Website Templates Save Time & Money

Website Templates Save Time & Money

. . . and do a lot of that Hard Up-Front Thinking for ya.

A good web site template can help you save both time & money & and do a lot of the hard up-front design thinking for you. A web site template is a finished generic site that include all the graphics and coding files used the create the template. All you need to do is customize the template to meet your needs. Templates can run anywhere from $30 to $200 – hiring a professional designer will likely cost you 10 times that. By starting with a good template, you can have a finished web site in a matter of days – creating one from scratch can take up to 5 to 10 times as long:

When just One Percent of a Project’s Up-Front Costs are Spent, up to 70% of it’s Life-Cycle Costs may already be Committed

One percent of a project's up-front costs represent up to 70% of a life-cycle costs

One percent of a project's up-front costs can represent up to 70% of a project

You probably suspect that web site planning is hard stressful work — and you’d be right! And more than that — it’s critical work! But did you also know that 70% of your project costs are committed in the first few decisions you make?

Efficiency expert Joseph Romm (in the book Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution) states: “Although up-front building and design costs may represent only a fraction of the building’s life-cycle cost, when just one percent of a project’s up-front costs are spent, up to 70% of it’s life-cycle costs may already be committed.”

It’s just like the old saying known well to builders and contractors: when designing a building, all the really important mistakes are made on the first day. So just accept that you’re going to be making your worst — and most costly — mistakes on that very first day. There’s no way to get around that, but — you CAN minimize the costs.

Your Two Most Critical Challenges

The two most critical challenges you’ll face that on that first day is 1) coming up with a visual design that will compellingly draw your customers/clients “in” and 2) laying out a specific information architecture so that your site’s information content is organized in a way that your customers/clients can immediately understand and use it.

A great template can go a long way to helping you successfully tackle these initial critical challenges. This is because a good template will have taken into account good information architecture and compelling visual design. If you’re not sure how to evaluate the visual design and informational organization of template, you should consult with a knowledgeable designer who has usability experience .

The Ultimate Goal of your eCommerce Site

The goal of your eCommerce site is to turn potental customers into REAL right now buyers!

The goal of your eCommerce site is to turn potental customers into REAL right now buyers!

If you’re looking to build an eCommerce site, in addition to the above benefits, a good eCommerce template can help you solve the sales funneling problem, i.e., how to get customers to move from awareness of your product to making the decision to purchase your product.

Specifically, there is first Awareness - someone realizes that some number of possible actions is available to them.

Then comes Interest - they actively self-select and show a preference for a particular course of action.

Then comes Desire - their enthusiasm grows as they investigate the course of action.

And finally comes Action - they are moved to act and reap the benefits of the course of action.

The acronym AIDA describes these four stages. The topic of AIDA is big – and admittedly – a complicated one. For example, SiteTuners.com is a performance-based landing page optimization and testing company that specialize in website tests with non-parametric propriety technology. The goal? “Tuning” a website by a set of models known to increase conversion rates.

For a fuller treatment of AIDA and the web, check out the Andrew Chak’s Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites (VOICES).

It’s Raining! Templates — Templates Galore!

In order to help you make the best use of templates, Brooklyn Sky Design has partnered with some of the best and most comprehensive template companies out there to bring you the widest range of choices possible to meet your needs. Go to our Web Design services page for more information or visit these links:

Be sure you talk to a qualified web developer and/or designer before purchasing any template to help make sure it is the right one for you.

Want to Raise your Web I.Q. Through the Roof?