Should I use Website Templates?
You want to create a fantastic looking website but lack professional design skills?
You could pay a graphical designer an hourly rate to come up with your designs but you wouldn't be left with much of a profit.
There is an alternative, cheaper and far more lucrative option out there...
Website templates are professional designs that are sold to more than just one user. As a result; the price tag is significantly smaller.
A good quality template will start at £50. But what should you look for in a website template? Is it just the look?
You could buy an amazingly glossy, professional, bells-and-whistles design, only to find it doesn't score well in the search results - and that means poor traffic to the site.
The HTML and CSS of the website template must comply to W3C standards and tabled coding is a complete no-go!
It's difficult when deciding to buy a template to know what the code of the template will look like. Any good template store will allow you to download a sample before purchasing.
If the website template looks professional and the HTML/CSS is compliant; it's a winning purchase! But why?
Search engines won't see the design of the site; the way it looks and the images it uses, since the search engines are only interested in the code of the site (BTW: you can see the HTML code of any website by selecting View > Page Source in the menu of your internet browser).
So that fantastic looking, professional, sleek website template must also have the correct and compliant code to land at the top of Google. If the templates is poorly constructed the website will struggle when it comes to getting good traffic.
The bottom line: website templates are a great way to show off your web design skills without needing any design skills! Plus fairly little knowledge of HTML is required!
See you tomorrow at 09:00
Simon
