Web design techniques and trends have changed dramatically over the years. I can remember the days of generic gray backgrounds, default system text, flashing animations, moving arrows, construction signs, and gaudy backgrounds.
In 1999 (after five years of template development experience by most of our designers) BasicTemplates.com, our template membership service was formed. It was our dream to stand out from the crowd and produce
quality, clean and affordable website templates using the current version of HTML, external cascading style sheets, SSI (server side include) instructions for those who wanted improved maintenance techniques, and the concept of removable, interchangeable graphics. It was a smashing hit and still is by webmasters who understand that a web template labeled "professional or attractive" doesn't mean "guaranteed to achieve your website goals".
Even though there are tons of eye candy, colorful templates on the market mainly developed by "graphic designers" - not "web designers", it is our prediction that business savvy webmasters will begin to understand that non-traditional navigational structures, heavy page loads, unnecessary graphics, and cluttered websites is not helping their conversions at all. The design of your website should be the easiest part of all. Leaving you with tons of time to add original, rich content and promote your site.
While many of our competitors are busy publicizing that their goal is to populate the web with pretty websites using their designs, we have and will continue to educate people and provide webmasters with designs that are effective, clean, low cost, easy to use, and maintenance friendly.
I guess you might say we are busy doing the same things - aggressively providing webmasters of the Internet with effective tools that will help them. If you are serious about your online business, you will spend less time worrying about the graphics and more time growing your content and promoting your website. After all, the search engines don't care about your graphics, and you can add them at any time when you purchase the right template from the right company. ;)
My second prediction is the continual growth in popularity of blogs in conjuction with RSS. Most people don't realize that blogs have been around for years. If memory serves me well, I had a personal blog online as early as 1998 (maybe 1996?). At that time Blogger was the only blog service available and it was pretty new. If you will notice, the most successful blogs you see are basic, simple design layouts. Why? Because as human beings we intuitive know that keeping things basic and simple are the quickest ways to achieve our goals. Hence ... the name of our website template company:
BasicTemplates.comMy third prediction is that podcasts will soar in popularity and in less than five years it will be as popular of a marketing media as blogs are today. It's pretty silly to think otherwise. Our podcasts
Effective-Website-Secrets.com have been popular over at iTunes since September 2005. It's been featured on iTunes homepage and in the Top 25 Most Popular Podcasts in all of iTunes many, many times. Why? Because webmasters are ready to hear the truth about what it takes to make a website effective, and our podcast listeners are supporting us 100%.
My fourth prediction is that website templates designers who label their designs in such manners as to try to entice non-suspecting good folks to buy their templates and/or try to justify a higher price will start to "get it". Or they will simply and permanently go out of the template development business. Having been around for more than 11 years we have seen this countless time. These type merchants are actually Black Hat Marketers.
Honesty is always the best policy when you are trying to establish trust and grow relationships. Template designers who mislead people into buying their designs often label their templates as:
- Adsense Ready Templates or Adsense Compatible Web Templates
- Affiliates Website Templates
- Full Website Templates (meaning a fully developed website)
- [insert other misleading Label or Niche here] Web Templates, etc.
- Adsense Optimized Templates
Think of it this way. Would it be a Black Hat marketing technique if I took a Snicker candy bar, removed the packaging and replaced it with a wrapper that was labeled "Pet Owners Candy Bar", "Good For Your Website Conversion Chocolate", "Internet Marketers Power Snack" or "Affiliates Candy Bar" and then sold it to non-suspecting people for 10 times or more its original retail value? Of course it would be!
Why on earth would a template designer do this? Well, here's why .....
It takes six times the effort and expense to find a new customer than it does to resell to an existing customer. If a merchant is consistantly coming up with what is technically called
Black Hat marketing techniques to trick someone into buying a product, they are not establishing solid relationships with their existing customers. They might trick a customer into buying an overpriced or niche-labeled misleading product once or maybe even twice. But once the customer figures out they have been scammed, and it won't take long, the designer has lost their business and respect forever. So the desperate cycle to find more new customers with other mis-labeled products continues.
Although we are sure most template designers who intentionally mislead people into buying their designs are good people, they are simply caught in a loop mindset and cannot seem to get out. Because they might have successfully tricked someone into buying a product one or twice, that momentary adrenline rush is addictive and they cannot stop long enough to see that they are harming their business and their customers' relationship with them more than they are providing a valuable service.
If you suspect a web template provider is using Black Hat marketing techniques, let us know. We have a growing list (now over 14) of them, and we can help you decide whether their niche labeled designs are a value or simply a trick.
Let's be honest ... Yes, we would love for you to
buy our web templates, BUT more importantly we dislike seeing webmasters tricked into buying a product that is not effective nor affordable for their website's goals and target market. It's all about honesty, building trust, providing quality products, and fair prices. Every well established and solid business will echo these important keys to the longevity of their business.
// posted by BasicRic on 2/01/2006 01:10:00 PM / Permanent Link
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