The Web Design Template - A Manual for Small Business Owners

It is seemingly common knowledge that every business, be it large or small, must have a website to actively compete in today’s workplace. The internet has opened the consumer market to an international level, and even if a business is targeting only local customers, there is an expectation that a quality business must have a respectable homepage and site.

Many small business owners are intimidated by the assumed technicality and work associated with building a website, or they are disgusted by the going rates of traditional designers. Fortunately, the advent of the web design template has brought a fresh breeze into a field that was once stagnant, and almost secretive. Gone are the days when a business required a high-price designer to spend weeks or months creating a basic homepage and related links. Now business owners can create attractive, professional web sites for a fraction of the time and cost.

Finding the Right Web Design Template

A simple search on the internet yields literally millions of results for a web design template. Making the right choice can be almost overwhelming. There are certain guidelines to follow while shifting through results. A quality web design template will be easy to download from the internet. It should also be simple to open in and edit with popular editing software such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. The more user-friendly the web design template is, the more simplified the design process will be. Finally, once you have modified the template to your exact specifications, the file should be easy to upload and open in your browser.

In addition to the ease of use, it is important that the web design template reflect the nature of the business. Templates with animation or flashy logos might turn off potential customers if a business is more staid and traditional. If a company is in the entertainment industry, bold, colorful patterns would be more suitable.

Using a Template

Once the correct web design template is obtained, it should be saved or downloaded so that the template can be modified. Programs such as Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver make the editing process simple. In many cases, an individual need never even see the HTML coding behind the template; he may simply import texts and objects or use basics commands such as cut and paste to achieve the desired result. In addition, a quality web design template also comes with basic, or occasionally advanced, user-support on the originating website if the editing process proves to be more complicated than was originally assumed. A web design template can range from the simplest, user-friendly form to increasingly complex.

A business website is also expected to have quality content, i.e. writing and any other relevant images or logos. This material can usually be created in traditional programs or obtained from other sources and imported into the web design template. The overall process is not too far removed from inserting clip art into a word processing file. The final step would be to save the modified file and upload it onto server space reserved for the website.