What is a Website Template?
A website template or better known as a predefined theme is a website layout and design that was built by someone else. These website templates are either given away as free or sold as software packages. These types of website templates are designed to the do it yourself individuals with little to no experience in website development to get a website up and running quickly. Although they might look good on the surface, predefined website templates might have many flaws built into them that could sabotage your digital marketing efforts. Below are some examples we have discovered when using someone else’s website template.
Limited Design and Creative Options
Website templates are often limited in the design options to express your organization’s true brand identity. As a result, using someone else’s website template may make your website, well, like everyone else’s.
Website Template Lacks Flexibility to do Specific Digital Marketing
Great website design will give the ability to break away from the design of the overall website and be able to create custom landing pages used for specific digital marking efforts. This is very important. Sometimes we need a clean page or pages with very specific content and easy call to action functions so the page easily converts visitors into customers.
Missing or Outdated Digital Marketing Features
Some website templates we came across don’t fully utilize the technical functions of search engine optimization. As a result your website’s content might be harder for the search engine to read and understand. If the website template is too poorly written without SEO in mind the search engine might give poor marks on your website’s overall health in reading content thus making your content not as important over others. This does your website and its content a big disservice.
Nice DIY Extras can put you in Jeopardy
A lot of overhead or “bloat code” is built into a predefined website template. This code is to handle all of the content placement needs automatically of the do it yourself designer.
This can hurt your website in three ways:
- Search engines like Google and Yahoo that read your website have a finite amount of time to spend on a particular website. All of this extra code in the website template can slow down the load time of each page when the search engine is trying to read your website. If the time runs out the search engine will move on to the next website and even give your overall website a poor mark for speed.
- Slow loading websites will make the visitor go someplace else. Lost engagement in your website due to having to wait for a website page to load. As a society we are consuming more information faster than ever. As a result we demand that information load in a timely manner. A couple of years ago we would be concern if a page didn’t load in under an average of 4 seconds now we get nervous if a page doesn’t load in 2 seconds.
- Extra unnecessary code in the website template can open the potential of security leaks that can make your website and it’s content vulnerable to hacking from others.
- If the website template is no longer supported by the author it is a matter of time when certain parts of code design will be degraded and potentially break. We have had clients who have had website templates break down and costly to go in and fix some else’s code design.
How to not Fall in to Pitfalls of a Website Template
Website design for content and digital marketing should not be taken lightly. It is important that you get the foundation of a proper optimized website design correct while developing a meaningful digital marketing strategy. This simply does not come out of a boxed solution.
Success Media Services develops custom website themes around our client’s needs. They are developed in with the idea of only having enough code built into them so the website page loads a fast as possible, and only enough code to complete the tasks at hand. Nothing more.
Our sites are built for digital marketing needs in the areas of search engine optimization (SEO), social media campaigns, and other marketing needs.
Contact us today to see how we can help you make the most of your website and digital marketing needs.