The website templates business has been in a cash cow position from its beginnings in the early 2000’s. Over the past ten years, hundreds of thousands of eager entrepreneurs have uploaded websites, or even entire networks of websites, in order to stake their claim in the website templates gold rush.

Now, ten years later, the marketing landscape has changed drastically. The boom town activity of website template sales has given way to market saturation and intense competition, with one hundred thousand template websites disappearing everyday and two hundred thousand start-ups rising to take their place.

I raise this issue because of the increasing number of novice, would-be web designers who contact me for advice about how to be successful in the web design and website templates industry.

As mentioned, the primary hurdle to overcome is the intense competition in the web design and website templates industry today. I just typed in “website templates” on Google and it returned 23,000,000 results. If you put up a new template website today, why would anyone buy from your page instead of from one of the other 22,999,999 other pages?

Frankly, I cannot understand how anyone could break into this market today unless they are brilliant at SEO or have very deep pockets.

That being said, if you are brilliant at SEO and/or you are extremely committed and determined, your only real hope would be targeted traffic, and particularly a niche market. In the early days (going back ten years), it was easy to sell to a broad market because there were only a handful of template sites offering a quality product. But now you are up against hundreds of thousands of template sellers, with many of them offering the exact same product or a product with competitive quality.

So again, you have to ask yourself, why would anyone buy from my website? The answer, in my opinion, is that you must market yourself to a specific type of customer. Unless you have a well-established brand, novices in this industry must tailor their marketing endeavors to attract a narrower range of customer than was previously possible.

For example, Perfectory Web Design Services has always (since 2000) marketed to the artsy web design professional, as opposed to, say, the small business entrepreneur or high-tech aficionado. This wasn’t a conscious decision, but was born of my personal interests and inclinations. It was from hindsight that I recognized this pattern and attributed it as a factor in my success. Looking back, all of Perfectory’s various facades have been “artsy”, and my marketing strategies followed in kind. No surprise then to reveal that many of my long-time customers are creative web design professionals.

So, in closing, I might offer as advice to neophyte web designers and website template sellers to think carefully about your own personal interests and proclivities and how you can use them to focus your website appeal and marketing strategies. Trying to sell to anyone and everyone will not work. You must develop some kind of “hook” to attract some of the people and hone your approach accordingly.

Getting a website for your business, organization, or family is the only way to connect to the World these days. However, having a great website is only the beginning. With a website comes the need to continuously improve it on a consistent basis, edit it, update content by adding new information, remove outdated information, test the navigation, and try new things.

Websites provide the opportunity to explain the benefits and features of your presentation, product, and/or service. When people are out shopping, or watching television, the time to browse is limited. However, in the comfort of the home or office, with the ability to quickly sift through diverse information and focus on specific needs, there is ample time for interested e-connoisseurs to peruse. To help guide them through your site, use headings, particularly on your home page that will appeal to emotions like fear and desire. Create an urgent imperative that will get people excited to see what you have to offer. Once their interest is peaked, keep them entertained with good writing. If you can’t write, hire someone. Broken dialogue full of typos undermines your professionalism. Distil the information so readers don’t get bored; make it complete, clear, and concise.

Once the content of a site is developed, tailor the website’s appearance to the content with a classy background, appropriate pictures, and clever graphics, like logos, that consistently represent website content visually remind visitors where they are. Too many graphics can be distracting, confusing, and slow down navigation. Graphics bars or button links can also enhance navigation, but make sure you have no more than eight links on your main page, and use subdirectories if necessary.

Credibility of a website develops over time with the use of testimonials, guarantees, secure payment strategies, privacy statements, and complete contact information, all presented with professionalism. Besides the use of reciprocal links, submit to search engines and online directories, making contact with the online public with newsletters and emails. In addition, posting on discussion lists and sites are creative ways to promote your site.

Research is another necessary practice of every successful media company, and is no exception online. Technology changes quickly, and by subscribing to newsletters and feeds (like ours), it’s easy to keep pace with emerging trends and changes in the structure and function of the online marketplace. There are plenty of online and hardcopy books available, along with websites that give free advice on web design and promotion.

With smart work and perseverance, a well maintained website can be a successful marketing tool over the long term. And of course, you can always come back to Perfectory Web Design Services to have your site updated and customized for you.

Perfectory Web Design Services, better websites in the long run.