So, Do Template Websites Suck Or Do They Rock? – Episode 54

When was the last time you maybe spent half a day on some detail, on a custom project that in your heart of hearts, you were thinking, you know, what most people probably won't even notice. it's quite a regular occurrence really, because, you know, there'll be things that the designers will do and it'll just be things will be lined up pixel perfect, you know, and it's just if that alignment's out a little bit, we might notice it. But to the untrained eye, it might just be like, you know, they'll just be quickly scanning through reading the content. But you know, since we know it's there, we just keep it pixel perfect to make sure it is right. And that's what you get with the off the shelf templates. If there's an issue like that in it, it's there. You know, unless a developer or that template fixes it, it's there and you've just got to put up with it. Whereas with a custom design, you can get these issues fixed.

Yeah. And more to the point, you're gonna have somebody like you and Diana sat there kind of poring over the design, looking for those issues, which speaks to what you're really buying, right? Which is a professional to babysit it and make sure it's right.

The dog agreed. Wait a second, wait a second.

So. Yeah. Great. Brilliant.

Have you finished? Because I'm recording.

Yeah.

That's fine. Right. Carry on.

Okay. Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Um, we've got a podcast virgin with us. Okay, so Dave's joined us. Um, there's two Daves at Red evolution. There's old Dave that would be me, and there's young Dave. So Dave is, uh, one of the devs and he's joined us for this one because we're going to talk about template websites, I think. Well, we're not going to talk about we're going to argue about it. I think because.

A big old debate.

I think we are.

I think I'm here to referee.

Stopping someone to break us up.

Definitely. Yeah. So I think it's a subject which has been done to death. It's been spoken about a lot. Um the idea of whether you invest What can be a significant amount of money? Getting a website, custom built and custom designed and the whole nine yards, or whether you just grab a template and build a website using an off the shelf template. And there are different approaches when it comes to templates. Dave, you're the dev. Tell us about the different ways that you could build a template website.

Well, you could go for the standard sort of thing. So the very, it.

Looks really, really nervous.

It's not nice to call attention.

So I mean, you've got the very basic starter for ten ones like a Wix and Squarespace where, you know, you buy your subscription, you pick a template and you start pumping content into it. And then you've kind of go, go for the next sort of step up. So like WordPress or other like Joomla and Drupal. And you know, there's plenty of places.

And things like that. Yeah, yeah.

Plenty of websites kicking about and other development agencies that just pump out templates for these. So you find a template you like and pay a one off fee for it, stick it in, and then pump that full of content. Mhm. Or you go down the route of the custom build templates. So you know, a CMS and you pay a development agency to actually build a template exactly to your specifications and needs.

And that would involve design.

Design and build. Yeah. That's right. So I'll be contentious and say that it's perfectly possible to build a great looking website for thirty bob and a fried fish using a template, pump it full of fantastic content and kill it online. Generate loads of business from it.

Like discuss like in terms of the fact that it won't technically hold you back from ranking, for example. Yeah, absolutely.

Kind of where I'm coming from.

Yeah. Because that's the thing you hear people talk about an awful lot, isn't it? People will say, oh, well, you know, it'll never rank as well. It won't be as SEO friendly. I think that is rubbish. Especially nowadays. Templates.

Don't you mean SEO optimised?

Uh.

Yeah. That a lot. Yeah.

Um. Yeah, I mean, that certainly used to be the case that building something in in Squarespace or Wix or whatever would hold you back. I think nowadays they work just as well. You can certainly rank them. Um, but I think where we disagree is that the idea that, you know, you'll make a success of your business doing it? Because I think there's a huge difference between technically can get something up and live and running. Um, that ranks in search fine, but like actually turns visitors into customers. I disagree.

Okay, so here's the thing. You've got five thousand quid to spend. Do you spend five hundred quid setting up a template website in four and a half grand, creating fantastic content? Or do you spend five grand on an okay website? Not brilliant, but okay and not not necessarily a template and then have bugger all left to create content with.

I'd go content.

Yeah, I mean absolutely. Well, yeah. Okay, fine. So if you're hard up against it and you've only got five grand and you've got to choose, the content is probably more valuable, but you're still going to reach a point. I mean, in this hypothetical situation where you've got a pot of five grand, you spend it all on content and your website looks like crap. You're going to have a problem in two, three, four years time when your business is growing and you are going to end up paying money to replace that template site with one that actually functions.

Totally. I think, yeah, you can start off with something really basic and, you know, make it work as well as you can and then as soon as possible, get something that actually does what you need it to do.

Yeah. I mean, what.

What kind of things would you be looking for to do.

If you want to come in. And I'd be delighted if you did, but you need to come into the microphone.

Right.

I'm going to sit on David's lap. Is it allowed?

I'm sure that's not allowed.

I'm just saying, you can make a template website, you know, one that you've bought from squarespace and you're paying a subscription. You can still make it look pretty nice within the confines of the design that you've chosen, the template you've chosen.

