When using a website builder to design your website, the first step will often be to pick out a website template. A recent study showed that 88% of browsers will not return to a website if they experience a single poor user experience. Therefore, having a great website design is incredibly important, and website templates are the start for this. 

Website templates provide a structure and web design to your website. They often come with a pre-assigned layout for menus and navigation, but can also be easily changed if you want to personalise them. 

Often the design of your website template will impact the theme of your website and how visitors interact and view your website. Depending on which website builder you use there will be different website templates and designs, often grouped by type of website. 

How to choose a template

Often when you sign up to a website builder you are given a range of templates to choose from to build your website on. Each template will have slightly different designs and (potentially different) features, therefore choosing the right one for your website can be difficult. Look through a few designs in detail before choosing one to use for your website. With Go Sitebuilder, we help you choose a perfect template for you by showing you preferred templates according to your industry. For example, this is the selection  you’d see if you were trying to build a website for a beauty salon:

The Importance of Choosing the Right Template for you

Given the wide range of website templates on the various different website builders, choosing the right one to suit your business or blog is very important. Your website theme will be impacted by which template you choose. Therefore, the web design and navigation aspects of your website will also be affected depending on which template you choose and how you personalise it. 

When picking your website template consider the following questions:

Does the design link to my brand image? 

Does the design immediately tell your customers the type of business you are? If you are running a travel blog your design will be very different to that of an accounting firm. 

Do I need to pay for this website template? 

Website builders often have a range of templates, some of which are free website templates and some which have a fee attached to them.

Does it have the features I need?

For example, a photography business will need to be able to show a gallery, whereas a business which uses online sales will need an e-commerce website template. 

Does the website builder allow me to modify the template?

There is no point choosing a website template if you are not able to change aspects of the website to incorporate your information and style. 

Different features of website templates to look out for

When choosing your website template there are a number of different features you may want to look out for. Some of these features will depend on the type of website you are building, whereas others are good to have no matter what website you are designing.

Some of the most common features to look out for are:

E-commerce website templates: these are useful for business selling products online. Features to look out for on e-commerce website templates are:

• The ability to take payment
• How products are shown on your website 
• Ability to show discounts of offers on your products 
• Delivery options 
• Ability to group products into categories, thus making the user experience easier to find the products they are looking for 
• Order status – the ability to keep your customers updated on the status of their purchase 

Image galleries: particularly important for photography businesses or travel businesses. Look for different layout options and the ability to add more information about each photograph.

Image editor: useful for quickly editing your images as you upload them

A blog feature: the ability to create informal content will increase interaction between visitors and your business. Look for features such as the ability to categorise your blog posts and an unlimited number of blogs.

Contact forms: this allows customers to contact you easily from the website, allowing you to respond and foster a customer relationship easily.  

Responsive design: the ability to view and edit your website for mobile phones or tablets. This is especially important as many people will be viewing your website on a mobile device 

Social Media Integration: this could include the ability to link certain blog posts to Instagram posts or simple links to social media profiles in the header of your website.   

If you need a great website builder, then look no further than Go Sitebuilder. With a wide range of website templates, our simple website builder design means you can have a professional looking website up and running in minutes. Try our 14-day free trial today!