PROBLEMS WITH OUT-OF-THE-BOX TEMPLATES

• Trouble with Templates

• "Quick and Easy"

• Selection, Instructions & Troubleshooting

• Guidance

PROBLEMS WITH DO IT YOURSELF, OR DIY WEBSITES

Trouble with Templates

During the time you’ve spent researching your project, you have undoubtedly come across services offering design templates.   They are layout designs, organizational structures upon which you can arrange your content.  You can find these models many places by simply going to your favorite search engine and typing in the type of model you’ll need. For example, if your business is in the real estate industry, you can type, “real estate web templates,” into your browser’s search field (Clicking the link will run a search in Google for you).

Maybe you’ll be attracted to the idea that you can throw something together in a few days.  Maybe you’ll like the initial low cost.  But, over time, this approach can end up costing you more in both time and money.

On the surface, these may seem like easy, “Do It Yourself” solutions, but they can lead you to a number of issues that using an expert developer would avoid.

Here are some of the headaches associated with prefab sites that use of a developer would help to avoid.

“Quick and Easy”

They promise to be “quick and easy” and “customizable” but, in the end, don’t deliver on these promises.  As anyone who has ever loaded new software knows, it is only “quick and easy” for the people who wrote it!

You might argue that you have already written the content of the pages, so why not just get it onto a prefab model?  A couple of my clients decided to attempt this route first, before consulting a developer.  After spending hours tweaking and fussing, they found that the net result was not something that represented their company.

A trained developer, on the other hand can suit your exact needs, without the aggravation.

Selection, Instructions and Troubleshooting

If you are unfamiliar with web design, it is best that you look for templates made for a beginner.  However, the simplicity of your pages might come across as boring or unpolished, as if little effort were put into it.  

You shouldn’t settle for less elegance or less sophistication than you would in the lobby or office of your business.  Your representation on the Internet is a reflection of your business and will often serve as a first impression for your clients.

If and when you do find a design that you feel suits your business, you will need to very thoroughly read—and very thoroughly reread—its creator’s description and ask critical questions along the way.  

If you have specific needs, you'll need to make sure the design meets them exactly.  Being certain that you have found precisely the right model might not be easy. 

You should also be aware that many digital products cannot be returned, so you must be extremely careful in your selection.

Even if you do feel comfortable enough to select one, you’ll need to make sure you are using it properly.  Instructions for use are available, and when they are, are not always as well written or as clear-cut as they should be. 

Perhaps after diligently following instructions, you load your page and find a glitch.  Troubleshooting a pre-made page can be a labor-intensive task without a developer’s keen eye.

 Indeed, you might be able to figure it out yourself, but you’ll almost certainly ask, “Was it worth the trouble or the frustration?”

Guidance

Finally, a pre-made site can’t provide the expert guidance or experience of an expert developer:  advice in organizing your content, anticipation of problems and their solutions, perfecting layout, and embedding keywords.  Further, the prefab site packages fail to address search engine optimization and do not submit your new pages to the major search engines.  A developer, on the other hand, would help you to increase your visibility on the Internet, and draw in more potential clients. 

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