Unarguably, the most important part of your website is content. To draw in clients or customers, you need captivating content and search engines are blind to web design. They only see content. The images, structure and colors of your website go out the window when it comes to search engine placement, which we all know is the single best traffic generator. Your web design is really only a shell that makes your content look pretty. Don't get me wrong, your site's design can be very important. People are influenced by colors they see, and the quality of your design lends credibility to your brand-image.

So why are so many people spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for someone to build them a custom shell for their content? The answer is simple: because they don't know about web site templates. Or maybe more accurately: they know about templates, but don't know how to utilize them. Did you know that many web designers actually buy web site templates that they then customize to meet their clients needs?

A website template is the fastest, easiest, and most cost effective path to building your website. Where custom design can take weeks or months to finish, and can run you in the thousands of dollars, web templates are relatively inexpensive, and can be ready to publish in a matter of days. Many high-quality templates are available for under $100.

There are a few different options for finding web templates. There are membership based dealers that offer a ?ne-time or monthly subscription fee which buys you the right to download their entire collection. Then there are companies that deal on a one-by-one basis, selling a single template for use with one website. Personally, I find the one-by-one type companies offer much higher quality designs. Not to mention the aspect of exclusivity. If ten thousand people subscribe to a membership based template company, and one thousand of them like the XYZ template, how many websites are going to look exactly the same? You do the math.

Many of the single-sale companies offer two separate ways to buy. The first and most common is the general purchase. This gives you the right to use the design to build one website, whether you're building a website for yourself or for someone else. Then there is the unique price. This not only gives you the right to use the template, it also means the company will stop selling the template to other customers. You will be the only one out there with that design.

I know what you're thinking, "Even if I did get a template, I wouldn't know how to edit it." The great thing is it's not hard to find a company that will sell you the template, and then help you edit the template for a nominal fee. Basically, you're getting professional web design at a fraction of the cost. There is really no reason not to buy a web site template.

Visit your local template shop and have a look around. You may be pleasantly surprised to find exactly what you're looking for!

Jon Hancock is the president and founder of HighTide Web Services. We are proud to be a fast growing, California based web services firm, offering high quality web site templates from some of the best designers out there, as well as excellent and affordable web h?sting.

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