What I Mean by “Stock Photos”

I want to be clear. When I’m talking about stock photos in Web templates causing a problem for the webmasters using them, I’m not talking about images that make up the basic site structure (like buttons or navigation link backgrounds). I’m talking about those creepy corporate smiling faces and very niche-specific photos so many designers love to use.

Most often I see these types of photos used in headers of Web templates. However, I’ve seen a few with stock images peppered throughout. Let’s look at why adding them might not be the best idea.

Why Stock Photos are a Problem

There are a few reasons stock photos can be a problem for people using a Web template. But first, let’s look at a common target market for these templates. Yes, some more experienced site owners still like to use templates and just customize them for their own use. But many Web template users (whether buyers or users of free templates) are new to managing their own websites.

This latter group is important. They can represent a big potential buyer base for template designers. But they don’t necessarily know how to customize designs easily. They might not even have access to software enabling them to do so. For this particular group, stock photos can cause a variety of problems. For example:

• Stock images might be directly integrated with other images in the Web template. Many Web templates don’t even provide the .psd for users to edit layers (not that new webmasters would necessarily know how yet anyway). Sometimes these images are layered over things like textured backgrounds though, and that can make it nearly impossible for the potential buyer to edit the image to something more appropriate for their company’s site.
• Even if you do include the .psd file, it’s likely they don’t know how to edit the images. If that’s the case, they’ll probably buy from someone else. After all, they’re going with Web templates because it’s supposed to be an easy option.
• Potential buyers might love a general design, but stock images represent an entirely different industry. This goes back to them not knowing how to edit the images. They might think it’s an otherwise perfect fit for their site, but if they can’t easily swap things out, they’ll look elsewhere.

Let’s look at a few examples. But let me be clear: I’m not saying any of these templates is “better” than another — just showing examples of potential problems and easier designs to work with from the perspective of a first-time site owner.

This first Web template has a very busy design. It’s visually interesting of course, and that might suck in buyers. But then when they start trying to use it in developing their own site, they might find that it’s not very adaptable to their needs.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

This next Web template might look much cleaner, but it still poses image editing problems to a newer user who might either not have the .psd (or other layered file) to work with or the expertise of knowing how to make the changes. The problem in this case is actually the icons and the fact that they overlap other edging in the design. If someone’s given the coded template instead of the editable image for a design similar to this, they might have a hard time using it if they need different icons to be able to use those areas for different types of content.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

The next Web template example might look a bit busy like the first one — a heavy emphasis on the visuals. However, because the images used are generic and easily adaptable to any number of uses, this one isn’t too bad for a new user. A sticky note is a sticky note. It’s not like having an icon that represents something specific when you want to put different content in a section. This overall should be an easier template to work with (at least when it comes to images).

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Let’s progress a little further to an even easier to use template for new site owners who aren’t terribly familiar with Web design. This Web template is relatively clean. There is only one image to deal with other than the logo in this case. It’s enough to give the template some visual interest, but at the same time it could actually be treated like a block image and be easily replaced with just about anything else relevant to the user’s own site or company.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Remember that appealing to a significant customer base with your templates means that you have to not only focus on keeping the design interesting visually, but you also have to keep usability in mind.

Tips for Designers Who Want to Use Stock Images

If you’re worried about these stock photos turning off potential Web template customers, here are a few things you can do to minimize that problem:

• Use few (or no) stock photos. Instead make the Web template design visually interesting with a great color scheme, generic images (like buttons and icons), and attractive typography choices.
• Try not to use industry-specific images if possible. If a Web template could otherwise be used for any industry or niche, don’t ruin its potential mass appeal with overly targeted stock photos.
• Don’t lay stock photos that people might want to remove over other images or backgrounds. You might make it too difficult for a newbie to change that image.
• Try to avoid stock images with odd shapes. A basic block-style image can be much easier for the user or customer to replace than a complicated image shape.
• Include the .psd. Make the template as easy to edit as possible. Better yet, include instructions on how the user can edit that .psd to change the main stock images in the Web template.

Stock images can make a template visually appealing at first glance, but for customers still new to Web development (those who are also likely to consider templates for their supposed ease of use and affordability) they can also cause problems. You can make it easier on customers, and possibly attract more of them, by keeping those concerns in mind. There’s nothing wrong with using stock images in Web templates. Just keep your target customers’ goals and limitations in mind when designing them.

