Why Readymade Joomla Template May Not Be The Solution For Everyone?

 

PSD to Joomla conversion service
Why Readymade Joomla Template May Not Be The Solution For Everyone?

Joomla is an open source content management system built using PHP. Joomla is of course one of the most powerful content management systems that you could consider. While WordPress is a good enough contender for Joomla, WordPress is limited in a number of ways when compared to Joomla. Therefore, many a times the most preferred content management system turns out to be Joomla when it comes to launching a powerful and resourceful website with advanced features.

Building a Joomla website of course involves a certain amount of serious effort. There are two common routes to building a Joomla website. The first approach is the use of a readymade or predesigned Joomla template and the second approach is building a Joomla design from scratch.

While using a readymade template is the easiest way out of the Joomla web design challenge. Numerous companies out there sell readymade templates for your Joomla website. The cost of these templates varies based on the design and the license type.

Will Readymade Joomla Template Work For Everyone?

To answer the above question we need to first understand the pros and cons of using readymade templates. So that we will be able to make well informed decisions.

Why people choose Joomla templates?

This is the first question that we need to ask when we are trying to figure out whether Joomla templates are suitable for everyone. Designing a Joomla website from scratch is a challenge in itself. If you are going to design a website in Joomla, you need to first come up with your design concepts or at least you should have a mental plan of what you need. You cannot start designing a Joomla website from vacuum. As the website owner, you need have a certain amount of clarity firstly to know for yourself how you want the final design to look like. Initially when you are creating your own blueprint of the design and putting down your vision for the website, you are unlikely to take into account the technical feasibility of launching a website based on your design specifications.

Once you have a rough idea of what type of design that you want for your website, it is time to establish the technical feasibility. You do this only by talking to a Joomla web design experts. Joomla website design comprises of two factors namely creation of the design in PSD and conversion of the PSD design to fully functional Joomla website. The second part is called PSD markup, PSD slicing or PSD to Joomla conversion

To transfer the design from your mental blueprint to fully functional Joomla website is a very complex process. You will need to find a highly talented company to handle your design needs. At times, the design company will possess the skills required to convert the PSD designs to a Joomla page or website but, not many companies possess these required skills. In other words, you need to find a company that is capable of handling the second half of the design process that is converting your PSD designs to a Joomla page. This step will unfold its own set of challenges making the process of designing a custom Joomla website even more challenging.

All the above steps will look all the more complex when you do not have adequate experience or when you are totally new to this field. To evade all these challenges and to escape the complications, many website owners try to take a shorter root by choosing to use a readymade template, which will solve their problems easily in just few clicks. All that one is required to do is to search for the best templates available and pick a design that is suitable for one’s needs. Through this approach, you will be able to launch your Joomla website in just about a day.

Is Readymade Joomla Template The Right Solution For You?

The above discussion might make one think that buying a Joomla template is the best way to deal with the Joomla website design challenges and to deal with the PSD to Joomla conversion complications. If that is what you too are thinking then you need to know that it is just one side of the coin. You will need to look at the other side of the coin too before you could make a reasonably good judgment on this matter.

Joomla Templates – The Other Side Of The Coin

If you want to establish a powerful brand online, your website is an important trump card that you have. It is important to play that trump card effectively. You should not therefore try to cut corners here or to evade little challenges those may be present along the way in the creation of your custom website.

These are some of the areas of our concerns when you use a template based designs, which could be effectively addressed in custom Joomla web design.

1. Niche specific preferences
2. Branding challenges
3. Functionality limitations
4. Upgrading possibilities
5. SEO considerations

Niche Specific Preferences

Joomla templates are designed based on the preferences of the designer who is creating them. The chances of his or her preferences matching exactly with your requirements and vision for the website are very less. In other words, you will not get exactly what you want. You may have to review the templates available online for several days at times before you could actually find something that is close to your requirements.
Every niche has its own uniqueness. As a business owner, you will be trying to meet the needs and demands of those customers with a specific mindset. To expect a Joomla design designed to impress your audience with specific set of preferences and inclinations would be to expect too much.

The Importance Of Branding In The Rat-Race

Today, there is cutthroat competition in every niche. You will need to compete with online as well as offline companies in your niche. This almost doubles the competition levels. In this rat-race, branding is everything. You cannot throw out some cheap stuff out there and think that you will be able to impress your customers and to attract them to your brand is just a daydream.
Aggressive branding efforts are required to just survive the competition. In such a scenario, if you want to lead the competition, you need to work ten times harder. You cannot leave any stone unturned in this game. Your website being one of the most powerful tools that you have in your hand, you should make the best use of the website.

How to make your website work for you in impressing your customers and in putting up a good fight against the competition? Creating your own custom Joomla website is certainly one of the best solutions here. When you design your website from scratch, you will have the freedom to build the entire website to your preferences keeping your specific set of audiences in mind. You need not have to curtail yourself to the limited customization choices those come with any template that you will be purchasing online.