You totally can. I think the thing that we come across is clients would kind of say, yeah, I want this template and they'll choose it and we'll start building it. And then they'll go, can you just make that do this? And can you just do this? And then that's not the template anymore. It then becomes a custom design. And people who think they want a template actually still what people want to make it their own, people want to customise it. And that's where it kind of falls down.

That's when they have access to us. That's when they start realising they've got choices. But if they.

Don't.

Then they're pretty happy with it.

Um, I mean, I've dabbled, you know, before I was here, I've dabbled in building websites and trying to pull it together. And you can never the template never quite does what you want. And so you end up either having to compromise or having to spend hours, you know, building a website from a template should maybe take like a few hours, but it doesn't because you end up having to go into Google and try and figure out how to make it do this thing that it doesn't really do, but you really need it to do. So they never quite work the way you want.

I agree, I agree, but what I'm saying is we only see that people saying make it do this because they know that we can.

We can, we can. And yeah, if they're working with us, they have the benefit of our clever dev people. I'm looking at Dave now, um, who actually know how to do these things rather than spending hours and hours and hours trying to figure it out and kind of make a weird compromise that kind of does what you want. So yeah, I think we agree.

Okay, I'm just going to sort of, um, throw something in the mix. We seem to be confusing template websites and functionality. So you can build a website in WordPress, for example, a little bit of sick in me mouth. Then you can build a website in WordPress and you can use a template design. And then if you've got the know how or if you know somebody who's got the know how, you can make it do all manner of fantastic things, you can. First of all, you can find plugins off the shelf, cheap or free functionality, which you add on to it. But just, just hear me out, hear me out, hear me out. And we're confusing that with functionality. I mean, the look and feel is where I'm driving at. I mean, let's maybe get into functionality, but when it comes to like, let's say, for example, we just want a website with twenty pages of content on it. We want some, some service information. We want a couple of thought leadership pieces, you know, we can download a template and that's the design. We can plonk our logo on it. We can maybe slightly tweak the CSS. So it, it uses the right colors, our brand colors, and that's it. We've done no design at all. We haven't spent any money on design. And we've got a perfectly functional, well-functioning website from a, from a, from an aesthetic point of view.

Yeah. But even then, it's never quite what you want.

Yeah, but it's never quite what you want because people are obsessing about the look and feel instead of the hard stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

The content. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I sound like I'm an advocate for template websites and I'm really not. Um, you know, I think if you, if you care that little about your brand, that you'll just use some off the shelf nonsense for your website, then what does that say to the world? That's my view. But I'm playing devil's advocate.

Yeah. But what I'm saying is nobody cares that little about their brand, that the custom template does the job they want. It never quite hits the spot.

And you mentioned content, David, and how things look. Well, we've seen some amazing squarespace templates, but we've also seen people putting their own images in. The dog.

Agrees. Wait a second, wait a second. Let's just let lucky. Lucky. He'll need to calm down. Good boy.

We have. We have a dog friendly office, which is lovely.

Yeah, but I think he's barking at his reflection.

He's not the smartest, is he?

But not the friendly dog this morning. Um, what I was saying was about we've seen amazing templates with awful images in, for example. So we've got images that people don't really understand design and they've put the images in and maybe the white text in the banner. That's their big message.

That's right.

Hidden things like that.

Things like that, or the images not being the right size. So they don't quite look right at different sizes or they're too blurry or they're too little or. Yeah. Okay.

But again, being Mr. D advocate, um, we have designed sites from a blank sheet of paper and still had problems around content, images and getting the content and getting the right images and tweaking it. We've got, you know, we've got some customers who will obsess over images. Oh yeah. Absolutely obsess over them. And that to me again, is not related to template websites. Template websites to me is about the initial framework, the initial design, the initial look and feel which you then populate.

But you can't separate the two really, can you? Because the kind of people that are taking the cheap option and buying the rubbish template are doing so because they want to save money, and they want to avoid all of the faff and the hassle of, you know, speaking to an agency and getting somebody to tweak the design and getting somebody to build them custom functionality. But what we're essentially saying is that people that go down that route are still automatically always going to end up in a place where they end up needing that kind of care and attention. Nobody's just happy with the template they've bought. Sorry. So you spend ninety quid on your WordPress template, you are inevitably going to spend another three four hundred getting somebody to hack it about and get it how you want it to look.

Nobody's actually spent less than five hundred quid. And if you came to an agency like us and you want a custom website, then you're going to spend five, six, seven thousand quid just on the design and another five, six, seven thousand, ten thousand quid getting the thing built into the CMS that you've used, whether it's WordPress, HubSpot, or whatever it is. Then you start adding your content. And so I think the big problem is you can get a great looking website using a template very quickly, very cheaply. And if you do that, you could then start working on and concentrating on growing your business and getting the traffic and everything you need from search. But I'm not saying that's the right thing to do, but I'm advocating for it because I think you can create if you look at some of the templates in squarespace. I mean, you you come in on this, Dave. I think some of them are lovely. I think they're really lovely.

