Why Custom Designs
are so much better than Premade Templates
We have changed our focus away
from providing premade templates for websites to more custom
designs. We work with each new customer to create something
unique for their business website rather than using existing
templates.
It is a big change for
our business but here are some of the reasons why we have made
the change.
Loads of man
hours in to website templates
In time
website templates are dated and need to be replaced
New web
browser capabilities allow us to add new features
New management
tools don't integrate well into less flexible designs
Happy
customers means more money
In every industry, things
change. There are new ideas and designs become dated over time,
so putting thousands of hours into building templates does not
make much sense when we can create custom designs for each new
customer, give them something unique and spend less time overall.
Templates don't work for us
anymore because:
1.) It takes
loads of man hours to make templates. To create 1000 templates we
might have 2-5 hours into each template,so if we average that at
4000 hours @ $20+/hr we might invest $80,000.00 building
templates. That is a lot of money and well worth it if
everyone could use one of the templates.
The problem we have had is
that templates don't translate. In other words, when people look
at the templates, they don't visualize the design with their own
content. So most people look at a gallery of over 100 designs and
figure they don't have one they can use. At that point, they look
for another host that has something they like.
Well, with thousands of
professions, it is impossible to make 1000 templates for each one,
we would have to have millions of templates to browse through and
still, nobody would find exactly what they are looking for.
So we have invested, time a
bundle of money and it was costing us customers because they
though they had to use one of our templates and none of them made
them happy.
Even though the templates
could be modified, people don't see the forest for the trees.
They see something that does not wow them and that is bad
business.
2.) In a
short time after spending all the cash on the templates, they are
dated and nobody wants them. So it is almost impossible to keep
up.
In the beginning, offering
1000 templates put us ahead of everyone, because small companies
just can't afford to do that or spend full time for 2 years to
build templates. So what we offered at discounted rates did work
very well.
But over time, the templates
became stale, people wanted new looks, new trends and new
features.
Animated gifs faded as
javascript slideshows emerged. Flash and other fancy display
mediums took over the static templates and the interest in what
we had was fading.
So we created more flexible
layouts. Tools to set the layout of a page and not be limited to
a pre designed website template. We created a gallery of
thousands of titlespaces that could be modified and this gave us
a more modern look without any real limits to the design.
Again, even with over 4000
unique title spaces, we would get people that say, "none of
them works for m business".
We explain, they can be
modified, add your logo, add you text and it will be what you
want.
But they did not have the
desire, the drive or the design ability to do that, so we did it
for them.
3.) Over time,
browsers change, allow for more features, like CSS and new looks
and styles. What was not possible 3 years ago, is now possible.
What we could build 4000 hours ago, is now being eclipsed by new
looks.
I guess artists deal with this
all the time. Keeping up with trends, updating and making things
seem new. Architects have to make more contemporary designs.
Interior decorators shift from Formica counters to granite and
stainless appliances. Cars don't look like they did 10 years ago,
nothing is the same.
So having templates just was
not working. We could not keep up or make enough templates to
make all of our customer happy.
4.) Static
templates were also making it more difficult for us to add new
tools to the management interface since we had never planed on
adding those features when the templates were designed.
So templates had to be
modified, changed and sometimes rebuilt just to add a single new
tool for our users.
After several rebuilds of the
old templates we just had about enough.
90% of the new designs did not
use the templates, the templates were old, dated and just did not
offer what the rest of our system could do.
5.) It made
so much more sense just to build custom designs than to mess with
maintaining a gallery of old work.
In fact, if we spend 2-5 hours
creating a custom design for a customer, we have less time
overall and the customer has something unique that they can work
with.
There is no question that when
someone see, their colors, their logo, their photos in a web page
it invokes a different emotion than when they see a template.
We still have to work very
hard, but our customers have what they want, not something that
we thought of years before they even became customers of ours.
It is not that the templates
were bad, it is just that we could never offer premade designs to
make everyone happy.
But if we do customer work as
part of the overall service, then our customers are very happy.
We have been able to create
unique looks, designs, colors and styles that fit each business.
Take a company's logo and turn it into an entire page design,
following the styling of what they already have.
It really is nothing new,
since we always offered free customization of templates with
hosting. But now we don't even let people use the templates, we
just create one for each customer.
Ultimately, having
happy customers means we make more money.
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