What a template cannot know

A website template is finished before anyone has met your business. That is not a complaint about whoever made it. It is simply how a template works, and everything that goes wrong with one follows from it.

The sections exist because the template has them

A template has to suit a bakery, a law firm and a garage at once. So it gets what suits everyone: a welcome, three benefits in cards, a few testimonials, a form. When you fill it with your content, the content bends to the slots that are already waiting. You have two real advantages and there are three cards, so you write a third.

A designed site is made in the opposite order. First comes the question a person arrives with, then the answer, and only at the end the layout that carries that answer.

The bakery a template knows nothing about

On our home page there is a slider with two versions of the same bakery's site. The template version welcomes visitors and assures them of a passion for baking. The designed version says the bread is out at six, gives the address and lists today's loaves with prices.

The difference is not in the colours. Someone looking for a bakery wants to know three things: where, when and what there is today. The template could not know that, because it was made for everyone. To write it, someone first had to ask the baker.

How to test your own site

Cover the logo and the company name on the first screen of your site. Then read what is left and ask one question: could your competitor have written the same thing?

If so, the site is about your trade, not about you. That can be fixed, and the fix usually starts not with a new look but with writing down what customers actually find out from you when they call.