Most importantly, you will not be able to have a website that is unique to your brand. The same template would have been used by number of other companies and websites. Even if a company promises that the templates will be sold with exclusive rights to you and charge more for that reason, they will sell the same template with minor modification so that it does not affect the exclusivity agreement that you have with them. The bottom line is that you will not have a website that is unique and different from websites that are built using the same template. It will be very unprofessional to use templates for your website when hundreds of websites have the same or similar design layout.

Finding The Right Talents Is The Key

Yes, we did notice that creating a custom website in Joomla has its own set of complexities. However, if you manage to find the best service providers in the industry then they will be taking care of all the technical aspects of the design process. Every time you want to design a website, it is not necessary that you should be technically qualified in the platform that you are using for your website. It is enough that your designers and PSD to Joomla conversion experts know what they are doing.
Your focus should now switch to finding the best vendors possible in the industry. Careful review and screening will be required to spot the top service providers. However, it is worth the efforts because you are building an empire of your own online. For this, your website is the foundational component. Once you have this foundational element established strongly, then your way forward will be lot more positive.

Don’t Have To Deal With Functionality Limitations

Another great advantage with building your own customized website is Joomla is that you could incorporate your own functionalities as per your needs and your budget. If it is a readymade template, your special requirements on the functionalities will have to be addressed separately. You will need to any way hire someone that is willing to work with you to integrate the additional functionalities that you need for your website. During this process, you might come across certain compatibility challenges too. If the template that you have purchased is not compatible with the additional functionalities that you want to integrate then you need to look for an alternative template. You will not get any refund on the template already purchased. Here you will be spending more money than necessary.
If you build a Joomla website design from the scratch, then your web design company and the PSD conversions company will take the advanced features and functionalities into account and make the necessary provisions in the coding of the pages so that all the required features work seamlessly in your website.

Challenges In Upgrading Your Website

As a brand, your vision is to grow beyond limits as long as you run the business. When you are growing, you will be looking into upgrading options. Your website is one area that needs to be upgraded. During such times, your website should have room for upgrades instead of completely changing the entire website. When you buy a pre-designed Joomla template, you cannot possibly expect the design to have options for such upgrades. On the other hand, when you build your own website from scratch using Joomla you will not run into any problems at a later stage when you want to go for upgrades provided you have taken such factors into account while designing the websites. Upgrades could be equally expensive and they have to be planned and executed carefully if you want to keep the budget under control at a later stage. If you work with an experienced company in Joomla web development, they will help you get things right along these lines.

SEO Considerations

Today SEO undoubtedly plays a very important role in making a brand successful online. There is no guarantee that the templates that you purchase are built on sound SEO principles. There is no use having a website that is not search engine friendly. The design and the coding factors determine ultimately, how search engine friendly your website is and along these lines, the templates available online for ready use may not have done complete justice to the SEO considerations. Unless you are a well-informed customer, you will not even know what to look for when it comes to search engine friendliness of a website. If you go out to shop for your Joomla design template in such a scenario, what will you be looking for when it comes to search engine friendliness? It is a tough challenge. You could avoid this challenge too effectively and build a beautiful Joomla website that is also search engine friendly. It is also possible to incorporate advanced SEO techniques while designing the pages from scratch. Such a design is likely to respond better to all your future SEO efforts. You will be able to build a website that is intrinsically search engine friendly. Such a website is likely to perform better in the search results. Launching a website without taking the SEO factors into account will be making a terrible mistake these days because everything boils down to your online visibility.

Templates Help You Save Money – Is It Real?

This is one sure question that we need to address in our discussion. The first reason we identified why many people opt for readymade templates is that it does not have the usual challenges of designing a brand new Joomla website from scratch in terms of the technical complexities. There is another reason why people opt for Joomla templates. The second reason is the cost savings. Before we buy into this reason, we need to ask ourselves whether this is a valid reason and whether it is true that we save money when we buy Joomla templates as opposed to building our Joomla websites from scratch in PhotoShop and converting the PSD designs to Joomla format.

The answer to the above question is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. If you are going to use the template as it is for your simple website where you feature a page for each service you offer, just set up a contact form for your visitors to get in touch with you, then you will probably be saving some money in using the readymade template. On the other hand, if you want to have an impressive website that will make your brand stand out in the crowd, you will need extensive customizations done out of the template that you purchase. Moreover, if you also want to add more features to your website besides the regular Joomla widgets that are already available, you will be required to spend a considerable amount of money in hiring the right resources besides buying the template of your choice. Further to that, you will be making SEO customizations by hiring an SEO company. In this process, you will also be required to handle any compatibility issues. When you take all these factors into account, you will be able to notice that the savings are not that impressive. If only you could stretch your budget little more, you will have a brand new website in Joomla with accurate, pixel perfect PSD conversions and with exceptional SEO value.

You need to give it a serious thought regarding how you might want to take your Joomla website design project further. Never compromise on the quality of the user experience because too much is at stakes here. You would certainly not want to bet on your success. Making well thought out, wise decisions are of paramount importance. Stay away from impulsive decision making that is driven merely by cost saving principles. As a business owner, you need to have a better grounding here.

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