If you’re looking for an affordable and quick way to get a great look for your website or blog, a pre-designed template can be the way to go. Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, people often make mistakes when it comes to choosing and using a web template, so they end up with something they didn’t expect. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.
The first obvious mistake when choosing a website template
The most common mistake you’ll see is using a template that’s very popular. If too many people use the same template, you’ll see what is essentially the same website in a bunch of different places. Don’t you want to be unique? If you’re going to use a template, be careful to pick one that you won’t see everywhere. You can also purchase a premium template. Premium templates won’t be as widespread, and often times you can get exclusive rights (though that will cost more).
Over-customizing a template. Is there such a thing?
The whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort, but as I already said, you want to look different. Some people will choose to just change the title and appropriate details and be done with it. If you’ve chosen a unique template, then that’s probably enough. Still, you might want to customize things a bit more. Just don’t get bogged down in the details. If you take the time to customize the template so that it looks nothing like the original, you’re kind of defeating the purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort. That’s a personal judgement call, but something to be aware of.
However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site’s theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. Still, though, only make the necessary changes and don’t redesign the whole template. That kind of defeats the purpose.
Know your audience. Choose a template with an appropriate theme.
In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is subjective, but you really should take time to be sure the template that you select suits your audience. Don’t use a garden theme if you’re selling computers. Don’t choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they work for your mission and your audience.
Templates can be a time saver and give your site a great look fairly quickly, just be sure to take a little time do do it right.
P.S. – There’s tons of inexpensive premium templates at TemplateMonster, or if you’re on Wordpress, there’s always Thesis, which I use and love. The beauty of Thesis is that it is highly customizable and doesn’t have to take up a ton of your time to look amazing.
