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Why Start With A Design Theme
What is a theme?
You may or may not have heard of "themes" (sometimes called templates). A theme is a set of files that allow the content of a website to be shown in a certain way - for instance they contain images, colors, styles, fonts and so on. A theme often has a particular "layout", such as "2 column", "3 column", "fixed", "fluid" and many more. Some themes are very elaborate and some are very minimalist.
Who uses themes?
As website development has matured, 2 types of website development businesses now operate in the field; those that use themes and those that do not. Each type has a certain process and also has a role to fulfill when it comes to meeting a your needs:
The web development business that does not use themes will be creating the design from scratch and will typically have one or more graphic designers in-house. Once a design is in its later stages, the functional elements of the site will be built around it (such as shopping carts, content management systems and so on). Sometimes in doing this, the designers must change their initial ideas a little to accommodate the rigors of web browsers and programming code.
The web development business that does use themes will be starting much later on in the process described above. The design will already be created, complete with hooks for the functionality and with several web browsers in mind. Once the design is chosen, the web development company, depending on their speciality, will either expect you to proceed directly into adding content or will customize the design first before expecting content.
In considering which web development company is best suited to your needs, you should try to take into account the cost of the design, the time it will take to produce, the portfolio and reputation of the web development company and what elements of their design ideas require custom work.
Why we use themes
We often start the design process from a theme of your choice, as there are many benefits to you:
1. You have access to a huge repository of designs, allowing you to choose one that you know will represent the core of the final design of your website. When you choose between designs from a web development company that does not use themes, you are only able to select from their designs; often when they are not complete.
2. Themes are often specifically designed for cross-browser compatibility and search engine optimization (SEO); they place copy and images in strategic locations and take care that all elements will be visible and easily read. The themes are designed to compete in the marketplace of theme repositories and so make every available effort to meet your expectations.
3. Starting with a theme cuts out at least half to two thirds of the traditional design process; this means reduced cost (a custom design can range from $3000 up to $20000). Starting without a theme usually requires an initial payment of between 20% and 50% of the cost of the project; once you are in that far you have no recourse should the rest of the development take a long time or fail in other ways.
4. Starting with a theme reduces the time taken to complete your website. In many cases, this is crucial since a website must coincide with other marketing drives; often there are cases where you may have promised the "live date" to current and/or potential customers.
In conclusion, we feel that starting from a theme is time and cost efficient, is effective at meeting the needs of web design and SEO and can serve as a great starting point for the rest of the development. We also choose to offer, included in our free package, a full customization service that ensures not only will your process start off well, the final design will exceed your expectations.