I’m sure there are plenty of bloggers outside of the writing community with the same problem. They use themes out-of-the-box not necessarily because they want to but because they don’t know how to change things. With those WordPress or CSS newbies in mind, let’s take a non-technical look at some quick HTML and CSS tips and tricks a new WordPress user can use to improve their blog design. Note: I’m not a designer — these are meant to be practical tips to help non-coders work around common WordPress design issues on their own. I do not claim that they’re necessarily the best solutions in all cases. If you’d like to share other methods, please do so in the comments.

1. Replace your blog title with a logo

By default, your WordPress theme might include a blog title link in the header, but to customize and brand your site you want to replace it with a logo. Here’s how to do that. First upload your logo image and have the URL / address for the file on-hand. Then go to the WordPress templates editor in your admin panel and find header.php. You might see something like this:

<h1><a href=”<?php echo get_option(‘home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></a></h1>

That code adds a link to your home page (with the text of your blog title). On my business site, this is what the site name looks like without a logo:

If you want to use a logo image instead, you would remove everything between the <h1> tags and replace it with something like this:

<a href=”YourBlogURL.com”><img src=”WebAddressOfYourLogoGoesHere” alt=”YourBlogTitleGoesHere”/>

That code will add your logo in place of the linked blog title. Here is what my site’s name looks like when making the change:

2. Add margins around images or theme areas.

Is your new logo image all the way at the top of the screen or too far to the left? You can fix that by adding margins around the image. Here’s what your logo might look like without margins or padding:

Let’s look at some inline CSS you can use to adjust the margins / positioning of a specific image. Go back into your header.php file and find the logo code you just added. We’re going to wrap that code in div tags (the new code is bolded below). Here’s what you would get (and yes, I know that purists would prefer to do this in the stylesheet, but I’m sticking to inline here to give non-CSS folks easier control over individual images):

<div style=”margin: 9px 6px 9px 12px”><a href=”YourBlogURL.com”><img src=”WebAddressOfYourLogoGoesHere” alt=”YourBlogTitleGoesHere”/></div>

This adds a 9 pixel margin above the image, 6 pixels to the right, 9 pixels at the bottom, and 12 pixels on the left. You can use any margins that you want to — whatever works for your site’s design. Here’s what mine looks like when adjusted:

Note: If your theme’s stylesheet already moves your logo section away from the template edges, you might not need to do this, but you can still try it to see how it makes the logo move and apply the styling to other images as needed.

3. Change colors.

Sometimes you’ll find WordPress themes you love, but you aren’t quite crazy about the color scheme. Fortunately that’s a very easy fix. Colors are represented by six-digit hex color codes. To change a color, you find the existing code in your stylesheet (style.css for most themes) and you swap it out with the hex code for the color you really want.

Take a look at my business writing blog as an example. I designed this site to be minimalist. As you can see on the live version the background is white. What if I wanted to give the body (the area surrounding the main theme / content area) a dark gray background for some contrast?

First, I would find the body style block in the stylesheet. It looks like this:

body {
background:#ffffff;
font-family: arial;
font-size: 14px;
padding:6px;
}

The #ffffff hex code represents the white background. Next I have to choose my desired shade of gray and find its hex code. I can do that using image editing software or by referring to a hex color chart. I’m going to choose the dark gray with the hex code of #333333. To make my body background gray, I just edit my style.css file and replace #ffffff with #333333. Here is the result:

Pro Business Writing Blog with a Gray Background

4. Change default font sizes.

Some themes have unusually small font sizes by default (I’m always baffled by how many designers think it’s a good idea). It can negatively impact readability. Again, it’s an easy fix. Just find the font size in your stylesheet and increase it. For example, the font size for the main blog content on the blog mentioned earlier is 14 px (you can see that in the body style code above).

I wanted my blog post headlines to be bigger though — 18px. So in my stylesheet I simply went to the area dictating h1 tag font style (h1 tags are your primary headings, like your blog title perhaps). Here is what it shows now:

.post h1 {
font-size: 18px;
color: #ff0033;
padding-bottom: 12px;
padding-top: 12px;
}

Note: The proper section of your stylesheet might be titled differently. For example, it might be called content instead of post, or you might not have post H1 tags — just default H1 tag styles that apply everywhere  on the site.

