@aki. Its good you have offered her given her valuable insight on the possibilities out there. Its a "cheaper" option but to many disadvantages especially for a startup. The template layouts should be used as skeletons for the final design. Unfortunately, in her case the templates wont support the scripting she requires so she shall end up contracting someone do this for her.
Startup or established, every organization requires unique web presence. Using templates does not suffice especially for startup companies. You need a niche, which templates do not provide. Your clients might use your website and other promotional media to judge the quality of products and service that you shall provide. Spend an extra 20,000 to get things done right.
If she is not a designer, she shall waste valuable time customizing a template which she could use in planning the future of the business.
You of all people should advocate that a website is not just layout, color, font, images etc that the template provides. The website will just be another book in a library. They are other major elements that clients need to be briefed on like SEO, browser compatibility, load speeds...
Kind regards
Albert Kamau
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:44 AM, aki
<aki275@googlemail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Peter Karunyu
<pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:
Aki, maybe Claire doesn't want to concern herself with the vagaries of XHTML 1.0, making sure the content is googlebot friendly, securing the contact us form, maybe thats why she needs someone to take care of all that.
While templates will save her a pile of cash, customizing them willl cost her a handful of hair :-)
Hallo @Peter, I disagoo kidogo. She is running a small or a startup business and one value of that is to save as much as possible on infrastructure, costs etc. Now if something is freely available, then I fear she is being exploited for something that she does not need to pay for or pay large amounts for. Rather, for freelancers the aproach should be this : hey choose your template and I shall customize it for you at this much amount. ? Anyway, watch next year, how far I take the free templates and coding libraries on to some commercial levels, pending if the finances will be there and most likely on
asp.net ... :-)
On another note, freelancers need to watch out for major changes with systems like CMS where clients can use service provider templates to get their sites done the same day. How will they deal with this? Hosting Service providers in Kenya are doing kenyans a big dis-service. CMS has been around for almost 5 years, it is almost a hosting standard now.
Me thots.. :-)
Rgds.
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