In the past decade, I've worked with hundreds of healthcare clients, understanding their needs, which also includes website design. I just have one tip (and it's quite an important one) for anyone out there looking to build their website via a template. Whatever platform or template you choose, make sure that the template is responsive. And by responsive, I mean your website layout should adjust automatically across different devices, be it mobile, or tablet. That's because a major portion of web traffic comes from mobile or hand-held devices. Mobile phones are now common these days and most people use it to consume information and content, and if your site is not responsive, then you will miss out on a major chunk of web traffic and potential customers. Doesn't matter what type of business you run with your website, having a responsive layout will help you enhance your reach to a wider network of users.
Depending on how well you know your audience, you should choose a template that best resonates with them implicitly regarding colours, form, fonts, and structure. Based on neuroscientific research, some groups of people prefer colours such as red, black, and gold in combination with straight lines and a clean design that signals quality, performance, and dominance (think of ferrari.com). Other groups prefer yellow, orange, or even a varied colour palette and are drawn toward image-rich and playful design with lots of details (think of ikea.com). The most popular and highest-rated website template can fail if it does not align with your audience's innate preferences. If you don't know your audience that well, yet, pick a template that offers a variety of styles (especially colours) that you can easily switch between and test over time.
When you're choosing a template for your website, start with the end in mind. Don't get too hung up on the bells and whistles. Sure, you want to make sure that your site is easy to navigate and looks great, but what really matters at the end of the day is how well it accomplishes YOUR goals. If you're trying to sell something, then you need a template that helps you do that most effectively. If you're trying to provide information or promote a cause, then think about how to structure your content so that it's easy for people to find what they're looking for and share it with their friends. When picking out a template, think about what your goal is—and then pick one whose design best supports that goal. Looking forward to hearing from you. Best, Ishu Singh Founder, Startingtoknow.com
One aspect of choosing a template a theme that gets regularly overlooked is the availability of support following your purchase. Particularly for website owners who are not used to editing code to make updates, support is a vital component in ensuring that you're covered if your theme breaks due to a site update, or if you're experiencing bugs that you do not know how to resolve. Most importantly, if a theme update from the side of the developer you purchased the theme from is what breaks the site, then you're going to a) need to know that and b) be rest assured that the issue will be fixed.
If there’s one aspect to focus on when picking a template for a website, it is that it should be user-friendly. While there are many different templates available, one of the things that can make or break a website is how user-friendly and easy to comprehend it is. Your website template needs to make sense, be coherent in its logic, visually appealing and show the most important aspects of the website without struggle. The more user-friendly it is, the more likely it is for users to actually use it.
Dummy content is one hack for selecting a new website layout. I use dummy content to see how easy the layout is to use and customize. Pay attention to things like navigation, menus, and sidebars. Make sure everything is easy to find and use. Check for your CTA buttons and how they stand out. How do you go about finding the dummy content that you need? I use a plugin like WP Test. It provides a lot of different types of content and it’s easy to install and activate. Once you use WP Test to generate some content, take a look at your site to see how easy it is to find and use the different elements. Those different elements are what you’ll be working with when you customize your site. If they’re easy to find and use in the dummy content, they’ll be easy to find and use when you add your own content.
The biggest mistake business owners make is to select very elaborate templates because they look great. The issue there is that this also means that you'd have to do a ton of work to customize every detail of that template and make it your own. Often times this results in creating a website that looks sloppy. Instead, if the focus is on finding a great template that already feels on brand, and that is relatively clean and simple, then it's much more likely to use it and create a website that stays clean and looks professional.
People are way too focused on website design when they should focus on website page speed, clarity of the message, and the one goal they want to achieve. A common mistake is to choose templates that have high design flexibility and a lot of features. While these templates make a great selling proposition, they are often bloated with unnecessary code. This makes the pages slow and hinders high Google rankings. Further, design-heavy templates jeopardize a clear message. This makes it harder to achieve your goal. Whether it is demand generation, lead generation, or turnover. Only in the case of pure branding purposes, a design-heavy template makes sense. But still, one that loads fast. Or do you want your brand to be perceived as slow?
To give your website a more unique feel, I think you'll need to make some changes to your template. A good website template may be modified to match your company's overall look, including color schemes, your logo, and branding. If you don't customize the template you've chosen, your company won't stand out much from its many competitors and will instead disappear into the background. Your website won't ever stand out among the thousands of websites that use the same template if you simply rely on them with little to no original content. Before you start the selection process, think about how much customization you require as this will enable you to narrow your options.
Keep it SEO-friendly. At first glance, it may not seem like the template you choose is important for your site's SEO, but it's critical. Poorly coded templates that take a long time to load can damage your ranking on search engines like Google. You also should look for designs that are easy to navigate and optimized for searching. By putting in the extra time to find a highly organized, well-coded template, you improve your site's odds of showing up high in search results.