Looking.

Templates.

I mean, it's the thing like even with HubSpot, you know, we've, you've spoken about that in the past and here, but, you know, it's essentially a template based, you know, system as well. And there's a site I was creating for a client and they just wanted to use a template, HubSpot and just a basic template.

Off the shelf.

And off the shelf template. So, you know, I looked at quite a lot of them and it looked great on the paper, but then when you downloaded it and actually started trying to implement the content, it was like, actually, this isn't going to work. And it went through a few iterations trying to find the right one. So, you know, a lot of these templates, they do look good off the bat of it, but you do spend a lot of time trying to get them. You know, they well, the developers set up their own demo sites to show them off and they show off in the best light. But then when you're putting your own content and it's like, okay, actually, yeah, maybe it's not quite as good. You know, I don't need all that. But so when you strip all out, all the extras they have in, it doesn't look as shiny and fancy. So you can spend a lot of time and possibly a lot of money, or you could go and pay three hundred pounds or whatever for a template. And then halfway through implementing your content, you'll be like, actually, this isn't quite right. I need a different one. So you have got the risk of wasting money as well, going through a few different templates, trying to find that right one based on what looks like a shiny template on the developer's website, because they obviously show off to the best light.

Yeah, it takes ages as well. I mean, we've had clients building Shopify sites for some online e-commerce stuff. Um, and it's taken them weeks to pick a template because there is a lot of choice out there and you can't really tell how it's going to look with your stuff in it and how it's going to look the way when it's configured, the way you need it for your content. So it is a really, really time intensive process, just trying to choose your template.

Yeah. It's not the quick and easy.

Method.

That a lot of people see. You know, it does simplify things, but it's not quick because yeah, if you get obsessed with the pictures and imagery and things like that, it can be difficult to see past some of the developer ones, you know, especially with the likes of Shopify when they have all their templates there. They've got them set up for different styles of shops. So you might see one that's like set for like a clothes shop and someone are like, well, I'm not going to sell clothes. I want to sell books. It's like, yeah, but you just replace all the stuff with clothes, with images of clothes, with books, but they struggle to see past that. So then if when they can't see past that, it just seems to narrow their choice. But yeah, it's it is tricky.

It's hard to make a decision. And then I guess also you have the risk of, you know, you go and like, right, I'm setting up a clothes shop. This template is ideal for clothes shops. And then five other clothes shops also use the same template. And then people are trying to buy something online and they can't actually remember if they were on your site or someone else's site, because they all look exactly the same.

I do see Dave's point though. Like ultimately, at the end of the day, what I guess what we're saying is if the purpose is to get something up and you have very limited cash, there will be people listening to this who run tiny, tiny businesses and don't have the money to go and find a dev agency. It is a legitimate thing to do to sink your own time into finding a template. Setting up. It gets the ball rolling, doesn't it?

And I said at the beginning, I said I'd go with spending your money on the content or your effort on the content first, because I think I still think the content is the most important.

Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I think it's just one of those things, isn't it? Like there's this kind of nice dream that is sold to you that you can just spend fifty, three hundred. Five hundred quid on a template out the box. You can just bung your content in it. It'll work. I just I don't see it personally, I don't think. I don't know if that's ever happened, but.

It's important to notice that, you know, the websites have to grow with your business. So if you're starting out your business, you're not going to go and employ twenty people, you know, and you're only sort of turning over a hundred quid a week.

Yeah.

You're gonna, you know, websites the same thing. It's, you've got to start at the bottom with it and work your way up as your business grows, you know, build it to your means. And, you know, some people will start with a template and they'll kind of try and grow that template website as their business grows. And I'm not going to die. There probably is some people that have managed out there and are still running quite a successful business with what's essentially a template website, but.

At one point, most people, there.

Will be plenty of people that cannot get to a certain point and they go, this just isn't cutting it anymore. We actually need to go down the custom route.

So just to throw a spanner in the works, um, I think there are plenty of people out there who've paid good money to have a custom website design who absolutely should have used a template. That is because the custom design is appalling.

Yeah. That's true.

So it's kind of safe. Yeah. You know, the thing about a custom design is it's, uh, it's an endeavor that is labor intensive. There's no quick way around it. I mean, we had a customer, and if Rob was here, he would, he would now be walking out of.

I know exactly what you're going to say in.

The room because, you know, we had a customer once I went down to London to see him. Uh, he was just a bit of a wideboy really, but, um, Rob did some work, some design work. So they were, they were, they were, you know, just designs, concepts that we'd shown him. And, you know, he turned around and said, what's this? I could have done this in five minutes on the back of a fag packet. I mean, Rob literally had to go out the office and go for a half an hour walk to cool down. He was he was so rude. He was it was just.

Unbelievable because Rob had put creative thinking and effort in.

And this guy didn't get it. He just he just.

Didn't get it. But yeah, he didn't even try to be nice either.

