How to Choose a Website Template Without Regretting It
Most people choose a template on how it looks and regret it a month later. Here is what to look at instead.
You open a gallery of fifty designs and they all look great. That is the problem!
Colour is the easy thing to change later. Structure isn't! Pick on structure and you'll be very happy a year from now.
Question one: what does the homepage want from you?
Every template assumes something! A restaurant design wants a menu and great food photography. A portfolio wants twenty finished projects. A one-page design wants a single very clear offer.
Look at what the demo is filled with and ask whether you've got that. If a template wants a photo gallery and you have four photos, it'll look thin no matter how good the design is!
Question two: is it built for the one thing you want people to do?
Decide what a visitor should do. Call you, book a slot, ask for a quote, or come to your shop. Just one!
Then check the template makes that thing really obvious. A design built around a big gallery is fighting you if what you need is the phone to ring!
Question three: how does it look with your amount of content?
Demos are filled with perfect content. Yours won't be, at least at first, and that's completely normal!
So look at the demo and mentally delete half of it. If it still works, it'll work great for you. If it collapses, that template needs more than you've got.
Question four: does it look like your business, or like a competitor?
A law firm with a neon startup template confuses people! A hair salon with a corporate blue one does the same in the other direction.
Your customers have expectations about what your kind of business looks like. Meeting them isn't boring! It's the fastest way to be believed.
What you can change afterwards, and what you cannot
Colours, fonts, photos and words are easy! Anybody can change those, and you can change your own text and images yourself later.
The layout is the commitment. So spend your time there, and open every template as a live site before you pick. Every Brennan Builds template runs as a real site you can click around right now, which is the only way to judge one honestly.