Budgets suck, but they’re a reality we all live with. Of course you’re going to want something that is tailored made for your business – who wouldn’t? But sometimes the budget just doesn’t allow for a custom website to be designed and developed. It’s not the end of the world. That’s where the template website comes in.
No matter what type of content management system your website is based on – whether it’s Drupal, Joomla or WordPress, there are a variety of themes out there that not only look great, but are extremely affordable. This may seem like a perfect solution and indeed, a good theme can sometimes provide you with everything you need at the time – but you need to understand what you are getting.
First of all, it needs to be made very clear that a website by itself is NOT a marketing strategy. You can’t expect to launch any website and have a bunch of leads just drunkenly stumble onto it, ready to throw wads of cash at you. A website should be the hub where your marketing strategy points to as a mechanism to track how successful your marketing efforts have been and to be a helpful resource for leads and customers.
Second, keep in mind that prebuilt themes are sold to anyone and everyone, so even though there is only a very small chance that someone else in your local area will own the same template, it is still a possibility.
Here are just a few more important caveats to consider when purchasing a template or theme website:
1. It’s going to have limited capabilities
What you are buying is a pre-made theme for the masses. It’s often going to be what you see is what you get. Many templates websites come mobile ready which is great for saving on development costs, but if you’re hoping to be able to add features like multiple languages, events calendars, custom forms or other custom plugins, you’ll want to make sure the theme will support such features before hand – if you can. Trying to MacGyver something into it later could be more costly in the long run. It’s kind of like buying a prefab home and trying to retrofit a Batcave into it later on.
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