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BasicTemplates
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Competitor A
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Competitor B
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Competitor C
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Competitor D
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| Membership Environment |
Yes
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Yes
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No
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No
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No
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| Number of Templates in
Membership |
375+ (growing weekly)
|
Does not state a clear figure for the
web templates in the membership area. Site also houses
other types of templates not suitable for the web. Find
out about membership bloating! :) |
N/A
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N/A
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N/A
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| Cost of Membership |
$ 59.95 USD
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$ 300.00 USD
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N/A
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N/A
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N/A
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| Average cost per template |
$ 00.17 USD
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Not able to figure since no quantity
is clearly stated.
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$ 10.00 USD
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$ 35.00 USD
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$ 65.00 USD
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| Is a link back required
to the designer? |
No
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No
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No
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Yes
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No
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| Can you use
each template on more than one site without purchasing
it again? |
Yes
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No. Limited to one template use per
site. How can a membership with this site possibly be
resourceful then? Does one have to purchase a single
template at average of $30.00 if they want to use it
on another site, or are they required to purchase another
complete membership for $300.00! OUCH, that bites my
bank account and my clients!
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Yes
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No
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No
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| Are web designers charged
a higher fee to use the templates on their clients sites? |
No
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Yes!
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No
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Yes
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Yes
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| Does the template designer
accept suggestions for new templates? |
Yes. Templates designed from members'
suggestions are made available to all members usually
the following week.
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No!
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Yes, but if you want it, you have to
purchase it. No obligation to buy.
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Yes, but if you want it,
you have to purchase it. You *must* buy the template if
it is designed. |
No
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| How much experience does
the designer really have? |
8 yrs. of web and graphic
design, 25 yrs. Of marketing/sales |
Unclear. Evaluating the
designs based on experience, we would conclude no more
than 4 yrs. |
6 yrs. of web and graphic
design, 11 yrs. of marketing/sales |
Not stated.
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Web design experience not stated. Graphic
design 5 yrs.
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| Does the designer use CSS
in their templates? |
Absolutely! There is no
other professional or acceptable way to design a web template. |
Probably some. Just recently
starting advertising CSS use within the templates although
the designer's site is NOT using CSS. |
Most of the templates include
CSS. |
No
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No
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| Are the layout styles and
designs exclusive and intuitive? (Not what everyone else
is doing.) |
Absolutely!
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Most
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Most
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No
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No
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| Are the designs diversified?
Do they illustrate a wide range of design interests for
different types of industries? Are the designs unique
in appearance/layout? |
Yes. We have four designers
to better offer styles which are diversified. A fifth
designer will be joining us this fall. Our designs are
unique. |
No. Only one designer and
unfortunately uses the same design layout/style. Repeats
many of the same images/colors/layouts on the templates.
A very cookie-cutter oriented design technique. |
Yes
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Yes
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No. This designer has a good grip on
graphic design which makes the layouts unique, but with
only one designer (who is more graphic design oriented
than web design) their styles seem very recognizable
and similar.
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| Does the designer offer
other resources for their customers? |
Yes
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No
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Some
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Very Few
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No
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| Is the designer's site
easy to navigate and can you easily find what you are
looking for? |
Yes. We have spent a great deal of money to create
an easy to use navigational system both in our public
and members areas.
Having a quality product was not good enough for
us. We wanted to have a quality system in place for
our visitors and members to utilize including a searchable
database for a specific theme if they needed to find
something even faster.
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Yes and No. Navigation is not bad. A
dynamic approach is used. However, page load speed is
a big issue here. The designer has a HUGE 60KB logo
image that takes too long to load. It's a lovely *graphic*
design but most people don't care about their logo.
Likely their templates are WAY TOO HEAVY as well. Which
is another issue, no where does it state what each template
weighs or how long it will take to load in a browser.
Search function is available but descriptive keywords
are very limited.
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Mostly easy to navigate.
Pages are static. A dynamic approach would be an
improvement.
A search function is available but does not return
a completely accurate match.
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No. Pages are static, but extremely difficult to
navigate. Mystery meat buttons are utilized on the
designer's site and reflects badly on how their templates
are likely designed.
No search function available.
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Pages are dynamically generated which
is good. However the company logo takes up 1/2 of the
page width on ALL pages. Why!? This creates a page load
problem (32KB) and unnecessary page clutter. Why force
site visitors to look at the same image that takes up
1/2 the page width dimensionally over and over again?
Can you imagine how their templates are designed?
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| Conclusion
- Summary |
By far the best value for the quality, design experience
and layout originality.
We toot our own horn a lot because as of now, we are
the only web template membership site on the WWW that
matches all the desired traits for the majority of webmasters'
budgets and theme requirements.
A membership with us is fast becoming a must-have for
every webmaster and web entrepreneurs toolbox. There
simply isn't anything like it.
We also offer a tremendous amount of resources, articles,
freebies and other goodies to our members, site visitors
and customers.
Sure we love the sales, but "service, support
and customer growth" is always our #1 concern.
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This designer is more graphics oriented. He/She clearly
is new to web design and seems to be more focused on
sales rather than helping their customers find complimentary
resources.
The membership plan is way over priced. You can however
purchase the designs individually for an average of
$30.00 each. Ouch, that bites my wallet, what about
yours?
This makes it virtually impossible for web designers
to make any kind of decent ROI (return on investment).
Layout styles are repeated constantly throughout the
selection. The designer uses many of the same layouts
and colors. It is obvious the designer is simply plugging
in a new image into the same HTML template without changing
anything else. Tisk-tisk-tisk.
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A good value given that most designs are unique and
reasonably priced. Does not provide a membership environment.
This designer focuses mostly on custom work.
The designer's experience in the web and graphic
design field is obvious, and he/she uses CSS in their
designs and on their own site! Hurray! Someone else
has a clue.
Layout styles are diversified even though we believe
there is only one designer behind this site.
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Nice designs but over priced. Site navigation is poor
and the designer is likely new to web design as he/she
does not use CSS at all. This is probably why no credentials
are mentioned on the site.
Designer mainly focuses on cute/ retro designs making
the templates inappropriate for most serious business
themes.
The color scheme chosen for the site is surprising.
This leaves us to believe that the designer is not educated
in color theory concept and how it effects site visitors.
The color used represents death and distrust. Hmmm ...
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Nice designs, but w-a-y over priced. This designer
is very graphic oriented. Not a bad thing, but
certainly not the best for optimal page load on the
web and easy site navigation. Unfortunately, the end
user is the one that suffers. Designs do not include
CSS as many graphic designers do not keep up-to-date
on web design technology since their focus is mainly
graphics.
Proper "web" design is a must. If "graphics"
were the focus, they would have called it the "World
Wide Graphics" ... don't you think? :)
The color scheme choice for this designer's site is
interesting. He/she has chosen a color that represents
bold power and forcefulness. Selling a product through
a site designed with this color choice makes people
uncomfortable. Most people don't want to feel overwhelmed
or forced. We conclude that although the graphics this
designer creates are nice, he/she has little education
in color theory or effective web design. Hmmm ... Interesting
too considering the templates are way over-priced.
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| It is important to note
that we do not mention actual competitor website URLs
here. Why? Simply because we do not want to embarrass
these designers. However, we find that by pointing out
the obvious and putting it in writing, many folks who
have visited these sites will easily recognize them from
our option review. We have merely stated the obvious and
repeated what many of our site visitors and our members
have told us. |