But maybe, you know, and obviously we immediately sacked the guy anyway. So it was fine. You know, that was, that was an end to it. But um, it's an interesting idea that maybe there are businesses out there who value what creative people are doing. And, and there's just no way that they could ever live with, um, you know, they're never going to buy an off the peg suit. They're always going to get it made to measure, you know, they want it, they want something for them. And maybe there is a bit of an analogy there because you can buy an off the peg suit that looks pretty smart. If you're a standard build like me, I can get off the peg. Peg that actually off the peg, off the peg that actually fits me, you know, and it looks fine. And maybe, maybe that's it. Maybe it's just some people want that custom experience and the custom finished product.

Well, I think as well, like there's another kind of aspect to this. I'm going to try and articulate. I'll probably do it badly, but just because you don't.

Just go make a cup of tea. Are you doing this fine?

Just because you don't recognise the importance of something like design? So like the client you're talking about, for example, where he's just kind of design blind, if you like, like being color blind, but, you know, he can't see good design from bad. He, he can't see that he couldn't design that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that your customers feel the same way. Lots of people buy off the shelf suits that don't fit them very well. They're not very fashion savvy, and they don't realise they look like an idiot, but they do, and everybody around them is kind of judging them. And I think there's another kind of aspect to this where if you're kind of serious about your business and you want to make sure that the people looking at your website think that it's credible, that it's modern, that it's up to date, you kind of do need a designer's perspective on that because you're probably not the best person to say whether or not the suit fits.

And yeah, and I think you're right, it comes down to really understanding your market. I mean, there could be some, um, kind of businesses where their customers are, they just want to get the facts. They just want to watch a video or read some content and they really don't bother.

Flashy design would put them off.

Or there's going to be some customers or some markets out there that if your audience don't come on and see something that's absolutely going to knock their socks off and wow them, then they're just going to go go somewhere else. So I think it does come down a lot to the ultimate customer. I think you're right.

Yeah. And I guess I guess that's one of the things that I keep, you know, I keep circling back to is that I think it is possible using a, a non custom design or a template, an off the shelf, for example, whether it's in HubSpot, Wix or squarespace or any of these tools to create something that potentially can be impressive. I mean, here's an example. You can take a template one, one that allows you to either upload your own background video or your own background image. And, you know, we, you can then put that image in there and it just makes the website have so much impact because it's the image.

Yeah, totally. And people go, oh my goodness, wow, that looks amazing. And they, Because they're looking at the image, not the the style or the design of the website, they're looking at your content. And that's the thing that makes it original, I suppose.

Yeah. That's right. So I mean, we had a, we had a thing many years ago and Dave will remember this where we'd done a custom design and our custom design used an image off Unsplash. It was like a range of mountains. It was it was fantastic, fantastic image. And our client was shown by somebody else, a template website that had used the same image. And he assumed that we had downloaded this template and then sold it to him as a custom design. I mean, I was I was knocked out, first of all, that he thought we would have done that to him. But the point is, once you put that amazing image into a template, it kind of looked the same as the custom design that we've done. Now, the detail that had gone into the custom design was there if you started drilling in. Yeah. But I just wonder what what aspects of design do people tune into that makes them think this is a credible business or this isn't a credible business? And does that come down to whether it's a template or whether it's a custom, you know, in its entirety? I think, you know, when a lot of websites today use big background images and big background videos, once you've got an impressive piece of footage or an impressive image, then the template bit that's wrapped around it, does it kind of become a bit superfluous?

Well, the I think the first impression is certainly part of it. You know, the first impression is whether they stay in and look further or not. So the first thing, if the first impression is good, they'll stay. And then the rest of it kind of follows on. So if you get them to stay by, by hooking them in by some something stunning at the beginning, then the, the way you've built the rest of it is whether they're actually going to buy something from you after that or not. So it's half of it, I guess.

Yeah. I think I'm gonna make myself wildly unpopular here and give Dave some ammunition to rave.

About more.

Unpopular. But yeah, no, I think those fine details are those kind of microscopic little things that a designer will add that the template doesn't are actually what kind of makes or breaks a website, right? So it's like just going back to the suit analogy again before it gets too tired, you can wear a suit and a really colorful tie, and somebody who knows nothing about suits and nothing about how they're meant to fit will just see the colorful tie. But all the time there's this kind of like subconscious.

When it comes to cheap suits. If as a cheap suit manufacturer, you put in a really colorful lining. Yeah, I, for some reason, I've always found colorful linings in suits. Like they really kind of make me go, wow. So you might get a gris, a gray suit, for example, that's got a shocking pink lining. I immediately assumed that's an expensive suit. Yeah, I don't know why.

But yeah, I mean, but just, you know, kind of looping back to the point I was trying to make, I think.

I have no idea where this is going now.

