As a designer/developer in the web business, I am ultimately a huge fan of purely custom web sites.  From the stand point of the actual job itself, they are more exciting and of course they pay better because more of the design and code—such as the stylesheet (CSS)—is developed “from scratch”. One of my favorite sites, Unmatched Style is a great resource for the planning of beautiful CSS/XHTML web sites.

On the other hand, not every client cares about having the most original web site in cyber space and nor should they. With over 8 billion web sites, the likelyhood of someone happening upon two sites that use the same template is quite rare.  In terms of the functionality behind the site, that is most likely available somewhere under a creative commons license, share and share alike. A web site that clearly fits your brands color pallet and identity is of course top line, but the layout and functionality behind the site may not need to be “original”.

In the changing of economical times, a certain group of web developers have enabled a new breed of web sites that are quite affordable for those wanting a web site that clearly represents their brand and who don’t want to spend a ton of money. Yes folks, it is called a template… There are many perks other than price point using a template as well.  Here are a few others:

• Extremely clean code that work in all browsers (even IE6)
• SEO-friendly code (meta tags in place, H1, H2 tags etc)
• Clean design and a layout that the visitor is familiar with (top nav, right side bar etc.).
• You are paying a very small amount for for what can be 100+ hours of development time.  (The developers make their $ after a certain amount of sales and their potential is more)
• The best for last…  You can even manage your own content going forward using popular content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

Although it may not be for everybody, it is something to consider especially in this economy.