeforest will come with several pre made layout options plus extensive customisation options. Using the on board customisations it is possible to create 2 completely different looking websites from the same theme. For further customisations it is possible for a developer to access the CSS stylesheets and HTML/PHP template files to tweak and add extra content and styles.
Templates also come with many handy functionality features such as special content types for displaying testimonials, portfolio items, team members, ecommerce products etc. These handy specialised layouts can also be tweaked to suit the style of the site and save a great deal of time that would otherwise be needed to build them from scratch.
Website templates (from a reputable author) come with up to date, standards compliant code and are fully mobile responsive to optimise browsing on smart phones and tablets.
So what is the down side of a template website?
With pre made layouts in a templates, even with extensive customisations, to the discerning eye it can still look like a template site. And of course templates, or ‘themes’ as they’re called in WordPress, are sold many times over. So whatever your business is – if you use a template website there is always that small chance that you’ll visit your competition’s website and find that by chance they’ve used the same template and your sites look similar….. Of course customisations can reduce the chances of this but it would take a fairly thorough editing of site styles to change every element of the existing theme.
So it’s best not to use a template site when:
- Your brand requires a truly unique look and feel that will withstand scrutiny to stand up as a completely custom design (e.g. if you were a website design company selling unique design services it would be counter productive to use a template site).
- You need (only), specialist features that aren’t part of standard website content (portfolio, blog, testimonials etc).
* At CP Design we specialise in the efficiency and cost effective nature of template site. For highly customised website development and design wen recommend some of our associates.
It is best to use a template website when:
- You don’t have a gigantic budget!
- You want a quick, efficient, modern, responsive attractive website with a huge range of features available and an absolutely unique look is not a necessity.
View the range of sites we have built using templates here.