For many website owners, selecting between custom website design and buying website templates is not an easy decision to make. If you are faced with such a dilemma, what factors should you consider in making your choice?

The Advantages of Website Templates

Commissioning a web designer to create a custom website design that only your website will enjoy requires an investment of time and money. If you cannot afford to make this investment, then website templates will be the better choice for you.

After all, there are thousands and thousands of templates that you can get at a mere fraction of the cost of a custom website design. There are even templates that you can download and use for your website for free.

It also takes only a few hours to set up website templates so you can use them on your own website. If the template was coded correctly, you can easily change the elements to make the template your own.

The Disadvantage of Website Templates

As cheap and easy as website templates are, the one problem you would have to deal with in using them is that you cannot assert your own uniqueness on the Internet. This will be a huge deal if you are trying to create your own brand for your products and services. No matter how much customization you make with the template, you will always look like a clone of someone else.

Also, there is always the risk that the website template that you got is not coded properly. This is especially true for templates that you have downloaded for free. If you make one mistake in modifying the code or adding content to your website, the entire look of the website will be in disarray.

Custom Website Design: An Investment for Your Money

If one of your goals in putting up a website is to assert your own unique identity on the Internet and if this identity is essential to the success of promoting your own products and services, custom website design is the only way to go. A custom website design for your own website is yours and yours alone.

And because it is yours alone, you can always count on the custom website design you have commissioned to be fine-tuned to every single detail of what you expect from your website. Unlike with website templates, you do not have to take apart a custom website design to make it suit your needs because the design was already crafted for your needs. It may take a couple of months to get it done, but you are 100% guaranteed that the output will be to your liking.

If you have the money to spend or if you are serious about your own branding, always go for a custom website design. As great as website templates are, they cannot beat the uniqueness and suitability of a web design that was tailor-fit to your needs.

The fact is that web design for small business should not be looked upon as an expense but rather as an investment. You would be marketing your business however way you can in order to keep your clients patronizing your business, would you not? A website is the most powerful marketing tool you could ever have.

The Website as a Marketing Tool

More and more people these days are relying on the Internet when it comes to finding the goods and services that they need. A lot of people even go so far as buying what they need directly from the Internet. That is because the Internet does not only give them more information about the goods and services that they want, but it also gives them more choices.

Hiring a team to create a web design that is suited for your small business is a way of capturing this market, even if you are just operating within your own locale. A website is the best medium available to you to explain to your potential customers what your products and services are all about and how your customers can benefit from using them.

A good web design for small business is also a great way to build customer loyalty. Through your website, you can update your clients if you have something new to offer. You can even put up a page full of resources that can offer solutions to their problems beyond simply selling them your products. Also, if your customers have some concerns about your product, they can easily get in touch with you through your website.

The Website as an Online Store

Another excellent thing with hiring a team to create a good website with a web design for local business is that you will have a store that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This means that you can serve your customers anytime even if your physical store is closed. You can also operate from home if it is your choice.

Imagine the convenience that you would be giving your customers simply by being able to cater to your needs at any time they require your assistance. You do not have to be awake or to be at your store for that to happen. You simply need to have a website that handles some of your business processes automatically. Thus, you are adding more value to your products that your customers will greatly appreciate.

In time, you may even want to expand the reach of your business beyond your own locale. Because the Internet knows no boundaries, you can do business and gain clients from outside your own locale through your website. Room for growth is one of the biggest benefits you can get from web design for small business.

The W3C standards, however, exist for a reason, and that reason is by no means to limit or to restrict the use of the Internet. The web standards should rather be seen as a means by which a webmaster would be able to protect his website, to make it easy to work with, and to give a form of versatility to the website so that others may be able to access it.

The Accessibility of Standard Websites

Accessibility is one of the greatest reasons why following the W3C standards and creating a standard website is important. In this day and age when search engines reign supreme and people can surf the Internet using mobile phones, handheld devices and even gaming consoles, it has become essential in web design that the website one creates must be read correctly by all existing platforms.

If a website is designed and coded properly according to web standards, it does not matter which device or browser a person is using to view the website. The website content will load correctly regardless of gadget, browser or operating system being used.

Also, the viability of the website is protected. If a website was made according to web standards, it will have the backwards compatibility that makes older browsers able to read and load them. On that same note, the website will still be readable to newer browsers regardless of whatever technological advances would occur in the future.