This is how the blog looks now, with post headings a larger font size than the post body text:

5. Add bullet images.

We all know that it’s important to use lists and bold headings when writing for the Web — it makes the content easier for a reader to visually scan through. But plain old bullet points are boring, and they make your website or blog look incredibly plain. Why not replace them with your own bullet images to either use pictures, shapes, or colors to help draw the readers’ eyes down your page? Here’s an example of the bullet images I use on my business writing blog:

I bring the pink from other areas of my site into my bullet points. You can do that by finding the unordered list (ul) styling in your style.css file and the list item styles for them (li). You would create and upload your image, and then just point your stylesheet to that bullet point file on your server. For example, here’s what mine looks like:

.post ul li {
background: url(images/bullet.gif) no-repeat 0 5px;
padding-left: 15px;
padding-bottom: 12px;
}

That code formats the bullet points for unordered lists (not numbered lists which are “ol” for ordered lists) in my blog posts. However, your stylesheet might format bullets in different areas of your site in different ways, such as your sidebar. If you want to use the same bullet point image for all, you’ll need to edit the list style for each section. I choose to use similar arrows, but gray ones, for my sidebar.

These might seem like very small changes on the surface, but those small design edits add up. You can take any existing theme and truly make it your own (figuratively speaking of course). In about a year I went from knowing nothing about coding to being able to code full css sites from scratch. Now I occasionally design and code my own simple WordPress themes too. Even if this feels foreign to you now, stick with it. We aren’t all cut out to be designers (I’m certainly not!), but we can all learn enough to help us get what we want out of existing designs.

1. Grungy & Rusty
Grungy designs are quite common for music band, they’ve also been around for quite a while in graphic design. However, a few talented designers have brought this trend to blog design. Dirty lines and lavished backgrounds are becoming common and will be even more in a near future.

2. Watercolour
With its irregular gradients, watercolour is one of the most enjoyed type of paintings. Webdesigners using this effect will add a soft touch to their designs and a kind of dreamy effect.

3. Collage
Before Photoshop, collage used to be a commonly used technique to mix elements together. It is also a good way to put colorful elements together and will often turn to joyful designs.

4. Vintage
Stylized old school drawings or photos will add a charming touch to any blog design. While not appropriate for every niche, vintage blog designs will definitly keep on being trendy.

5. Sketches
The first impression I get when confronted to a webdesign sketchy background is that there is some work in progress. Sketchy webdesign can definitly be a good choice if you want to make your blog or website a more lively place.

This article was written by Mirko Humbert, a swiss designer running a popular graphic design blog.

1. Nice Pull Quotes
Using the blockquote HTML tag is a good practice that many web writers use to differentiate quoted text from the rest. However, you can improve the rendering of these by tuning it with CSS. Adding nice typographic quotes and a background color will make your citations really stand out.
Tutorial on SitePoint

2. Background Images for Bullets
Bulleted lists are a nice way to display links, archives, or categories but they do look very common and fail to blend into your site’s design if to stick to displaying default bullet points. Did you know that you can replace these bullets with custom images? Doing this, you’ll have a more coherent design.
Tutorial on MaxDesign – Tutorial on MacWorld

3. Rounded Corners
When creating a box in your design using basic HTML and CSS, it will look very square with hard corners. You can smooth those out and make them look less aggressive using one of these two easy techniques.
Tutorial using images – Tutorial without images

4. Styling Your Forms With CSS and Labels
Unfortunately, it is still very common to see people use tables to align their forms. It is actually easier and more accessible to use CSS and labels to achieve this.
Tutorial on Pete Freitag’s blog

5. Styling hCard with CSS
hCard is a simple, open, distributed format for representing people, companies or organizations using a 1:1 representation of vCard properties and values in semantic HTML or XHTML. It is a nice way to display your contact information and it is easy to set up using the hcard creator.
Tutorial on 24Ways

6. Creating Your Print Stylesheet
If your article is long, chances are that people will want to print it out to read it. Improving the layout of the printed version is quite quick to do, so why don’t you do it?
Documentation on CSS discuss

7. Link Labeling
Ever clicked a linked and been taken to a PDF, DOC or MP3 file? Remember how annoying it was? Knowing this, you should be kind to your visitors and give them a way to know what kind of file a link will open. This can be done by adding a little application icon using the following technique.
Tutorial on Maratz.com

8. Removing Dotted Outlines
Ever notice this dotted outline coming around focused or active anchor links? It makes your site look less professional, so you should get rid of it using the following technique.
Tutorial on CSS tricks

9. Image Replacement for Submit Buttons
There are three ways to deal with submit buttons when designing: leave the default browser button, customize the background and border with CSS, or replace the button with an image. The last solution is the one that will blend in with the rest of the design the best.
Tutorial on Ampsoft

10. Styling Tables with CSS
Even though you should avoid using HTML tables for layout purposes, there are still cases where it’s the best solution, such as for presenting tabular data.
Tutorial for zebra table with CSS on A List Apart – How to style tables with CSS

This article was written by Mirko Humbert, a Swiss designer running a popular design blog.

