Choose The Best Business Website Templates

Once you decide to build your own website, one of the first things you need to do is to choose a great template. You don’t have to be a master of the graphic arts to decide on your desired template. However, with a multitude of business website templates at your disposal, you are left wondering which one to choose. There are a few things to consider when choosing a template, such as design, colors, customization, and the number of pages. A standard website template can do the job, but there are also various complex ones can support your specific needs. What are the factors you need to consider to consider when making this decision?

Design

How important is it to have a cutting-edge, flashy website design? Of course, the appearance of the website matters, but its functionality and UX are much more important. When comparing business website templates, you should always put user’s experience first. Pick a simple and intuitive layout that suits your website’s architecture and guides the visitors through the pages. However, simple doesn’t have to mean boring. Go for something appealing but with enough white space, especially if your website has plenty of text blocks.

Color Scheme

Your background color is another detail you should match with your target audience. Black backgrounds are not recommended unless you want to create a very masculine website. Triadic color palettes using soft tones of blue, yellow, and red make great choices for a modern looking website template. However, if you want to stand out from the crowd, use your website’s color as a branding element, and pick a highly saturated warm color.

The best is to choose one color, maybe the dominant one in your logo, and then pick two more colors to build a complementary, analogous, or monochromatic scheme, which will surely provide your website with an appealing look.

Width

There are two different content widths that you can choose from for your website template. They are full-width and boxed-width. A full-width content template means that the content stretches fully from one side of your computer’s display to the other. A boxed-width content template has a set box in the center of your website that is framed on either side. How do you decide which width is right for your business website? One way is to think about your menu bar layout.  Depending on how many page tabs you plan to incorporate into your menu bar, you may be better off with a full-width design simply so that the menu bar appears less cluttered. In general, however, a boxed-width design appears more conventional whereas a full-width design looks more modern.

HTML or Flash?

These are the two most common coding methods used for website design. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Almost as old as the World Wide Web itself, HTML is the dominant format, especially during recent years. Although much better looking, and offering an improved user experience, websites built in Flash are more difficult to optimize and slower to load.

Today most website builders offer HTML templates. Wix website builder has made a name for itself because of its gorgeous Flash templates. However, because of optimization constrictions, they are currently offering a wide range of HTML 5 website templates.

Customization

The ability to customize your site is an important aspect when deciding which website template to use for your project. Templates based on HTML code are the best as they allow you to make small backend changes easily. Moreover, you don’t have to master HTML and CSS perfectly. Most website building programs allow you to alter the templates via their user-friendly interface, without even touching the code.

Features and Functionalities

The features to look for in a website template depend on the type of site you are building and the goals you have set for yourself. If you are into e-commerce, you might be looking for a template that includes a product search option, a popular products section, and store locator feature. If you are a photographer and decided to build your own website as an online portfolio, you might want a template with large picture inserts.

Field

One of the easiest ways to narrow down your business website template choices is by your professional field. Many website builders divide their templates into categories to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for. Typical categories include things like blogs, events, and business. Under the business section, you can often opt to see templates by groupings such as healthcare, real estate, restaurants, tourism, and more.

Choosing the right template for your field can save you so much time because it will incorporate a layout of the business pages that you’ll likely need. For example, a template for a bed and breakfast site will include pages for room rates and where clients can make a booking. A restaurant template will offer a menu page and a place for people to make reservations through the website. An online store will have a Shop page with products and a shopping cart. Instead of needing to figure out how to add all of these relevant elements to a blank template, you essentially get a head start by choosing a template designed with your profession in mind.

Cost

Of course, one of the factors that you’ll likely consider when choosing your website template is cost. While there are many free business website templates available on site builders, there are also premium templates that come at a price. WordPress, for example, offers both free and premium themes. On Wix, on the other hand, all themes are available to everyone for free. Then there are website builders like Web.com that provide the additional option of having an expert custom design your website for you –for a price. That being said, you shouldn’t necessarily choose your website template based on cost alone. After all, a well-designed template can end up being priceless for your company in the long run if it helps you stand out in your field, is easy to navigate, and results in more customers paying for your services and products.

Conclusion

Website templates are useful design tools that can help you save a lot of money and effort. Picking the right one is very important as it can impact your visitors’ on-site experience as well as your website’s performance with search engines. The best is to draft a list of priorities and go over a good number of templates before you make your final decision.

This article was originally published on April 18, 2015. Its content has since been updated.