Well, it's like tiny little things like tiny details about the cut of a suit actually help you form a subconscious impression if somebody wears a really nice fitting suit. Even if you don't know that much about it, you'll be left with the impression, oh, they looked really good or whatever. The same thing is happening with websites. Tiny things like the spacing of buttons, the placement of lines, the way elements stack up against each other form a kind of subconscious impression.

You think classier than the person wearing. Even if you don't know it, that one looks classier than the person standing next.

That's the.

Thing. Cheap suit. Maybe just you get a feeling about something.

Right? This looks really slick. This looks really modern. You don't know why, but.

Okay, so I can I can speak to this being a great fan of shopping.

And.

Clothes generally, but I'm a big fan of the charity shop because in my opinion, it's the only place now where you can actually go and feel the cut of a piece of fabric, you know, a coat, a jacket, you know, a skirt or trousers. Um, but that's aside. Do you not hear people say, I was looking at, you know, racks and racks of clothing and my eye was immediately drawn to this garment. And then I looked at the price and I realised why my eye was drawn is because it was the most expensive garment on the rack, because something drew me to it. But in the charity shops, it's exactly the same. And you go and you think, this, this has got to be something that's been donated by someone who knows what they're talking. You know what they bought, and they spent a lot of money on it. And you often don't know why until you look at the label.

So essentially saying that quality speaks for itself.

There is an analogy there. You're right. But we don't always we're not tuned into it. I like sewing, I like fabrics that that might be because my brain is already my eyes are already looking for that. But but I think often, even if you're not, there are some people who naturally gravitate towards something that's just that little bit better. That cut is a little bit better. That colors a bit better that that placement of, of an image or, you know, the font or colors something attracts.

Yeah. And there the custom bits, aren't they that just, um, yeah, make, make you look a little bit more credible than maybe somebody who's just not got the little extras.

Can I just say then bring in to bring, um, young David. Uh, when was the last time you maybe spent a chunk of time, maybe half a day on a, on, on some detail, on a custom project that in your, in your heart of hearts, you were thinking, you know what? Most people probably won't even notice what I've had to spend all this time doing when they actually look at the finished product. I mean, I don't want to just drop you in it, but you've, you surely have spent had to spend a long time adjusting and fine tuning something to get it exactly how the designer wants it to be.

Yeah it is. It's quite a regular occurrence really, because, you know, there'll be things that the designers will do and, you know, it'll just be things will be lined end up pixel perfect, you know, and it's just if that alignment's out a little bit, you know, we might notice it. But to the untrained eye, it might just be like, you know, they'll just be quickly scanning through reading the content, but we kind of know it's there. And, you know, it's that other developers and designers will notice there and people will probably just see that thing, you know, it just, it might just be a line that's just sort of ten pixels, you know, a little bit off, off center. And people realise like, well, I'm just thinking, you know, something's not quite right there, but they won't give any thought to it. But, you know, since we know it's there, we just keep it, you know, pixel perfect to make sure it is right. And that's what you get with the off the shelf templates. If there's an issue like that in it, it's there, you know, unless a developer or that template fixes it, it's there and you've just got to put up with it. Whereas with a custom design, you can get these issues fixed and.

Well, you can. Yeah. And more to the point, you're gonna have somebody like you and Diana sat there kind of poring over the design, looking for those issues, which again, speaks to what you're really buying, right? Which is a professional to babysit it and make sure it's right because, you know, business owners might not even notice that, but the customers might. And that's the, I think that's the real kind of value that we're talking about here, isn't it? It's in having somebody like Dave sit in and pick through a website and make sure everything is perfect.

Yeah, make sure it's right. And, you know, it comes down to like the cross-browser testing and things like that. It's, you know, you make sure it's working in every single device, then every single browser and you know, you're not all you can't, well, you don't know for certain if you're getting that all these templates, you're buying an off the shelf template. You have no idea what sort of, what sort of checks it's gone through to make sure it's okay. It's, you know, you're buying it on the pretense that they have done all these checks. But if you go back to them and say, are they going to reply to you to say, yeah, we've done that. And the next thing, but it probably not, they've had your money. They'll just be happy to happy that it's been bought and they don't really care.

What you get. Yeah.

So are we saying that the real value of good design over template design is almost is almost invisibility?

Yeah.

People will land on a website and they won't question whether this is a company. They want to deal with it just the design is so good, it's invisible. They immediately that barrier has been crossed. Okay. These guys are the real deal. I am prepared to talk to them. And and the other thing is leading on to that, um, is the design, the custom design that's had the care and love and detail going into it makes them feel something rather than necessarily look at it and make some kind of decision based on the information coming back to them. When they look at it, you know, it's this idea of a, of a, of a brand being about the way you feel about a business, what people say about you when you're not in the room, all that kind of good stuff, which we spoke about in a previous podcast with with Cliff Collier from BBN. Is that what really good designs doing?