The core principles or functions can be listed as follows:

1. Web design systems work towards saving development time
2. Web design systems also work towards building a cost effective website or a cost effective online presences
3. A good web design system ensures that a webmaster or the owner of the website needs to spend very little time on maintaining his website

Web templates are a result of these three requirements. A web design system can enable you to produce a large number of replicas quickly and accurately, similarly, web templates can be used to create as many web pages and web sites as possible without having to worry about extra development costs.

A web template is created by using a small number of programming instructions. This helps you fine tune the template without having the need to learn programming or web design. These limited or finite programming instructions resemble simple guidelines that are important for every web site. A web template is created to fulfill a few requirements. These are also the same reasons which become guidelines while creating a web template. A webmaster while using and creating a template should realize that there is a difference in the business logic value and the presentation logic value of a master template. A master template once created, can be used to create replicas and hence a make a profit. A web template carries a basic sense of inheritance from its parent or master template. Inheritance however, does not mean repetition in this case. In this case when a replica of the master template is created, only the functions of the master template are carried forward and not the design. For example, we use multiple e-mail accounts listed with multiple service providers. These service providers have similar functions but different layouts and designs for their website.

Another important aspect that should be taken into account while creating a template is its flexibility. The need to retain content but change the look and feel of the web site is a common demand. This requirement can be fulfilled only if the web template has a flexible design and interface. The process of re-designing a template should be simplified. The third and possibly the most important rule that should be implemented is the re-usability and reproducibility of a template. People who need to use the web, but have no technical proficiency should be able to use a web template.

Our discussion so far dealt more with the science behind creating a template. Now, let us talk about how a web template can be used for practical purposes.

Practical use of a web template:

To keep it simple, a web template is a pre-designed web page which you can use for your website. Now, why would you want to use a web template? Why would you want to use a pre-designed website, which is, in most cases, used by a large number of other webmasters to build various websites? This draws us to reason with the root cause of the concept. Templatization does save you a lot of development time. Efficiently using your development time is especially important when your requirement is large and you need a fast turn around. Internet businesses thrive on information, and a successful internet business thrives on delivering information quickly.

Templates give you the option of setting up a website within minutes. You may want to fine tune the website by tweaking the branding option and placing your own logo in the space provided, you may want to optimize the HTML code by experimenting with the “Meta Tags!”, or you may simply want to copy-paste the content you have into the area of the web page. What is even better; templates help you overcome basic programming and designing hassles and hurdles. You require very little or no knowledge about programming and designing to make a website of your own.

Web Template Resources:

So to speak, there are literally thousands of websites on the internet that let you download a template for free or for a very small price. You will find lots of various designs on various websites. However, choosing the right design and the right template for yourself is entirely based on your requirement. You may want to pick a template just looks very nice, or you might want to pick one with a lot of features and functions on it. A famous tool provided by Adobe called the Dreamweaver, or even the MS Frontpage provides templates as options in their software packages. There are numerous advantages that come along with web templates; reusability is one such cost cutting advantage that you can make use of. If you download a free template, you may be required to link back to the owner and creator of the template, however, it is not mandatory for one to use a template in the ‘as is; state, it is very likely that you will find a web template you like, however, in case it becomes extremely difficult to find one that appeals to you, you can select a template which comes closest to fulfilling your requirement and have it customized. Each web template can be modified to suit your needs; you can play around with the color combinations, layout, designs etc. Once again, as mentioned earlier, you don’t need to get into the technical aspects of web design to build your own website. There are a lot of categories under which these templates are sold.

Listed below are a few categories, under which templates are more commonly sold:

Website Templates
Flash Templates
Flash Intro Templates
SWiSH Templates
Dynamic Flash Photo Gallery Templates
osCommerce Templates
ZenCart Templates
CRE Loaded Templates
Corporate Logo Templates
Corporate Identity Templates
Various Blog and Content Management System Templates

Three Web Template Purchase categories:

It does not matter if you go to a website with over 30,000 templates or a small website with a resellers account; you are more likely to find only three ‘Template Purchase Categories’, which are listed as follows:

Free Templates: This type of a purchase and use account will require you to let the owner’s link remain on the main page of the website, customization is not an issue and there are no restrictions on it.

