How to Spot a Good Web Template Design?
There are many web templates out there these days and many of our customers get confused on what is a good design and what makes for a bad design. Here are a few pointers for consumers to look out for when shopping for a quality web template.
1. You need to consider your site objective when shopping for a web template. And you need to know who your target market or the majority of your site visitors will likely be.
The majority of site owners want a professionally styled web site. They are providing some type of information, products or services to the WWW community. Heavy graphics can be beautiful, but if they leave little space for your content, they really are not realistically functional for your site needs. On the other hand, if you do not have an abundance of content, like the WOW factor when your page loads, and you know that the majority of your site visitors will have high speed Internet access then that is a different scenario. Always remember that your web site should be designed with your VISITORS comfort in mind. If you do not mind waiting three minutes for your site to load those WOW graphics, that does not mean your site visitors will appreciate it. Your visitors comfort is your number one concern if you really want them to stay or return.
2. Graphics should not take up more than one-third to one-fourth of your web page.
Content is king. People are searching the Internet for information. Web templates that are designed so that the graphics take up the majority of the page are not really functional. If the person viewing your site is forced to do a lot of scrolling downward or worse - horizontally because the template is too wide for their screen, they will leave your site. The same is true if the template graphics takes up one-half to three-fourths of the page and you have to create 12 pages to publish your content. Perhaps if the web template were designed correctly or you chose one that was not as graphic intensive, you could have put the same amount of content on 2 or 3 pages. Your important site content that you want your visitors to be sure to see should be placed as far toward the top of the page as possible. When the page loads in the browser, and the graphics immediately forces the user to scroll downward just to view what else is on the page is very poor designing for the majority of web sites online today.
3. Avoid the use of splash pages unless you have a good reason to use them.
It may seem like a cool thing to have and they look great. However, splash pages simply force your site visitors to make one more extra unnecessary click before they find what they are actually looking for at your site. Although splash pages were the rage several years ago, they have outlived their usefulness long ago. Unfortunately, some designers use the splash page concept as an added incentive to buy or a reason to price their templates higher, because after all, you are getting two pages. But do you really need two pages? More often than not no.
4. Avoid buying templates that use redundant font tags, color tags, inline or internal CSS, etc.
Professionally designed templates should ALWAYS be designed using "external" CSS (cascading style sheets). We cannot stress this enough to the consumer. But how can you tell when you do not get to examine the template before buying? That is simple. Take a peek at the source code of the template designers own web site. If they are not using "external" CSS, have redundant font and color tags, the program GENERATOR meta tag is shown in the source code, the code looks cluttered, disorganized and simply difficult to read, then you can make a fair summation that their templates look just as bad. Avoid buying a template from this type of designer, because they are likely inexperienced in website template development. Their main goal is making a sale and not the end users ability to use their product with ease. In the long run you will be the one who suffers by using a poorly designed template.
5. Avoid purchasing multi-page template packages.
99% of the time you will not need to purchase a multi-page template package. The designers who develop them (approx. 5-25 page packages) are doing exactly what you could do within a few minutes. They feel that supply you with unnecessary pages (ie. about.html, info.html, contact.html, etc.), it justifies a higher price. In reality they are charging 10x what the template is really worth and delivering a template to the end user that is underdeveloped but stuffed full of unnecessary pages and filler text that you have to delete or modify on every page!
Exclusive & Non-Exclusive Web Template?
What is the difference between an exclusive and non-exclusive web template?
Way back in 1994 when we first started designing website templates for our fellow webmasters, we offered both exclusive and non-exclusive designs. In those days when digital dinosaurs still roamed the earth there were not nearly as many web sites online as there are today. The majority of folks online were male computer geeks like myself. Most were not design oriented and had no right brain. Their specialty skill was coding and programming and they did not know the first thing about color analysis, effective web design techniques, etc. Non-exclusive templates sold for an average of $250 each and exclusive meant that the design would only be sold once to one buyer.
Non-exclusive templates were sold at a much lower price and were sold to multiple buyers.
Naturally, this raises a question to some folks. In today's world, if a consumer purchases a non-exclusive web template, shouldn't they be concerned that dozens or hundreds of web sites might have the same design as their site causing design saturation?
This is of course a natural human response but when looked at from a wider perspective based on reality, it can be answered quite easily. Since there are literally millions (or billions) of web sites worldwide and thousands of new sites born every day, your site's chances of "looking" like another site is slim. And even if it did, why be so concerned?
The chances of all of your visitors finding your site and the site that looks similar to your's in all those millions of websites are minimal. (Unless the look-alike site is your competitor, of course.) In reality though, would your visitors really think poorly of your company if they even noticed the similarities? Not likely. Would it cause you to lose business? No.
