Website Templates

What are the advantages as well as disadvantages of using website templates

There are some businesses, especially startups or those on a shoestring budget that prefer to use website templates for creating their websites. Others don’t prefer it as they feel it involves a lot of hassle. We present here with some advantages and disadvantages of using website templates. Based on the pros and cons, one can decide to go in for a website template or if they would rather have a website built from scratch and that too, customized and created by a website designer.

Advantages of website templates:

  1. You can choose from hundreds and thousands of available designs. You do not need to think of the exact colors, shades or fonts and then describe it to a designer who may or may not share your vision. Here, what you see is what you will get finally. Those people who are not very good with colors or designing can consider this as a boon. They may not be aware of what they should use or what combinations can be the best for creating a website. However, they can make an attractive site easily!
  2. As the templates are already available, they can be put to the test to find out how visitors navigate around and how should you display the matter on the site. It allows an owner to get a first-hand feel of the website.
  3. You can instantly start creating the site without waiting for the designer to design it before you can test it out. That way it saves a lot of time and the site can be up and running within a whisker, thus attracting more customers and leads.
  4. These sites are cheaper than building a website from scratch. As the amount of time required to have it functional is less in this case, there are more chances of people coming to the site.

However, these website templates also have their fair share of disadvantages.

Disadvantages of website templates

  1. The expansion of a website is usually limited when one gets a website template. There are chances that the number of navigation links may be limited. Therefore, adding more pages or adding more products or services gets tricky as well. Thus in the long run, if the company or business plans to go aggressive in expansion, they should stay away from website templates that have limited links.
  2. Some of the website templates lack originality and are plain looking. They may not have the ‘wow’ factor that a custom-made site would have. Also, various businesses can use a template design and thus even though you may add your logo and change the color scheme; it may not still look unique.
  3. A custom designer can perhaps, insert images and content as well as add a shopping cart and more. When you have website templates, the task lies with you – whether to optimize images and make HTML links or even adding buttons for a shopping cart.

These, in short, are the pros and cons associated.