Website Design templates: A web designers
secret weapon
Introduction
Website
templates (web design templates) can be an excellent tool
when building a new web site; a tool that can speed up the
production schedule, improve the quality of the final web site
and just make the whole process of building a web site much
easier.
A fast way to build quality web sites
Now that the web has matured, the experts
have discovered what works and what doesn't work when it comes
to web site design. Out of this experience comes web templates,
web site designs that have been tried and tested. Like with
building a house, there is no longer a need to reinvent the
wheel with every project - today you can select a web design
template and get it online fast!
Don't reinvent the wheel!
As a software architect and programmer, I
can tell you that a core rule in that field is to not reinvent
the wheel. This basically means is that if someone else has
built it already, you should use it! You are wasting your time
and money trying to recreate things from scratch.
Fortunately you can now select from a huge
collection of proven web site styles that you can use 'out of
the box' or use the web site template as the foundation to your
own creation.
My own experience
I've been creating web sites since 1994-95
and have seen and tried just about all the possible ways of
approaching a web project.
In the early years we would create all our
web sites from scratch; this was a slow, tedious and expensive
process. Besides trying to make the web pages look good, you had
to figure out how to make it work with all the browser and
within the limits of your potential visitors computers:
- Will
the web site end up being fast enough for people on slow
modems?
- Will
it work with Netscape and Internet Explorer?
- Can
we fit all the required sections so it works in an 800x600
screen resolution?
In those days I was not to keen on
website
templates because I wanted to produce an 'original web
site'. But I always discovered that the web
site ended up looking like other web sites already out there!
Why was this happening?
It happened (and still happens)
because web developers have figured out what works ... and
they do it! In the same way that the automobile industry has
figured out that a car seems to work best with four wheels,
web designers over the years have figured out the best way
to structure and design a web page. As such you're going to
see most web sites work with the same handful of proven
designs and styles ... given a projects' needs.
The web site designers point of view
If you try hard enough, you can
probably come up with some funky style for a page with for
example, a new wacky navigational menu. The problem is that
everybody expects to see a web page layout follow certain
basic rules; navigation sections have to be arranged in a
certain way, links have to look a certain way ... being
consistent makes the web site easier for the visitor to use.
No worries, you can still be original
within the context of a template; people do it all the time.
The web site template serves as the framework for designers,
where it eliminates the grueling structural work and frees
you to develop the subtlety of the web sites' style.
With so many web site templates to
choose from these days, you are almost guaranteed to find
the basic style and layout you are looking for. You can then
build off of that, speeding up the process - makes good
sense for you and your clients!
The business point of view
Web site templates save you time and
money; the production cycle of a web site project is at
least cut in half when you use a web site template. Another
advantage of using templates is that you can show the web
site designers what you want rather than trying to describe
it to them. The reverse is also true where the designer can
show the client several templates that he/she can choose
from - this in of itself will always be a great tool!
I have also found over the years that
most people don't really know what they want until they
actually see it. Templates allows the business owner to
identify what they really want in a web site and actually
buy it right there and then. They can hand the template off
to the web designer for the personalized touches.
Even the great artists develop a
'template' of their own
This is just a side note, but it may
be worth considering:
An artist typically becomes known for
their style, this style is consistently applied in their
work and it defines their careers. Picasso is one such
artist; if you look at any of his paintings, you can clearly
see that it's a Picasso.
Other examples are found in the music
of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; you may have never
heard a particular song, but their styles are so well
defined you instantly know whose song it is.
An artist's style is really just a
template of what works for them. In a sense, an accomplished
artist creates his or her own design template and then
applies it to their work.