It's really interesting. So, you know, I'm a big advocate of user testing, which is where you pay kind of random people on the internet to go through a site and fulfill certain tasks for you and record themselves doing it so that you get a kind of a real kind of no holds barred kind of impression of what actually people think of websites. And one of the things that's really interesting is when you set people tasks to on websites and you ask them, what were your general impressions of the website? If it's a bit shit, if things are out of line, if things don't look quite right, they'll always come back with feedback that it's kind of messy, that it looks unprofessional. If everything works and it looks really good, they never have anything to say about the website. What they do have to say is about the brand, which is just that, oh, it's like a really professional brand, or they're obviously at the top of their game or something like that. And I think that's exactly what you're talking about, isn't it? It's just that the overarching impression is this is professional and works and is brilliant. Or they're going to notice all these tiny little minute errors. And their general impression will be just that the brand isn't very good.

Do you think that having like errors and untidy design, um, makes people trust the brand a little bit less?

Yeah, I think so. I think maybe it's even more fundamental than that. It's just the difference between kind of like thinking of it as like a brand and, you know, like a kind of destination. This is the website for that brand. And just thinking of, oh, this is a messy website. You know, it takes you out of the whole, the whole thing, doesn't it? When you see websites where things just don't work properly, you're too busy focusing on that to kind of think about what you think of the company anymore.

Distracts you from the thing you went to the website for in the first place?

Yeah, I think so.

Could be. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think again, I'm just devil's advocate. I think if you certainly like squarespace, which squarespace has a kind of feel of being all about design, it's slick. I mean, is it easy to use Keanu Reeves in the adverts and you know, and the TV adverts were really slick and so there's not many templates are slipping through the net in the squarespace ecosystem because I think I think they do them all in-house, don't they? I don't think you can contribute to squarespace.

I think yeah, I think you.

Into the microphone, David.

I think you can. But they're most of them would be in house. But you know, you'd have to go through checks. You can't just, you know, any Tom, Dick and Harry can't just go and make a site and upload it. I think it would have to go through the strict checks and, you know, they kind of give it the sign off. But I mean, the interesting thing with squarespace about Keanu Reeves, you know, his website's no longer in squarespace, whereas Motorbike company, it's now built in something completely different. So they started off with a template, but, you know, got big with the TV advertising and then moved elsewhere. So, you know, is it because they were no longer contracted with squarespace that they built elsewhere, or is it because they outgrew squarespace? That's one of the things to consider. It's that's an example of a big company that has moved away from the template website, potentially because they were killing it.

Yeah. And I think the other thing I'd say about that is that if you take a template on squarespace, straight off the shelf, as long as you, as long as you use it as it was designed to be used, it's absolutely fine. The thing is, you should never, ever, ever be building a website to fit within the parameters of something that somebody has designed enmasse for anybody to use, like your website is supposed to be the kind of your personal representation of your business online. It's like your shop window. How many people do you know that would want to set up a shop, but only if you know, the specific dimensions of the windows were pre-set and they were only allowed to put things in certain places, and they couldn't really make their business look the way they wanted it to. It's, it's just it's just backwards really, isn't it? You're not supposed to be designing to fit the boundaries of a template. You're supposed to build a website that reflects the best side of your business.

Okay, so as expected, um, I don't know if I'm the only one advocating for templates which, which, which, which as an agency founder is a strange thing to do. No, no, don't get me wrong. I mean, template based websites is not the market we're in. We're in the market of taking specifications, you know, doing a whole load of work, figuring out a lot of stuff, then coming up with concepts and designs and going at it from that point of view. And I know the, the amount of money that's involved in doing that and the amount of effort that goes into, you know, for example, creating a set of icons can be you could spend a week creating a set of really slick icons that are going on now. I don't think it's easy for people to appreciate that. It's like you're paying people to, to think about your business, to conceptualise. You're paying them to do something they've never done before, and that's create visual representations of your brand. And that's really hard. And, you know, I guess the reason that the template industry exists is because like lots of people either don't see the value in custom design or they simply can't afford it. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, absolutely. But then let's be right about this. Some people also don't see the design in good content and are perfectly happy to outsource it. Yes.

You don't see the value in good content. That's the one.

I've let some some of these things go as I've been listening to people.

Let.

Go, but not I'm not letting that go.

Yes, some people don't see the value of good content and are perfectly happy to outsource it for five pounds an article to somebody in India to write. But that doesn't mean that's what you should do. You know that that's not the right way to do it. And I guess that's the point, isn't it? It's like, yes, if you don't perceive the value, that is possible, but it doesn't mean that you should do it.

Yeah. I mean, I think once you start getting into that conversation around outsourcing to low cost economies, I mean, you do start to get into the realms of content software development. You know, I don't necessarily think I'll put it this way. I think there are lots of agencies in the UK who will outsource to low cost economies the building of websites, for example, but they would not outsource the design work. That's kind of what they do. That's the sexy bit that. Well, speaking about the sexy bit, it's the bit that you can often get the most engagement from from customers.

