In this digital world, a well-established website template is a key point for establishing trustworthiness and faith with your clients. There and plenty of website design templates available in the market, so how will you choose the best one for your own business? This article walks you through the necessary steps on how to choose the right web design template that will establish the foundation of your online success in your business.
1.Define our Brand Identity:
Before choosing a website design template, it’s important to identify your brand’s identity. Your website is the representation of your brand’s identity, principles, and idea.
Ask the following questions to yourself:
- What does my brand mean to others?
- Who are the visitors of your website and what you want to convey?
- To whom your brand is?
For instance your company is sleek and modern you need to focus on the website with minimalist design and neutral color palettes. If your brand is jokey and creative you need to select the template which vibrant and eye-catching colors, fonts, and pictures.
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2.Understand the needs of your audience:
Your website not only represents your business, but also accommodates to the requirements and needs of your target audience.
For example:
- What’s their age?
- Do they have technical knowledge or they prefer basic navigation
- What is the aim of the visitors to visit your site.
If your audience is young and very skilled in technology they may choose interactive, engaging, responsive and user-friendly website. However if your audience is old and less technologically aware, a simpler and more user-friendly design will be more effective. In this way understanding your audience will assist you to choosing a best website template the provides a better user-friendly experience.
Read also:How to Create a Powerful Brand Strategy for Your Business
3.Categorize the objective of your website:
Different businesses have different requirements and the purpose of your website template will have a huge influence on the choice of the template. Creating an online shop, blog or a business website requires a different characteristics and functions.
Some examples:
E-Commerce website template:
If you have an online store you’ll need a template that includes pages which displays products, shopping carts and payment gateways. You need to look for the templates that are compatible with e-commerce systems.
Portfolio website template:
For professionals like photographers, designers, and artists etc a portfolio template that focuses on huge picture galleries, slideshows and minimal distractions is necessary.
Blog website template:
You need to recognize actual purpose of your blog. You should choose the template on whether is personal or niche specific (for eg: fitness or yoga) or business-oriented blog. The layout should be easily customized, with recent post sections and integrated with social media.
Read also:What is the Best Social Media Platform for Brand Awareness?
4.Importance to Mobile responsive template:
In an age where mobile internet usage has exceed desktop usage, it is important that your website template be mobile responsive, While selecting a template make sure that is completely responsive for all platforms, including smartphones,tablets,etc.
A mobile-friendly theme is very much necessary for your website for ranking purposes. When selecting a template, make sure it is completely responsive, which means it will automatically adjust to different screen sizes and orientations. Many of the vendors provide preview feature to see how to it is adapting to different screens in the market.
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5.Evaluate customization choices:
While choosing a template you should consider how adaptable your template is terms of design and functionality.
Design elements:
Choose the layout which allows your to rapidly change the color, textual styles and format which naturally speak about your brand.
Content Blocks:
Does your template allow you to alter, add or remove content blocks? Some templates have a drag and drop capacity, so that you can easily alter the layout without any coding knowledge.
Add-ons and Plug-in:
Check whether the template supports popular add-ons and integration with the plug-in you need, such as social media, contact forms and ecommerce tools etc.This will save your time in adding vital features in your site.
Choose a template that provides correct level of customization for your business needs and remaining user-friendly.
Read also:How to Create a Powerful Brand Strategy for Your Business
6.Give attention on SEO aspects:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important aspect to increase organic traffic to your website. SEO optimized content in the website will rank your website to top position so that it will be easy for your customers to identify you.
Some SEO features are:
- Well structured code: A website template with a clean and a well structured code is essential for easy and fast loading of web pages and easy indexing in search engines.
- Meta tags: The template should easily allow adding Meta title, descriptions and alt tag images which are the important features of on page SEO.This will help the search engines to understand the information about your website.
- Loading speed: Google give importance to the pages with fast loading times. Give importance to the templates with fast loading times both in the desktop and mobile.
Read also:What Are the Best Ways to Rank a Website
7.Consider your budget and customer support:
While selecting a website template you need to assess your budget and the expenses and there should be 24/7 customer support with proper guidance.
Free templates: Free templates are excellent solution of startup companies and small enterprises. However free templates have restricted functionality and customer support and limited design quality.
Premium templates: Premium templates are the excellent solution for professional website with more customizable options. It provides more functionality, good customer support and higher design quality.
Conclusion:
You need to do a research before confirming a website template for your business. Reading the review from your clients helps you to know the ups and downs in your web template. Choosing a great website template is an important decision for the long-lasting online visibility of your business. Focus on mobile-friendly, SEO, customization possibility of templates and user-friendly template. This may build trust and reliability of your company and increases conversions.