Hello, It's important that the web design team finds a template the compliments a company's existing pictures and photos of their product and service. It's extremely easy to seduced by demos of website templates. But those demos are typically designed with specific imagery and content that may not have anything to do with your business. So the best approach to picking your template is know which company images or photos you want to to use for your website. Once you know the pictures you want to use, then look for the template that best compliments those company pictures. Thank you, Jeff Neal CritterFam.com
Marketing & Outreach Manager at ePassportPhoto
Answered 4 years ago
There's always the dilemma of whether to pay for a custom template or a free one. You're looking for quality, of course, but just as not every free template is poor, not every paid one will turn out a good investment. If you feel like you have time to spare on working on your website, you may benefit from choosing a free template that you'll adjust yourself. If, however, you cannot afford to lose time and would rather solve website matters quickly and effectively, paying for the right template might be the right idea.
Go for less fuss. The trend now is on a clean, uncluttered look and feel. The less distraction, the better. The website must serve its purpose, to get the message across. If it is a marketing site, make sure that you know your market’s preference. It will be safe to go on the user-friendly side. Nothing fancy and elaborate. Easy to read and understand. Not too wordy or stuffed with unnecessary contents. Imagine your reader browsing through your site and seeing what they need at once. A call to action must be placed prominently on the front page. Headers need not shout. Use photos that match the theme. Deliver all the important details on the first page. Leave all the other items on the rest of the pages. Make sure to consider the visibility of the site on all gadgets like mobile phones.
Use a website-building program such as SquareSpace or Wix. These platforms will give you templates to choose from so that you do not have to worry about creating one from scratch. Of course, you can always change your template down the line, but these programs will help you get started and develop a website quickly.
Even if you are not a professional designer or a developer, depending upon the type / category of your website, you can choose from some ready to use website templates that match your requirements the best. Keeping with the fast changing trends, a rough guess puts website traffic coming from mobile phones to a staggering 60+ per cent of the total traffic. Obviously, apart from being SEO friendly, the best template to choose for a website must be the one having a smooth MOBILE FRIENDLY USER EXPERIENCE (UX). The important advantages include (i) improved, ever growing traffic, (ii) site ranking in search engines going up, (iii) streamlined user experience across a variety of handheld devices like iPhone, iPad, tablets, Android smartphones. In simple words, your web pages will display correctly irrespective of the devices used, (iv) saving on cost of developing a separate app, (v) faster site loading time and (vii) improved conversion rate in case of monetized / e-commerce sites.
Professional designers sometimes infuse a lot of creativity into creating visually appealing desktop templates, but leave the mobile customizations up to buyers. Yet, the majority of online users operate predominantly from their smartphones these days. Moreover, most people who purchase templates aren't website designers. In fact, they're trying to avoid high-ticket purchases and find the fastest route to establishing their online presence. This is why it's a wise strategy to always review the details of the website template package you plan to purchase. Ensure that it comes with a mobile-responsive design that you can customize according to your brand elements. It would also be in your best interest to purchase a template that is tablet-responsive. Although tablets and iPads aren't as popular on the buyer's market as before, there are still quite a few people who use them for browsing. The more accessible your website, the better.
CEO at Live Poll for Slides
Answered 4 years ago
When picking a customized template for your business, take into consideration your kind of business. Sometimes simple installation requirements would be ideal, other times complex box layouts will be the best. Learn from the businesses you emulate. Borrow ideas from their business sites on how they customize posts related and comment quotes sections of their websites. Get ideas on how to create a highly graphic website, say for a photography business. That would require a graphics studio plugin to develop and maintain the website's appeal. The bottom line is to know how to best pick a business template depending on the nature of your business.
The best tip for choosing the best template for a website would be nailing down website design necessities. You need to invest your time in the header design, navigation menu bar design, content width design, and responsive design template. Therefore, to nail down content width design, you must consider how much space in the browser window your content should occupy. Within the web design, the required space in your browser is well-known for content width. You may face two options here, such as complete or boxed width. Various visual portfolios will choose full-width web design; hence, sample content from the portfolio will have significant space.
Whenever possible, pick a responsive template because it’s an authentic way to reach a broader target audience. When designing a website, go for templates that can be previewed across varying screen sizes and different types of mobile devices. Smartphones and other handheld devices such as tablets are dominating online traffic above all other sources. Hence, it’s up to you to ensure your visitors can have a good experience on your site regardless of their accessing device. Plus, with Google going mobile-first, it’s a necessity to have a mobile-friendly and responsive site.
When choosing your website template the most important aspect to keep in mind is who your customer base is. For example, we work mainly with elderly clientele, so for us it was essential to make simplicity and ease of navigation the main features of our website. Our template highlights the things that matter most to the demographic we serve, such as prominently displayed contact information and testimonials from previous customers. We have also taken into consideration the font size we use - we have no small text to ensure that none of our customers miss any important information.