The yeah, they really want it to look nice and they get very hung up on the colors and the pictures. So yeah, I think it's easy for them to identify with because it's so visual. Whereas, um, when you get into, you know, the, the, the things they think are the boring bits, like actually getting the content and the words and the stuff that that needs to be there for your customers to actually understand what they're getting. And it's, it's not as sexy and it's not as visual and they can't get their heads around it. And, and it's really difficult to, to get on and do.

I often say to customers when we're pitching to them that whether they decide to work with us or any other credible agency or for that matter, credible freelancers, that they will get the end product, they will get something that looks fantastic and I refer to it as the easy bit. Um, which is not strictly true because it's not easy to come up with fantastic designs. But what I'm driving at is you will always finish up with something that looks fantastic. If you work with a credible agency or a credible, a credible, um, freelancer, um.

It's easy for them because that's the bit that we do pretty much the, they brief us, they let us understand what they're after and what they're all about and what their brand's about. Um, but we, we then take that away and turn it into something that they can then look at. Whereas when it comes to creating content, they kind of need more input. And that's where it gets really difficult.

Yeah. Okay. So, so we've talked about content a lot in other podcasts. So, so we'll, we'll kind of steer away from it in this one. Have we, have we come to any sort of consensus at all when it comes to templates?

Bad.

They, they have a place. Yeah.

They've got a time and a place.

And they have a place. They're not ideal. They're never going to be ideal. But if your resources are limited, then it's better than nothing. And it's a start. A step on the ladder.

Yeah, that's the thing. They're a good step. Your first foot in the ladder for a company to get a website up, see what works for them. Because a lot of new businesses, they don't actually know what they need for a website. You know, you'll speak to them like, well, I'll just need a homepage and about us page and a contact page. And it's like, right. Yeah, but that's not really going to get you anywhere. So once you start to start building it, like, oh, well, maybe have a page for this service and then a page for that service. Oh, well, I could maybe have, you know, a blog here and it starts growing arms and legs. So a template is good, a cheap option to get them to find their feet and see what they need to do, and then allow them to expand on that, to then get up to a custom website. As their business grows, you move up to a custom website that you know properly fits in with their needs. Because as we said before, you know, trying to get your content to fit into a template. It's is a bit of a losing battle really, because then you find yourself creating, creating content you know, or need an extra header here, or we've got this little module here. So we need to create a, you know, a paragraph of text to go in there and you'll end up just repeating yourself over and over again in the content. And it'll cheapen the website rather than enhancing it. It'll just cheapen it all. So yeah, it's time and a place for it. I would say.

Yeah, just starting to realise, uh, why this is Dave's first podcast and it's gonna be his last.

That's a bit mean.

Well, as opposed to the rest of the time when Dave is nice to anybody, people. Um, yes.

That's me encouraging him to up his game.

All right. Okay. Sure. That that's a really good management technique.

I'll just blame lucky for barking.

I was hanging on your every word, Dave. Just so you.

Know.

Kind of now clearly wants Dave to go and do something really urgent for when he's finished this podcast.

I need to go and deploy a site live.

I think we have this, um, this whole idea, don't we? Whenever we're talking to people about growth driven design of a minimum viable product.

Put the brakes on, explain that, explain that concept.

Trying to see how many.

Often a complete.

I was trying to see how many acronyms I could cram in before I got started. That was good. Um, yeah, so growth driven design, the idea being that you.

Don't think growth driven design is an acronym. GD is an.

Acronym. It's it's a bit of jargon, incomprehensible bit of jargon.

Um, yeah, yeah. Um, so the concept being obviously that you kind of grow a website and a, and an online business kind of incrementally in stages rather than trying to get to the finish line straight away. And we have this whole concept of like a minimum viable product, which is the most basic version of your website that you can possibly get live to start growing the business. And I think what kind of Dave's talking about really speaks to that idea, doesn't it? It's like if you're at the very beginning of your journey, get a template and get it up and get something started, get something online and start building content. But if you're at the point where you've already got a boatload of content and you know you want your website to look a specific way, and you kind of know what your audience expect to see, you've probably already outgrown a template and you need something custom.

Okay, so coming back to Dave, if we're on a growth driven design project, so minimum viable product websites gone up with twenty twenty five pages, and we know that we're going to be increasing it and growing it over time. As a developer, are you happier if we're working on a site that you developed, you designed the the whole technical structure behind it. If you know that down the line, it's going to need to be extended or would could you do it just as easily with a template?

Hey, you're always easier working with the code that you've built because you know, inside out, you know that you're creating little bits as you're going along, you're like, well, this could be extended. If this happens, we could do this to it to extend it, you know, down the line. It's, you know, you put in the fail safe bets, you're not like boxing yourself off completely. Whereas with the template, a lot of these templates, you can't actually go and hack the code, otherwise you can't then get updates. So, you know, a lot of these templates, they do provide updates down, you know, periodically to change it or if they find bugs to fix them. But if you start hacking that template code that's out the window, if there's any bugs, you've then got to fix them yourself. Otherwise, you've got to go and update the template and then go and put all your hacks back in place to get it to work with the website.

