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As a web designer, I have a personal interest in a new trend which threatens to put me and my kind out of business. That “threat” is Web Design Templates. In short they are ready-made web design products which can be used as a basis for a fast and high-quality website. You usually receive a Photoshop file (.psd), Flash file (.fla), HTML files with your tables and initial scripting already complete, fonts, sounds and anything else which may be part of the website design. A couple of years ago these templates were a small issue in the world of design. Most of them were of minimal quality and there were not all that many out there. Now some of the “big players” like BG Website Templates, The Discount Directory and Plantillas De Website are supplying spectacular designs which include 3D animated Flash, multimedia and dynamic programming for prices comparable to dinner out. Many of these templates rival even the best custom designer’s work. So how can we (the humble designer) survive? My first suggestion is to “aim high”. By that I mean start targeting a “higher end” clientele. Most companies of any size will not want to have a website design which may well be found on dozens of other websites around the world. These templates, while very impressive, are still templates. They still require the knowledge and skills of a professional for them to function to their full potential. So consider promoting your customization skills to those clients who are looking for a low cost solution. You can still make a pretty profit on the website and you’ll get it done much faster. Another advantage to this method is that the client has already chosen a design, so the process of “back and forth” designing is removed. Finally, you may choose to directly promote templates on your own website. You may feel that you’re cutting your own wrists, but as mentioned before, the clients who wish to use a template most likely didn’t want to spend the money for your custom work anyway. Once you’ve saved them money on design work by selling them a template, you have a much better chance of upgrading their order with add-ons like chat rooms, help desks and newsletters. In the end you may end up coming out ahead. Whether or not our careers as designers will survive this competition remains to be seen; but in the meantime it doesn’t hurt to at least become familiar with web templates. Knowing your competition is key to success. In every design there are basic rules to consider. For a web design, here are a few of the rules which you can take or break for your projects. 1 > Viewers do not want to scroll horizontally. As a personal experience, I find it really annoying to have to scroll the page to the right just to be able to read the whole content of the page. People should not be put to the task of having to pick their mouse and move the web page over to the right so as to see what’s hiding over there. web designer It’s easier to scroll down a page than to scroll horizontally. One designer suggests checking out your web pages at resolutions of 640 x 480, 800 x 600, and 1024 x 768 to avoid scrolling the page to your right. It doesn’t matter that the majority of monitors nowadays come preset at 800 x 600. You never know when one of your audiences would have a monitor with the lowest denominator, and then have that potential client go to a competitor just because he or she also hates scrolling to the right. 2 > Have more than three screenfuls of information… not. Having to scroll horizontally for the rest of the information is annoying, but it is also not fun either to have to scroll down the page forever just to be able to get the whole information. The rule: one web page shouldn’t require a viewer to page down more than three screens. Of it is more than that then you better go back to the drawing board and re-design your screens. But you should also consider that people will definitely scroll if the content is king. As one designer puts it, “You just need to balance content and nuisance factor with having to click through on links.” 3 > One web page should weigh in at no more than 50k. If all of us would be able to obey the rules what a wonderful world this would be. But we should also be considerate of the fact that there are gray areas. Nothing is quite cut and dried. It would be lovely to have a web page that doesn’t take so long to download. It only takes about seven seconds to make a good first impression on the web. However, there are times when you really need to put those large graphics and images. This is especially true for photographers. They need to have large pictures and photos in their pages to be able to convince viewers of their capabilities. Just a word of advice: do not bloat your web pages unnecessarily. It is still better to have viewers tinkering on your site than to have them go to another just because it takes a hundred years to download your pages. 4 > Do not force your viewers to download plug-ins. This is another thing that bugs me aside from the scrolling horizontally. And that is to download a plug-in so that I’ll be able to view whatever it is I would like to view. True, plug-ins can give that extra “wow!” to your interactive website. But always remember that not everybody have plug-ins although we’re in the advanced technology age. To accommodate everyone of your potential clients, think about creating an HTML alternative.