The majority of people who surf the net do so looking for information. As long as your site is easy to navigate and they can find the information they need quickly, they are not concerned at all about whether your site layout is exclusive.
The only webmasters and companies who might be concerned about template exclusivity are large corporations who have well-known trademarks worldwide, like Expedia or Ford Motor Company. They would have their own designers, although they might (and have) purchased a starting point template from us at BasicTemplates.com. If Ford Motor Company and Expedia isn't concerned about exclusivity, then why would anyone else be? :)
It is also important to understand that our web site templates are easy to work with and many webmasters change them graphically thus making them look quite different when they are live online.
So why do you see so many high-priced templates being sold as "exclusive"? They feel it justifies a higher cost of course. For the majority of web sites that are not concerned about an exclusive corporate identity, an exclusive web site template is not necessary. Let's hope this clears up any fears, myths or concerns about non-exclusive templates.
BasicTips.com, division of BasicTemplates.com
Make Life Easier with Shared Page Elements
In the early days of the web, sites were usually built with primitive text editors, one page at a time, one painstaking HTML tag after another. Yeah, back then also we walked five miles to school, uphill both ways. And we liked it.
Current web building tools make it easier than ever for content managers to maintain a site's consistent look and feel -- every page with your logo at the top, a primary navigation bar in a prominent place, and a footer with your company's address and phone number, for example.
This article shows how you can create these page elements once and have them shared by every page in your site. So, if you're still living in the horse-and-buggy world of building every page top to bottom from scratch, repeatedly coding your banners and footers, it's time to harness the power of shared page elements. Let's start with a few of the more popular web authoring tools.
FrontPage
Achieve consistency in your FrontPage-built site by using Shared Borders, which are page regions reserved for content such as page titles and navigation bars that you want to appear consistently throughout the site.
Start by clicking on the Navigation icon on the Views bar to switch to Navigation view. On the Format menu, click Shared Borders. In the Shared Borders dialog box you can specify where on your pages FrontPage should insert Shared Borders. You'll probably want to make sure the All pages option is selected.
Note that you can have more than one Shared Border, such as one at the top of the page for your logo, and one down the left for the navigation bar.
With the Shared Borders in place, all existing and new pages will, you guessed it, "share" the same logo, navigation links, etc. If you make changes to an element in a Shared Border, the change will be reflected automatically throughout your site.
That's not all. You can apply a Theme that gives pages, banners, navigation bars, and other elements an attractive and consistent appearance. With any page open, click Theme on the Format menu to display the Themes Properties dialog box. Refer to online Help for the the dizzying array of options available to you.
Dreamweaver
Our favorite web authoring tool lets you create a template that can be applied to the entire site. In Dreamweaver create a basic page that includes only those elements that you want on every site page. Apply this page to a defined site by selecting File - Save as Template. Select the defined site and give the template a name. Once the template is saved, you'll have to define what is editable and what isn't.
There's a lot to this powerful feature, so refer to Dreamweaver's online help for more information.
NetObjects Fusion
If this is your tool of choice, make sure you're using Fusion's powerful SiteStyles feature. You can select from over 200 SiteStyles that put a consistent look and feel to your site. You can even create your own site style.
Another feature you'll want to use are navbars (navigation bars). These are Fusion generated-navigation aids which appear as a series of links or linked buttons in your web pages. One great thing about these highly-customizable navbars is that they continually reflect your site's structure as you add sections and pages to your site.
For more information about sitestyles and navbars refer Fusion's online User Guide.
HomeSite
While HomeSite is not a WYSIWYG tool like FrontPage or Fusion, it's a fine HTML editor. Your best bet with this tool is to create a template.
Create an HTML file to hold the repeatable code that contains the "shell" for each page -- at a minimum, the opening and closing HTML and BODY tags. Include code for your logo, primary navigation, and other shared page elements. Save this file as a custom template (File - Save as Template). When you create new pages (File- New), click on the custom template.
Unfortunately, using this approach will not allow you to make site-wide changes to existing files.
Home-grown solutions
Not using a web authoring tool? Even if you're the programmer type with an unnatural affinity for Notepad you can use shared page elements. Essentially you'll create separate text files that contain the code for shared page elements, and then call upon these files as needed.
Server-Side Includes (SSI)
The most common way of doing this is with server-side includes (SSI). Create separate HTML files for each shared page element. For example, you might have an HTML file called "banner.htm" that's been saved in a directory called "includes".
In the HTML file for each page, add the following line:
<? include("/includes/banner.htm"); ?>
Conclusion
If you're not using one of these approaches, you probably should be. It allows your content managers to focus on what they do best -- creating and updating content -- without having to worry about recreating common page elements over and over. As with any change in process, anticipate a learning curve, but also be ready for the benefits of a more efficient process and a cleaner web site.
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