Yeah. So I think it's worth as clarifying that pretty much probably all content management systems and the content management system might be WordPress, Drupal craft, HubSpot, Joomla, any number of content management systems, the software that does the clever stuff, which squirts HTML and a web browser so people can look at web pages, all use templates. Yeah. What we're talking about is whether that is a custom template built around a unique piece of design, or a template that includes the design that you buy off the shelf, fait accompli, install it and start banging content into.

I mean, one thing that's important to remember is custom doesn't necessarily mean expensive. You know, you can have a custom template and it could be built by a one man band, you know, and they can be very good at their job, but because they're working at home and they don't have any really extra overheads, they could do it a lot cheaper than a twenty person agency could. So you could take, you know, have the same sort of style template from both of those options. What you're paying for with a bigger agency, obviously, is you've got more people to look at it. If someone's away on holiday or someone's off sick, you know, it's not a case of I can't get hold of them for two weeks. You've got someone else there. But yeah, it's important to remember custom doesn't necessarily mean expensive.

True.

I've just realised how we can work here and drive an Aston Martin Vantage. He's. He's moonlighting, isn't he?

All that client you turn down.

Right. Okay, so to kind of wind things up. Um, Alex, uh, final words on template versus custom custom, the right word template versus unique design.

Yeah.

Design. Not just to move away from the template. Geeky bit.

Yeah. Okay. Good. If you're starting out bad, if you have an established business audience and need something slightly more unique, I think.

Or framing that slightly differently. Good. If you don't care what people think about you, bad. If you're trying to build a brand and a proper business.

I think so.

Okay, Julie.

I think that's slightly harsh, but, um, yeah. Good, good, good for starting out. If you're not too particular about how you present your brand and you don't, you know, you're happy to go with what someone else has designed. But if you want something a bit more unique and you you want to stand out in the market.

Jeff.

Yeah. Can I agree? You know, I've kind of said it there before. It's yeah, great for starting out businesses. And yeah, there is a time and place, but I think there is a kind of time limit and size limit for a business where they really need to go. Actually, we need to invest a bit more in this to be taken seriously and just step up the game.

Okay. I don't really know where I stand. I, I'm not really interested in building websites using off the shelf templates. I think like we've all said, they've got a part to play. You can create a successful website if you take an off the shelf design. Um, that comes attached to a template for a specific system like HubSpot or WordPress or anything. And, and build a credible, uh, web presence because ultimately, and it's a subject for another podcast. Probably you can spend and we've worked with companies who've come to us having spent all of their money. We've spent thirty grand on a new website, and it doesn't generate any business for us. And it's been absolutely one hundred percent focused around design.

Yeah.

No thought has gone into what the website should be doing in terms of helping them grow their business, and they've blown their entire budget.

Yeah. But but that is also just like an example of a bad design process, isn't it? I guess that's an agency. Those are websites built by agencies that don't think about how a website will actually be used or what its function is.

And yeah, very much design first and.

Template versus bad design, like fine, take the template, but template versus good design.

Yeah, this is honestly, it's like herding cats, recording podcasts for you guys, having to keep reminding you to talk.

Don't look at me. I'm perfect. I've had it beaten out of me.

Yeah. That's right. Okay. Um, if you want to come on to What's it called?

Digital Marketing From The Coalface.

Coalface From The Marketing.

If you want to come onto the podcast and talk about how you've created a multi-million pound business using a template website, then we'd love to hear from you because I think it's probably possible. If you want to come and talk about any other aspect of digital marketing, we'd love to have you on as well. We've got plenty of great guests. If you look in the back catalogue and more fantastic guests coming up. Um, Dave, how did you find it? Your first podcast?

It's not been too bad. You've been you've been very gentle. You haven't been going at me as much as you go. Alex. So yeah, I'm grateful for that.

When you say it hasn't been too bad, are you talking about the experience or your contribution?

Well, I'd like to think my contribution has been top notch.

Very, very valuable.

But we'll wait and see. Of all the complaints that come in after this goes out.

Well, interestingly, we never edit these down. We kind of put them out there.

There's a first time for everything.

Just kind of thinking this time Leslie's gotta work and cut out.

When this goes out, I won't be in it.

Okay. And as people might have heard, the the, um. I was going to say the eagle eyed might have heard, but that's probably the eagle eared. The owl eared might, might have heard. Here we go. Caron, did.

You mean rabbit.

Did contribute from time to time? And she did come and sit on my knee while she was doing it. So, um.

Backed herself into a corner here.

Make of that what you will. But as anybody who knows Red Evolution. They know that Caron and I are actually an item as well. So, um, that was nice. That was that's five of us. Five of us in a, in a, in a podcast. That's pretty good. I think we need to do more of these. Hopefully you've enjoyed listening to it and, uh, we look forward to bringing some other nonsense to you next time. Say goodbye everybody.

Goodbye.