Webpage design has always changed rapidly with new developments in the Web. SEO, Flash, feeds, CSS, and blogs have all impacted webpage design.  Considering the poliferation of coding shorcuts with online sitebuilders and design packages like Front Page and Dreamweaver it’s no wonder website design has both simplified in
some ways and gotten more complex in other ways.

Over the last year I have been studying the uses of webpage templates.  These ready-designed webpage templates are now made for almost every possible use, from blogging to Flash to Liquid CSS applications.  In one respect it’s easy to understand why the price of web templates has been falling too.  It’s easier, cost and time effective, to make 100 of a variety than to make one unique product.

Although the demand for webpages and blogs is expanding geometrically - so have the number of designers and design tools.  Webpages can seldom bring the relative price that they once did - just as videocams and laptops have adjusted in price, and usually in quality, over time.

Web templates have been used more and more as their technical and esthetic qualities have improved.  In fact, I began asking webpage designers - both amateur and top level professionals - about their use of web templates.  The array of responses was very interesting.  In addition to conversations with designers, I sent out questionnaires for information on web template use.  I also conducted some interviews with webpage designers on my Web Templates Blog.

The results of these verbal and emailed reports was substantial.  To summarize what I found I will list the issues most often mentioned by designers.  These issues are rank ordered by number of times mentioned.

1) Template Cost    vs    Project Revenue
2) Time needed to alter a template    vs    Time needed to design in total
3) Graphics and look of a template    vs    Time and money to find graphics
4) Client need to see and make decisions from a working template    vs           Showing original design steps for approval
5) Designer’s familiarity with templates    vs    Designer’s lack of       familiarity with templates.
6) Designer’s desire to do certain parts of a design    vs    designer’s       desire to do the entirety of the design
7) Designer knowledge of a type of template    vs    Never having worked with    a type of template
8) Ease of code editting    vs    Ease of code writing

While the major issues are easy to list there were a few other considerations that were mentioned in various ways.  These considerations were lumped together into two other categories:

1) Designer comfort with a certain brand of template
2) Designer specialty and/or type of clients

Early on I realized that these issues and resulting decisions, as to when web templates make good design sense, would be almost impossible to quantify.  But as a general rule of thumb - it only took 2 clear-cut decisions on the above issues, pro template use, to cause designers to use a template.  The last two categories get into a more personal, less calculable area.

I found two other very strong trends in web template usage; these involved: 1) Once a designer begins using templates, they use them more frequently  2) The more freely a designer spoke about using templates in design projects, the more frequently they tended to report that they used
them in projects.

For the designers who interviewed publicly I can provide a few quotes here
with links:

I asked Pat Heard about pricing of his work, particularly a website design like North Shore: “template along with subpages would run around $600 USD. That site was actually a template project, so I created the code, and then gave it to my client for him to create the subpages, so it ended up costing him $350.”

Isaac Forman: “I have created custom templates for other development companies. . . For clients on a budget or someone starting out in the industry, I think they would be a useful tool - either simply to get a quality site online, or as a learning process.”

I wanted to know about Stuart Robertson’s experiences with website templates. “I think giving people a choice of nice looking and well coded templates when they’re getting started is a good idea. Once they’ve been using their site for a while they can make more informed decisions about what they would like to see in a custom website design, and hire a professional web designer to create it.”

I asked Adrian Mullan if he had ever worked with website templates. “Yes, I’ve used a few good templates over the years. . .        http://www.templatemonster.com/ , http://www.oswd.org/ , http://www.pixellogo.com/ , http://www.designgalaxy.net/ . . . I think the true test of any website template is how easy it is to modify the template to suit your needs. While many templates look great on the surface, they can be a nightmare to modify.  Occasionally we see templates where the original PSD file is hard to work with because the layers are not properly named/organized - but it’s getting better. . . It would nice to see more template providers go towards lean and mean templates, instead of the usual flashy stuff. . . The problem is, if you pull the regular person off the street and ask them ‘what do you think of this website’ instinctively they will base their decision on the aesthetics (not content, usability, search engine friendliness, etc).  Having said that, I can understand why template providers promote graphics intensive layouts.”

I asked Kimberly Barreda had she ever worked with website templates? “Extensively - we have 14 sites in the network and I believe 10 are template based. I used to use Moira’s web jewels, then I paid a known cartoonist to design some, then I found Template Monster. Moira’s was fun, they were free. . .Template Monster has worked out really well for us.”

I asked Robert Burridge about templates: “I personally specialise in template editing (HTML, etc.) since by using a template we are able to offer our customers the very best product at the lowest amount of time and money. . .I have worked with web templates since 2002; 80% of my work is based on templates.”

Numerous other conversations and questionnaires provided similar anecdotes and viewpoints.  I expect a boom in the near future of CSS based blog sites for both business and recreational use.  As a side question I often asked bloggers about WordPress Templates usage.  Notably blogs are becoming more complex and more beautiful.  Bloggers like variety in their themes.  Two examples of Wordpress themes:

Christine Rodriguez: “I set up a family recipe repository. . . I’ve been blogging for four years but this particular site is new . . . I blog for fun. . . I love it. It’s simple, elegant design, and very easy to install.”

Aspire Youth Ministries: Jessica Weiser explained, “I customized the design for our website, but overall the theme was okay.”

My Way or The Highway,
Arthur Browning