In today’s age of fast food and high-speed Internet, a business
may be tempted to take the “more convenient” route in launching
a website - buying a template and customising it.
Website design templates are like off-the-shelf websites and are
targeted at people who believe that launching their own, unique
and differentiated website is costly and time consuming, which
need not be the case.
But what happens when you buy a template, and when looking up
your competition on the web, you find that they are using the
same template as you! A good example of this happening is the
highly competitive real estate business - I have personally
discovered 6 (six) South African real estate businesses using
the same design template for their website.
Using the example of the real estate business, let’s imagine a
guy called Adam wants to look for a new home by looking at
several websites.
1.After browsing a few sites it occurs to Adam that the
interface of some of the sites was the same, although the colour
scheme may have been different.
2.After looking at, say six different web sites, he’s decided
that he is highly interested in one particular home.
3.However, poor Adam is at a loss - he can’t remember which real
estate company was offering this home! The layout and navigation
structure of all the websites are the same and all the websites
feature homes for sale in the same format.
None of these real estate businesses benefited from Adams
interest in buying a new home - they simply wasted his time and
made him feel frustrated. On the bright side, at least Adam
won’t remember which real estate businesses made him feel this
way!