The Profitability of Standard Websites

It should be emphasized that standard websites are also more profitable to make and maintain than those that do not follow the W3C standards. For one, they are easier to maintain. With the right content management software and code validators, maintaining and adding new content to the website will only take less than an hour to accomplish. This immediately saves the webmaster time and money in working on his website.

Search engines are also friendlier towards standard websites. All webmasters know that search engine visibility is the key to profitability on the Internet. Following the W3C standards ensures that the website has the correct coding and information architecture that will make search engine robots able to index the site properly. Properly indexed web pages are more guaranteed to land higher rankings on search engine results pages (SERP). A higher SERP ranking means more traffic, and more traffic usually means better income.

Creating a web design that yields a website that complies with the W3C standards is not limiting or restricting. It is actually far from that. Instead, the web standards are more of a way of unleashing the potential power that a website holds.

However, technological developments and the growing sophistication of users browsing the Internet have given rise to the necessity of implementing web standards when it comes to web design. It is not enough to bundle code, graphics and text anymore and call the results a proper website.

Why do web standards need to be followed when coming up with a creative web design? Basically, web standards are meant to protect the website and to ensure its continued accessibility to its users. The reasons in detail are listed below.

1. ­Following web standards reduces uses of resources. A creative web design that strictly follows web standards are smaller in size, does not eat up too much memory and does not take up too much bandwidth.
2. Websites created using web standards are ensured of future accessibility. If a website was built in a design that observes the set web standards, its owner will be assured that the content of his or her website will remain accessible and readable in the years or decades to come.
3. Maintaining websites that have followed web standards is easier. Before, it took hours to maintain a website and make sure it was running properly. Now, however, it only takes as little as five minutes to keep a website in running order as long as it is designed according to the set web standards.
4. It is easier to expand a website designed in accordance to web standards. A website that was built with a creative web design that follows web standards would have the right information architecture that can be easily expanded with new content.
5. Websites following web standards are easier to navigate. The last thing that a visitor wants to happen while visiting a website is to get lost within its pages. If that visitor is unable to find what he or she is looking for in a website, he or she will not hesitate to click away from the site.

There are many tools and software available that can help web developers make sure that their web design complies with web standards. Complying with web standards, however, can be as easy as making sure that the three factors below are observed in the web design:

1. The correct DOCTYPE is specified on top of the page. This ensures that the web browser will correctly read the webpage.
2. The syntax used in the HTML code is clean and valid so there would be no ambiguities or errors in loading and displaying the webpage.
3. The elements for the website’s presentation and the elements indicating its content should be kept separate using CSS.

If you are to hire online web design firms to work on your web projects, there are a number of considerations that you need to think about in order to bring out the best results from the project.  Of these considerations, these five are most important.

1. A clear goal and focus. What is it that you want out of your web projects? What purpose, mission or goal do you intend to fulfill with the website that you are going to have built?  These are two questions that you need to answer before you even approach online web design firms for quotes on your website. You see, the team you will hire will need to know your intentions for your website in order to come up with the appropriate web design.  It should also be clear enough that just one glance at your website shows exactly what your site is all about in order for you to gain a captive audience.
2. An identified target audience. You would also need to figure out whom you would be targeting with your website.  Who is your intended audience and what do you want your intended audience to do after browsing your site?While it is always nice to create a site whose web design is universally appealing, you are guaranteed that you cannot please everyone. So you might as well aim to please those potential customers whose traffic you want to convert into sales and loyalty.
3. An open mind. Remember that you are on the lookout for online web design firms to work on your website because you want experts who know their stuff to make the best web design out of your concept.  After all, you may not be able to afford the time it takes to build your own website yourself.Because they are the experts and you are not, you should listen well to what they say and take their ideas with an open mind.  Let your web design team take care of you.
4. A scrutinizing eye. But even though you should listen attentively to your web design team’s inputs that does not mean that you are to agree with everything they have to say.  Take a look at what plans and strategies they have laid out for you in terms of how your web projects would turn out to be.  If something bothers you about it, do not hesitate to ask questions and to seek clarifications.  After all, it is your website and you are paying your team to give you the website that you want.
5. Being on top. Always be on top of what is going on with your web projects.  Make sure that you are continuously updated with developments and that you communicate with your web design team.  In this way, you would be able to steer the team towards the direction that you want your website to take, thus minimizing any errors, misunderstandings and waste of resources that may happen along the way.