by: Anthony Lee
How to make web website x 10 times cheaper and x 10 times faster.
Take a look:
http://www.templatemonster.com/~david/article/106-m.jpg
http://www.templatemonster.com/~david/article/107-m.jpg
http://www.templatemonster.com/~david/article/109-m.jpg
http://www.templatemonster.com/~david/article/110-m.jpg
http://www.templatemonster.com/~david/article/137-m.jpg
http://www.templatemonster.com/~david/article/113-m.jpg
http://www.templatemonster.com/~david/article/135-m.jpg
Time after time ALL web developers need for good design like this.
Actually design of web site is VERY important at nowadays. Online competitionis very hard. Internet is filled with competing web sites that are proposing almost the same services. For example, few days ago I was browsing internet attempting to choose good merchant system provider. In my opinion, most of the web sites have the ugliest interfaces I have ever seen, but ALL of them have similar terms and pricing packages.
My choice falled on provider who had best design because I assumed that they pay same attention to their customer support, quality of service as they pay to design.
By the way, MediaMetrix monitoring shows that good design and usability influe on 60% of site visitors in their final decision. Good design makes people TRUST web site.
However it is a dilemma because hiring good designer cost a lot of money sometimes.
I was working as freelance designer for 8 years from now. My first project was web design studio - www.inverse-logic.com. After 1 year of hard work and marketing I realized that we have more job that we can make. At this time I though to use web design template for the first time.
I devoted next few hours for searching for good web site that is proposing pre made design and I must tell that I was VERY dissapointed. Most of them were proposing very ugly stuff.
However I was still able to use some of designs. Of course I had thoughts that probably someone will encounter web site with similar design online. That's why I opened template with photoshop and made a lot of changes that made design unrecognizable.
Conclusion: I have saved 1-2 days and received $3000 from client who was very happy with what I have done.
2 years later I have realized that website templates can become a good business and have made my first e-commerce project TemplateMonster.com. Website templates.
There was very different opinions about TemplateMonster. Some people was telling that it is bad, others was admiring this. I was dissapointed that only 10%-20% of customers were customizing templates - other was only inserting their logos and writing down other info.
Let`s let back to the merchant systems. Can you imaging how good merchant system provider can look with design like this:
http://www.templatemonster.com/~david/article/167-b.jpg
Template websites can be found on google directory http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Graphics/Web/Templates.
Usually templates come in HTML and Photoshop format. Good template sites are inclusing all fonts and other elements needed to modify template.
Many designers purchase premade clipart from such web sites like arttoday.com. So what is the difference? I think that it quite reasonable for novice designer to purchase professional graphics elements in Photoshop file of template…
Template design is good as long as you are customizing templates!