E-commerce is fast becoming an essential business channel. From solo entrepreneurs finding success with their first online store to large retailers leaping into the digital age. According to Nasdaq, by 2040, it is thought e-commerce will facilitate 95% of purchases – a figure traditional retailers can no longer ignore.
If you’re still on the sidelines about taking your business online, you needn’t worry just yet: it’s never been easier to start. Readymade solutions such as Shopify & BrandPacks feature hundreds of rich-featured website templates enabling you to deploy custom websites in just a few clicks.
But why should you use a readymade template when you can hire a developer to build something custom? Something unique to you? Well, let’s dive into that, shall we…
1. With Templates, You Can Launch Your Site Quickly
Developing a website from scratch can take weeks. Drawing up the plans, figuring out which features you do and don’t need, and the back-and-forth of revisions. It adds up to a timely endeavour, and that’s without considering the time taken to actually find someone who can build it for you.
Instead, you could just take advantage of the numerous website templates on the market already. These tried and tested themes are already known to work, they can be customized to match your brand and deployed in just minutes.
2. Cuts the cost of your new website to a fraction by using templates
It’s true, with templates you don’t always get exactly what you want. Often, it’ll be a close approximation – something that can be tailored to suit your brand – but not necessarily made for your brand.
The flip side to this is cost. Building a custom website design exclusively for your brand, as we’ve mentioned, is a timely process, time is more valuable than money.
Instead, solutions like BrandPacks with libraries of free templates offer an efficient, low-cost solution for getting your store online.
Remember: the more money you save on development, the more you can invest in sales and marketing.
3. Hassle Free Support and Regular Updates
Digital technology is constantly evolving and your website needs to keep up. With a custom site design, you’ll need a developer on call to fix your website should something go wrong.
On the other hand, readymade templates are often consistently updated by the developers that make them, ensuring your website stays online without the cost of a full-time dev.
This support is priceless; it saves you time, money and keeps your site updated to the latest technological changes.
Furthermore, template development companies are often highly active within large, helpful support communities such as Facebook Groups and Forums
Why pay overtime for a dev when you can post a question for free?
4. In-built SEO features
SEO, aka being found in search engines, is one of the most important factors for a successful online store.
Working with a professional website template often means many of these factors are taken care of for you. Even more importantly, a website template can you give an added amount of control over the key factors that can make or break your presence in the search engines, namely Title, Description and URL structure.
Additionally, a growing area in SEO is page speed. In 2011; a Google Webmaster video was released on YouTube where Maile Ohye gives an overview of site performance and page speed. Maile states that “2 seconds is the threshold for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half second.”
Well-designed templates are light in code and optimized for search. This keeps your customers on site longer and improves the user-experience required for them to make a purchase.
5. Mobile optimized and fully responsive
2016 was the year when mobile internet usage surpassed desktop. Enter 2019, as mobile use continues to increase, online stores wanting to keep their mobile visitors are being forced to update their sites.
Using a mobile-optimized template ensure you can transition with ease. This’ll help provide a user-friendly experience to your customers and in turn, convert to more profits in the long run.
Most e-commerce website templates nowadays are responsive, meaning they adapt to all screens. Launch your new business using a responsive template and you’ll appeal to a mass market of cell phone users, no longer needing to build a separate mobile version.
6. Full Design Flexibility and Complete Customization
Readymade templates enable you to build a fully-functioning online store with little-to-no web design or development skills. The large selection of professional templates on the market means you’re spoilt for choice when deciding upon a template to use.
Templates give store owners complete control over their website design. Easily drag and drop design elements, change colours, fonts, and upload product photos/video without having to rely on a developer.
7. 3rd-Party App Integrations
A website template gives you the added advantage of having a complete structure to work within. Along with most design aspects already taken care of, oftentimes templates are ready to integrate with 3rd party apps and services.
Whether you want to track website visitors, add social media buttons, integrated email marketing software, pop-ups, customer surveys, contact forms and more. Readymade templates are designed to plug & play.