Premium/Paid for Templates: The possibilities of finding more variety in this category are limitless. A bunch of designers get together, and create some very good templates, the makers of the website retain re-seller rights which enable them to sell the same template many times and as a result sell them at extremely low prices. There will be no links that you will require to keep on your website.

Buying a web template through this category and then customizing it is the ideal way of starting a website. The template does not cost too much and the customization will help the template fit your requirements completely.

Unique/Exclusive Templates: The web designers, who create the website, sell their reseller rights along with a web template sold in this category.
You own complete reseller rights to the template. This design is not sold to any other person after you.

Using a web template is cheap, easy and not very time consuming.
Web templates are made in such a way that you can simply choose and start to use!

Thus to start with, it has to be the speed and the ease of loading throughout your website. Not many visitors would go through waiting for your magnificent tools to stack, even if it is awe-inspiring, in particular if it is the subsequent time they have stopped over and your Flash special effects were not that splendid. It turns into an added weight than it is actually worth.

Secondly it is mandatory to present some control to the surfer who has stumbled upon your website to use it the way it wants. With the implementation of the much talked about “Flash Technology”, you should offer a “skip intro” key or else you might end up loosing a lot of visitors as we all are aware that a lot of people who hit on the internet everyday use a dial-up connection or some other slow internet connecting device. Net users are smart enough not to fritter away time on websites that take forever to load or have long introductions before getting to the actual stuff. Another option would be to enhance the visitor with a loading bar that shows the progress of the Flash loading. Such a bar avoids the user discouragement for waiting and the visitor can decide for himself whether he wants to go ahead watching the introduction or skip it altogether. These days such loading bars are designed in accordance to the theme of the website.

Flash enables a lot of ease in site navigation if properly utilized. It is up to the webmaster to make sure that the pages are not obscured with stuff like “link not found” etc. Another important aspect a site developer would like to inculcate is the providence of HTML links. Such links will overcome the problem of site navigation as far as Flash is concerned. It allows the search engine bots to index your pages properly and also permits the surfers to view and utilize the link to quit the Flash sequence at any point during their stay on your website.

Though the Flash technology is a boom with the biggies of web design but it can create an equal mess for your website if it is not properly used. It is important to follow a strong set of rules that benefit the users and make their Flash experience really worthy. It is not all about using the expensive plug ins and driving the prospects but it is merely about giving them th

Types of Web Templates

All-Page Template – a template encompasses an entire page including all design elements. Most elements including a header, footer, graphics and content location are fixed.

Block Templates – Only a portion of a website is included in template format. Menu bars or headers might be fixed on an otherwise dynamic website.

Template Engines – Templates used in conjunction with a template engine can be used to create mass-produced pages. Customized content contained within a database is combined with a pre-selected template to create mass-produce pages of a website. The template engine creates slightly differing pages based on database entries with little or no manual input of content into the web design.

Web Design Templates – Templates used for more personalized customization to create a more complex and unique website. These pages are updated in a more manual fashion. They may also contain fewer pages as they are not mass-produced via template engine.

Styles of Web Templates

Simple Templates –a mask or blueprint for all pages of a website. These templates contain all style and design elements with placeholders for text. Some simple templates allow for customization of other elements within the template using software such as Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.

Standard Templates – Complete pages developed for simple content modification to effectively update the site. Little or no additional customization beyond standard content is required.

Content Management System (CMS) Templates – Templates designed to enhance basic content management systems such as Joomla or PHP-Nuke. Content customization is required.

Blogging Templates – Themes designed for use with popular blogging software such as WordPress. These templates offer color and style to a standard blog.

Complex Templates –contain various degrees of programming capabilities. These templates allow for a standardized look to the pages of a website, but with varying content on sub pages. Color, themes, logos and images can remain consistent but with different placement and effect on various pages. These templates require additional customization.

Flash Templates – Templates that contain elements created using Flash. Both content and Flash elements can be customized in these templates.

Flash Intros – An introductory presentation to a website that requires customization. The basics of the presentation are created using Flash, and customization is required to make the introduction site specific.

Blogging Templates – Themes designed for use with popular blogging software such as WordPress. These templates offer color and style to a standard blog.

Online Store Templates – Templates designed for use with software such as osCommerce to build ecommerce sites. These templates contain basic designs for online stores. Products and services must be customized within the template.

