Advantages and Disadvantages of Web Templates

Web templates can be a huge asset to busy web designers. The variety of templates available is astounding, and almost any style of website can be developed using a template as a foundation. With that being said, there are also reasons to think carefully before selecting a template at random.

Advantages of Web Templates

Web templates have many advantages over custom designed sites. The most obvious advantage is the cost and time element. A web template costs considerably less than a custom website, but the quality of the design is often consistent with the custom variety.

Constructing a website from a template also can save a great deal of time. Custom sites can take months, but template based sites can be created in days, perhaps even hours. The more time that is spent initially in planning a website’s purpose and features, the less time the actual site creation will take.

If you know what is important in the design before shopping for a template, you can find a template that is the right color, contains the right graphics, and customize anything else. A well-designed template can be customized to almost any degree. It is unlikely that one of the millions of templates available will be absolutely perfect. However, if the basic elements of a site are present in the design, you can always add or delete pages, fix the buttons or make any other changes necessary.

Disadvantages of Web Templates

The most glaring disadvantage of a template is that your newly created website will look almost identical to anyone else who purchased or downloaded the template you used. For many sites this is not a deterrent to visitors, but in some situations it may be. This is an area of concern that must be addressed before the site is created. The similarity to other sites can be avoided to a certain extent by customization of template aspects, but the overall feel of the template will remain.

Another disadvantage is the coding behind the site. Many templates, especially those that are provided free have coding that can only be called sloppy. If you obtain one of these templates, the coding will hamper search engine optimization and any necessary changes or additions. It might even make it difficult to add basic elements. This is an area of concern that can be avoided by finding reputable sources for templates and examining and cleaning the code of any extraneous information.

Overall, website templates provide a ready design solution to thousands of wed developers on a regular basis. More than half of the websites created today utilize templates in one form or another. For some, the website template might be all that is required. For others, it is simply a starting point. But for all, it represents a readily available solution to creating quality web sites.

2 Responses to “Advantages and Disadvantages of Web Templates”


  1. thanks a lot your explaination is of much help to us


  2. Thank you I can now Get a A in my test