Templates or Designer?

How many people here designed their own site or had a developer do it for them? Could you possibly provide links of what situation you are in? I'm caught between if I should go with some sort of template or have one professionally designed. My site will be most text (service biz) as there is no tangible products being sold. Just one key part I may have to have someone design, but I was just curious as to the path others took and why?

Thanks,

Eastriver

Either approach can work, or not work, depending on the quality of the templates/designer used. For a really unique polished site, you have to hire a top designer, but that is not to say that you can't get sales with a template site. You can.

Any idea where you can find quality template for a full website? It seems all I am finding for ecommerce templates are ones with shopping carts already in the template. I will have a service company that will basically offer two different options. 1. They can be a member for free and have very limited capabilites to my service or 2. they can be a paid member and have full access to all the features. Will I need to have a "shopping cart" for this type of situation, or can I go through some other software like amember to satisfy this need? Sorry for all the questions.

Thanks

Equentity might be a company to speak with for web design. It is usually better to have a company do everything for you. Having a template - other companies might have it and sometimes it is more difficult.

Most templates don't come with a shopping cart in the template, it might come with examples. Shopping carts are usually a server side language ran by a database

Hi Eastriver

I think you can go with a template for this site. But given you will need to integrate subscription shopping cart, etc in it - better choose a more simple template so you can easily accomodate the purchasing interface inside.

Regarding whether you can use some ready software for registrations / subscription billing - it all depends on the service to which the users will get subscribed. If the service is e.g access to some information on the site, or anything else that has to do with logging into your site and using the service from your site - I think a custom member area and member subscription will be better..

You may check also some ready products, but probably the cost to adjust a ready product to fit your specific needs will be more than if you pay for a custom solution..

Hope that helped

Rgds

Chi

I've used alot of modified templates over the years and it's always good to take it in steps...if you try it yourself, a template can help you learn the basics...

As you get more advanced, you can always change later on. Going with a developer will save you time, but that cost factor is involved.

It's up to you how you want to progress!

Hope I've helped! Cheers!