Free Website Templates - What to Look For

Free Website Templates - What to Look For

When assessing free website templates to use for your online store, do you know what to look for? Our first piece of advice is to do a benchmark study of what you want to see in your own website. Look for web stores within the same niche and in the retail category in general. This should give you a good idea of what others are doing that you may or may not want to include in your own virtual storefront. While you're in the research mode, it's best to do a listing of your top competitors as well.

Then, put your own design skills to the test by starting to draw out the wireframe that you want to see in your own store. A wireframe is a basic frame with shapes indicating placeholders for the important elements of your website. This will be your guide when you start looking through different website templates free on the internet.

Now, decide on the most basic elements of your brand. If you already have corporate colors in mind, that would be a great starting point for your free website template search as finding one that fits your color preference would mean less tweaking in the future. More important than your corporate colors is the tone and general feel you want to have for your brand. If you're a fun, girly store - look for a free website template using tags related to "women". If you prefer to be more business-like in your presentation, start looking through free business templates.

Create a quick list of websites where you found templates that suit your needs. It would be ideals also to have a checklist of must-haves for your online store. Depending on your preference and sales tactics, this may include customizable logos and banners, categories and sub-categories, well-laid out product pages, a good shopping cart, ability to cross-sell and up-sell products or to show related items.

One thing to look out for when choosing free website templates is the reputation of the supplier. We suggest you go through the notes for template production, view the demo and read up on the comments related to the template. This is where you are most likely to see if there are any bugs or issues with security and viruses or malware.

Last but not the least, they say that nothing is ever really free in this world. The same goes with free website templates. There is bound to have some trade off for offering these website templates free on the internet, so do a little snooping and find out what those are. Some just require you to keep a link in the footer or on the sidebar. Other insert ads that are encrypted and cannot be removed. And there are those that require you to subscribe to some other service to get a free website template. There are a rare few that will actually offer you a website template free, without anything in return. Once you find out, judge for yourself if the free template is worth the trade off - after all, you may be saving hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in web development cost by getting a free website template option.

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