When you think of building a new site orrebranding an existing one, you almost immediately think of website templates!And that’s when you would usually fall into the rabbit hole. People like todebate their website template choices forever, instead of focusing on theirmarketing funnel, optimizing their marketing campaigns, or doing other coolstuff.
We’re here to do away with the websitetemplate debate entirely. Here are our top tips on how to narrow down yourwebsite template shopping experience:
1. Decide on the Type of WebsiteThat You Want
This might seem really basic, but it’s themost important step. You need to be crystal clear on what type of site you arebuilding. Is your site going to be an eCommerce site? Is it going to have ablog? Is it for a nonprofit or a church? Does it need to have a comment systembuilt-in or a portal for users to log in?
The template that you need will greatly depend on the type of business you haveand the various features that you need. So take the time to write down a listof your features and save yourself several hours of indecision.
On to our next point, are you ready?
Here comes.
2. Always Go with a ResponsiveTemplate
With more than 50% of the world’s trafficcoming from mobile devices, it’s critical that you select a template that isresponsive. What does that mean? It means that the responsivewebsite templates should adjust based on the screen size of thedevice that’s being used to view your site. So no more squinting and franticzooming in with your two fingers on your smartphone. Everything should beautomatically displayed to fit your screen.
3. Pick a Template with a Slider
Depending on the type of site you have, youmight need a different slider. If you have an eCommerce business with a veryvisual product, then you need to display a prominent image very close to yourtop menu. If, on the other hand, you run a nonprofit organization, then youmight consider a video slider on the top.
The following example is a nutrition app site,and as you can see the entire top part of the site is a huge image that clearlydisplays what the site is about. Then they have the two app icons that showthat it’s an app. So for Sigma, they needed a very large top element without aslider. There is no image gallery, there is just one static image with a veryvisible header.
Source: https://demo-sigma.ucraft.net/
4. Make sure Your Template IsBuilt for SEO
Search engine optimization is how you getdiscovered when people do a Google search, so it’s really important that yourwebsite template is built for SEO. The best templates have built-in SEOfeatures and allow for very easy customization. So make sure that your templatehas these features!
You’re probably asking yourself this question:how do you find a template that checks all the boxes?
Let’s talk about that.
5. Decide on Standalone versusPlatform
There are two ways that you can get access toa good template. The first way is if you use an online marketplace to pick yourtemplates. In that case, you need to spend quite a while going throughdifferent designs and then hoping that they have the features you are lookingfor. Sometimes it can take quite a while to verify that everything isavailable, and then you would still need to check that it has all the SEOelements built-in.
The second and more efficient way to get awebsite template is by using an online website builder. For example, Ucraft isa platform that allows you to build sites for free, or for an affordable price.It is a drag-and-drop builder (which means you don’t need any knowledge ofcoding), and also has a built-in SEO feature as well as being responsive andfast.
So in essence, you could be saving yourself alot of time when building a new site if you just use a platform like Ucraft,because it already has everything that your website needs.
