Real Estate Website Templates - My Personal Pick
Somewhere during the course of Internet evolution, website templates got a bad name for themselves.
I think it's because early templates were basically garbage ... and some of them still are. All of these companies referred to their products as professional website templates but, in truth, many of them were amateurish in appearance and functionality.
As a real estate agent, you've probably encountered many companies selling their real estate website templates (and the hosting services that usually go along with them). But there are significant problems with many of these template-based products:
I started playing around with website templates about six years ago. I wasn't very impressed back then. Most of them were built with clumsy HTML coding and lots of table structures that made them a nightmare to work with.
Then I "went off" templates for a few years, building my websites from scratch. It takes a heck of a lot more time to build a site that way, but I thought it was the best way to go.
About a year ago, I started researching professional website templates again. I looked at all the big template sellers, such as TemplateMonster.com, but I was never really excited about any of their offerings.
Eventually, I stumbled across a website called 4Templates.com. Since then, I've built a half-dozen websites by customizing their professional templates -- for myself as well as for clients. I've become a template "junkie" again ... and with good reason.
I'll get to the reasons I like these templates in a moment. For now, here are a couple of the more recent websites I've built by customizing the professional website templates offered by 4Templates.com:
With content aside, each of the websites above took me about a week to customize (and that's mainly because I'm anal-retentive about details).
If my clients at Far West Capital had some high-end design firm build their website from the ground up, it probably would have taken 1 - 2 months. But by starting with a professional website template and customizing it with unique content and graphics, I was able to produce a good-looking, highly functional and professional website for my client in a quarter of that time (and for far less money).
My background is in creating highly successful websites from a visibility, traffic and sales standpoint -- not in creating "pretty" websites that fail in the other areas. So when I experiment with a so-called professional website template I want to know ... is this thing going to harm or hurt my chances of good search engine rankings and traffic?
This is the primary reason I like the website templates offered by 4Templates.com. When you select and download one of their templates, you will probably get two versions of it. One folder will be labeled "HTML" and the other folder will be labeled "XHTML."
Now this might not mean much to you, but any web designer will tell you that XHTML code with cascading style sheets (CSS) is the more modern way to design websites. This approach makes them easier to maintain and gives your website greater flexibility, usability, and coding longevity. 4Templates.com is one of the only website template companies I've encountered who offers their templates in this more modern coding method.
That's the main reason I like their templates, because to me it's the most important aspect of any website template. In fact, I would go so far as saying that any company that claims to offer professional website templates had better offer clean-coded XHTML versions as well. Otherwise, they should call their product "outdated" website templates.
Cost and reliability are the other two reasons I prefer this company. You can get some really nice design layouts (modern, clean, versatile, etc.) for under $35. As for reliability, I've used their online ordering process at least a half-dozen times over the last year, and I have never had a single problem. You get an email within five minutes or ordering online, and it gives you links to your website template files and other "goodies" such as fonts and graphics.
I hope you look at website templates in a new light after reading this article, and I hope you find these products as useful as I have. Related article on free blog templates for various platforms.
Good luck, and good marketing.
-Brandon
I think it's because early templates were basically garbage ... and some of them still are. All of these companies referred to their products as professional website templates but, in truth, many of them were amateurish in appearance and functionality.
Most Real Estate Websites Templates are Horrid
As a real estate agent, you've probably encountered many companies selling their real estate website templates (and the hosting services that usually go along with them). But there are significant problems with many of these template-based products:
- They often use frames that greatly reduce your potential for good search engine rankings.
- They are usually cookie-cutter templates that cannot be fully customized.
- They limit your ability to make certain types of edits to your own website, which should never be the case!
I started playing around with website templates about six years ago. I wasn't very impressed back then. Most of them were built with clumsy HTML coding and lots of table structures that made them a nightmare to work with.
Then I "went off" templates for a few years, building my websites from scratch. It takes a heck of a lot more time to build a site that way, but I thought it was the best way to go.
Boy Meets Templates - A Relationship Renews
About a year ago, I started researching professional website templates again. I looked at all the big template sellers, such as TemplateMonster.com, but I was never really excited about any of their offerings.
Eventually, I stumbled across a website called 4Templates.com. Since then, I've built a half-dozen websites by customizing their professional templates -- for myself as well as for clients. I've become a template "junkie" again ... and with good reason.
I'll get to the reasons I like these templates in a moment. For now, here are a couple of the more recent websites I've built by customizing the professional website templates offered by 4Templates.com:
- Far West Capital - I created this company's website by starting with a template and doing some basic customization with colors, graphics, etc. I also added a blog to the site, but that's another article entirely.
- Top Ten Agent - This is the website I use to sell my step-by-step guide to real estate search engine optimization (which you should purchase, by the way!). Once again, I started with a template from 4Templates.com and did some basic design customization with colors, graphics, etc.
With content aside, each of the websites above took me about a week to customize (and that's mainly because I'm anal-retentive about details).
If my clients at Far West Capital had some high-end design firm build their website from the ground up, it probably would have taken 1 - 2 months. But by starting with a professional website template and customizing it with unique content and graphics, I was able to produce a good-looking, highly functional and professional website for my client in a quarter of that time (and for far less money).
3 Things I Like About These Websites Templates
My background is in creating highly successful websites from a visibility, traffic and sales standpoint -- not in creating "pretty" websites that fail in the other areas. So when I experiment with a so-called professional website template I want to know ... is this thing going to harm or hurt my chances of good search engine rankings and traffic?
This is the primary reason I like the website templates offered by 4Templates.com. When you select and download one of their templates, you will probably get two versions of it. One folder will be labeled "HTML" and the other folder will be labeled "XHTML."
Now this might not mean much to you, but any web designer will tell you that XHTML code with cascading style sheets (CSS) is the more modern way to design websites. This approach makes them easier to maintain and gives your website greater flexibility, usability, and coding longevity. 4Templates.com is one of the only website template companies I've encountered who offers their templates in this more modern coding method.
That's the main reason I like their templates, because to me it's the most important aspect of any website template. In fact, I would go so far as saying that any company that claims to offer professional website templates had better offer clean-coded XHTML versions as well. Otherwise, they should call their product "outdated" website templates.
Cost and reliability are the other two reasons I prefer this company. You can get some really nice design layouts (modern, clean, versatile, etc.) for under $35. As for reliability, I've used their online ordering process at least a half-dozen times over the last year, and I have never had a single problem. You get an email within five minutes or ordering online, and it gives you links to your website template files and other "goodies" such as fonts and graphics.
I hope you look at website templates in a new light after reading this article, and I hope you find these products as useful as I have. Related article on free blog templates for various platforms.
Good luck, and good marketing.
-Brandon
Labels: Real Estate Websites
posted by Brandon at
12:19 PM