Logo Templates – Prefabricated designs for business or personal purposes. Logo templates may include a simple business logo, letterhead, and business card designs. Business or corporate information much be customized on each logo.

You would also get better quality of finished product if you use a website template since the one’s that are already created are aesthetic as well as professional and provide maximum functionality as well. With ease of editing of the website template possible, you can create truly artistic websites without much fuss or bother.

A website template will also not necessarily mean spending a lot of money, as for a small sum of money; you can get a quality design that will provide a basis for creating your own website. Spending fewer than one hundred dollars provides you with a full-site creation with many pages, and for two hundred dollars you can get the templates adapted to your particular requirements.

Using website templates also makes for simplicity of use since every template can be checked either automatically or manually so that it handles well. You will also be sure to find the website template to be rare as well as original in design which will ensure that the website is exclusive to your needs. You don’t have to worry about other similar websites cropping up in future.

There are thus many advantages to using a website template since you will be able to take advantage of many attractive features as well as not have to hire a professional to do the job for you. You do not have to match colors or look for originality as all these factors have already been incorporated into the website templates for your convenience and use.

However, what are web templates exactly? Basically, website templates are the structure for the “text side” of your website. That means that within web site templates you will be able to find the content plus the html code.

Remember that web templates come empty. The only thing that you need to do is to insert your content in the predefined spaces of the website templates; the programming does the rest. You’ll see how the pre-programmed code of web site templates arranges the content perfectly.

The big question, though, is where can you get web templates? Fortunately there are a lot of websites that offer free website templates. You will find many kinds of designs in web site templates, though.

What if free web templates are not what you’re looking for? There are times in which you really need professional website templates; web templates that have been specifically designed to your needs or web site templates that have been designed by experts.

If that is your case, your best choice is to eshop templates. You can choose between pre-designed web templates or website templates that can give your site a professional look. Don’t worry too much about the price of web templates, though. Thanks to worldwide competition, you will be able to find web site templates at very affordable prices.

In order to be able to eshop templates you will need a major credit card or, in some cases, a Paypal account. If you don’t have either, then you will have to obtain one. Don’t worry, it is very easy. You can get a credit card in less than a week. On the other hand, obtaining a Paypal account is almost immediate (you only need a savings account in an US bank).

Additionally, do web templates have other use besides arranging content for web pages? Actually, they have. Website templates can be used for creating documents. These documents do not need to be hanged up in a web page in the internet. They can be stored inside a server as content of any kind, from corporate newsletters to sales pitches.

As you can see, website templates are very practical. Web templates can simplify your life and save you a lot of time and money. Remember that some things have to be left to professionals, and web site templates are one of them.

The same thing happens with the website content; if you want serious, professional content, you will need to pay for a copywriter. Whatever your choice: free web templates or paid website templates, you will be quite happy with them.

To build this site, you need to use better techniques than with previous, non-visually based websites. The cheapest and easiest way to do so is to use web design templates. These can help bridge the gap between concept and success, and most templates are so professional in appearance; they might be exactly what you need when the business really gets rolling, too.

Conception

When forming a new business line, building the website is the first step. Sometimes the actual concept is still vague when you start building the website, but browsing through the sheer number of templates available can give you ideas. If you know you are going to sell e-books, for example, looking at a good selection might give you ideas about adding forums or a blog to you site.

Most web design templates are arranged in categories or according to features, making searches easier to perform. On a lazy day, marketers might even scan through the templates looking for inspiration on new product lines or services. Formats for video hosting might spark an interest and generate an idea for a new interest.

Maturation

Once the website is planned, templates make it simple to build. They act as blue prints and are easily modified with popular software such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. Find specific formats that meet your needs and start adding the content. When all content is in place, you have a professional website ready to upload and promote.

The basic formats make website creation considerably easier and less expensive than custom design. With a new product launch, it is important to have a stylish website, but it is not necessary to shell out thousands of dollars on a product that might not be successful. It is far more prudent to use templates to make a website satisfactory until the product is a proven success.

Success

When a product is deemed successful, you might revisit the website and upgrade it. Again, this does not have to mean expensive custom work. Templates are available in a multitude of styles, and the individuals creating these templates are often the same professionals behind custom design.

Find new web templates, or keep your old designs as the basis of your site, but customize them further to meet your needs. Add a logo or take out the shopping cart. Once you’ve purchased a template it is yours to tweak as you see fit, and tweaking an already great looking website is considerably less time-consuming and expensive than creating a new one from scratch. Why reinvent? You’re time is better spend elsewhere.