Build great websites fast with web templates

Once there was a time when website budgets where pretty substantial. It was easy for me in the late 90’s to find web site jobs at $5000 and $10 000 a shot. It got to the point that I would refuse anything under 5k!

Budgets slashed and the competition fierce

But those days are long gone, and now we have to put out web sites with budgets that are often times 10% of what they used to be! If you think that’s bad, it gets even worse - not only are the budgets slashed, the overall competition is stronger and in much greater numbers!

Putting out crappy looking web site doesn’t cut it anymore

Back in the early 90’s, many web designers were able to do well even if the work wasn’t the most beautiful. Today the web has matured and there are now many hotshot web designers out there, so putting out crappy looking websites just doesn’t cut it anymore … 1995 is long gone.

Website template examples

Be competitive and still put out great web sites with web templates

The solution to this problem is found in website templates. I’ve tried many approaches to try and save time and still produce a nice looking site, but experience has shown that the way to go is with website templates.

Here are a few things I noticed about using templates:

1. High quality designs

A good supplier of web templates typically has many designers on staff who spend all their time just designing web sites in a format that is easy to modify and update – they have to be since the web sites are destined to be used as templates.

2. Choice of thousands of designs

The well-established web template company has thousands of designs to choose from! I used to spend hours trying to come up with designs for my clients; usually having to produce 3 looks for them to choose from. This ‘discovery’ period of the web design process is typically very time consuming and often times, the client doesn’t know what they want until they actually see it.

When working with a good web template company, you can select any number of designs from their collection for your clients to choose from. This saves you a lot of time and impresses your clients with the choice you are giving them.

3. Reduce your own stress levels – templates are pre-tweaked

This may not seem obvious, but web design can be a stressful job; it is common that web designers will come up with a style that the client likes, but then have a hell of a time trying to get it to work properly in the browsers.

Website templates remove that frustration altogether. When you get a template, you know that it has been pre-tweaked and made to work in the major web browsers.
This last point is one that really speaks to me - I can’t stand the browser problems, having dealt with the worst of it in the hellish days of the mid to late 90’s!

Ok, you believe it web templates, but where to go?

I've checked out many companies, and there is no question that the best place for web templates is TemplateMonster. TemplateMonster is the largest in the world; they have thousands of high quality designs to choose from and are a breeze to use.