Mistakes to Avoid when Using Web Templates

There are a lot of websites out there that offer free and paid website templates. Templates are great, for they can save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. In fact, I use templates to create the design for all my websites - though I personalized them quite a bit.

There is a downside to using template, however. A lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

Uniqueness Is Important
The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular - and not customizing it in any way. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbors.

Balancing Time Savings with Uniqueness
If you're doing this on your own, you'll have to balance the time-savings of a template with the time you need to take to make it your own. The whole point of using a web template is to save you time and effort - just change the title and appropriate details and you're done.

But as I mentioned, you don't want your website to look like everybody else's. However, you don't want to spend so much time customizing the template that you loose the time savings templates offer.

Modifying a Template
You want to look for a template that gives you the over all look and feel you want, that only requires you to maybe change a header image and the color scheme. For example, you find a nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer put an image of stamps in the header and your site is about gardening. All you need to do is find some images of garden plants and spades, and replace the stamps in the header for your site. This way you're making a small enough change that your site is unique, but you still save time over designing your site from scratch.

Keep Your Audience in Mind
In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. Of course, this is a very subjective issue. But you need to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Template choices can be very cool, pretty, etc., but if they do not suit your audience, they will not help your website. Don't choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they serve your purpose.