Welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly Christie!

With nearly two decades of experience in website design, I'm explaining the pros and cons of template shops; those ready-made website solutions that so many of us create, yet often struggle to actually sell.

In this episode, I'll talk you through what it really takes to build a thriving template side business.

From choosing the right client experience and support systems, to setting boundaries on content and pricing, I'll share the strategies that have made my own template shop, Simply Sites, a success.

Whether you're considering launching your own template shop or looking to improve what you already have, today’s conversation is packed with practical tips, personal insights, and actionable advice to help you avoid common pitfalls and create templates that truly sell.

Click play and let’s get started!

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With nearly two decades under my belt of website designs, there is

one thing that I have seen come up over and over and over again.

In today's episode, we are going to be talking about how

to have a successful template shop as part of your

web design business. The upper end of the scale is the two and a

half thousand pounds plus.

Hey, I'm Holly, I'm from Websites Made simple and I am

here to help you have a successful website design

career without making all the mistakes I did along the way.

If you're just joining us for the first time, thank you so much for being

here. It is lovely to meet you. If you've been here for a few episodes,

thank you for coming back. Today. I am talking about

the biggie, the template shops, because

with nearly two decades under my belt of website designs, there is

one thing that I have seen come up over and over and over again

and that website designers create template

shops for people to be able to come and buy the

websites and, you know, set them up themselves and

they go to all the work of creating the templates

and then they end up kind of ripping their hair out because

they're not getting anyone who's buying it or, you know, it's just not

the success that they want it to be. Now, as someone who has

a very successful template side of

my web design business, known as simply Size, I am here

to tell you how I did it. But also

what would be a good framework for you to work out how to do it

for you too? The very first thing I want to start with is

considering what you want the client experience

to be. And by saying this, I

mean, obviously we all want our clients to say, yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, I really

loved it. We had a great time. Let's say that that's a given.

What do you want your clients to do? Do you want them just to

buy a template, buy the framework and go off and populate it

themselves? Do you want to run a support group where

they are touching base and you know they're asking you any questions and

they're being supported and helped by a community, or is it

something else that you want to be able to offer

but is working with the framework now? When I set up Simply Size,

I wanted to be able to create budget websites for people and really

I wanted to tap into a slightly different market as well. And this is where

the template shops tend to sit are

usually the people who aren't budgeting for a custom build website,

but they still want a professional web presence. When I did

It I thought, I don't want to create a template and send people

on their way. I want them to feel like they're having a really good experience,

but at a budget price. I need to find a way that

I can make this work for everybody. My experience was that

I created templates for people to choose from. And

at the time I started, I launched with five templates. Choose your template

and after that you'll get a scaled down version of my

custom build service. So we'll have a 45 minute branding and

content planning call. I will build the website out to the first

draft. You'll generally know what it's going to look like because you've chosen the

framework for it. Then I will show you the first draft,

you get to suggest any amends and then we go live with it. Following

that, you have a website user manual and you get to do that for

yourselves. That's been a really successful experience

for me because I really handheld my clients with

their website builds. They get all of that kind of reassurance and all of

the good side of the web design with a professional site, but

at a budget cost. That might not be the model for you. You might

think, I just want to be one and done. I just want to have fun

creating the stuff, but I don't really want to populate it. So

really think about who your ideal client is going to be

before you get designing. Because first of all that will

influence not only the style of design

that you create, but it will influence kind of who

you're designing designing it for as well. Because if you want

to create something where your clients are going to populate those

templates themselves, then the website structures are going to have

to be pretty simple and you're not going to necessarily be able to get any

of the fancy animation or anything like that in there that you could

do. If you're the one who's populating it, that's the first thing

is who are you trying to draw in with this experience?

When I created simplisites, I wanted people who were at the

beginning stage of their website journey. So whether they had a shop,

whether they had a service led business. I knew that in three

years time after their simplisite had been built, I wanted them to

come back to me, but this time for a custom build website. So my custom

build clients were further along in the journey. They were people who'd already had a

website. They were looking to step into a bigger, better,

bolder website that was all about them.

Those type of clients, the Custom build clients, they're not going to be interested

in template shops. When we look at the kind of

person who is going to be looking at having a template website,

they fall into two categories. You fall into the

DIYers who are looking for something really inexpensive,

you know, 250 to 450 pounds. And they are

the ones who are most likely to be willing and

prepared to populate the content themselves. In which case, if

you're going to create that, you're going to have to look at a simple

framework, you're going to have to look at what kind of support you want to

give following that. I mean, back in the day people used to

do that using Facebook groups. Then do you want to have video

tutorials? Do you want to have written tutorials? I have like a

Vimeo channel that people can go on, but they also do get a website

manual. But as I say, I populate the content as well.

So I kind of have all of my bases covered here. Then you

have the other side of it where people are,

I'm going to call them like the semi custom build people

because they want a bigger, better website

and they're not fussed about it being a custom build. They're happy to

work with a template, but they want it to really feel like it

represents them. You'd be using a template and whether that's one

that you've created yourself or you're grabbing

something from the hundreds and hundreds of thousands

of templates available, but you're the one who's putting in the work, you're the

one who's populating the content for them and showing it as

this is something that's going to end up in your portfolio as well. And

those people are at a different price point. Those would usually

start round about the 2,500 pounds mark, going up

to whatever it is you charge for that. It can all depend really on

how big the website is and what kind of stuff that you're going to do

there. That is the first thing. Look who your

ideal client for this service will be. And

that will help you to map out what the price

point of what you're going to offer is going to be and then what

you're going to be working with. Are you going to be creating something, as

I say, something that pretty locked down into a child theme that you're just

sending out. It could be some people use the same framework and

just change the colors and the people get, you know, the pink website or the

green website or the yellow website or whatever Else some people make it

more sophisticated than that. My

personal thing is that I always want someone to

feel whether they've got one of my sympathy sites or whether they've got one of

my custom builds, I always want them to feel like it's

absolutely made for them, fits them like a glove. So I

don't do templates around colors. You know, we always, always work with a

client's as well there.

The next thing to look at is how

will you support them in getting the content that you

need? Or they need to be able to build out this website because

content is where people get really, really stuck,

particularly the copywriting stage. If they're also

going for a lower price website, it could be that they

haven't had a photo shoot done, that they don't have a brand or brand

guidelines. It might be. The most successful

way of getting these template shops off the ground is to offer

some support with that as well. A lot of web designers also offer

logo shops and what you can look at as well is

pairing the logo shop with certain websites as

well. So if you've got your template shop there and you can have an

upsell on the logos or the brand kits that go there as well and that

can work really well because people often feel quite

confident when they are buying everything from one place as

well. So do consider that if logos are something that you do,

you could get a copywriter on board. I have a copywriter

who I work with on my simply site, Natalie. She is

fantastic and she actually writes the

website to the template as well. So when I

recommend someone, you know, they come and choose their simply site

and they get put in touch with Natalie if they want support with their copy

and Natalie writes it to the simply site they're buying. So it makes it really,

really easy to build out this website as well.

If a client is going to write their own website

copy, how are you going to support

them within doing that? Because there's a couple of things.

First of all, copywriting, as you will know, is a

skill within itself and it's a skill that most of

our clients don't have and they don't realize that

until it gets to the point where they bought the website and they need to

create the copy and then it just goes on a go

slow or they just don't get round to it because they have that rabbit in

the headlights feel about it. I have

a client onboarding pack that I use for my simply site.

I actually have it available for web designers to buy as well.

Goes really well with The Web Designers contract pack. But the onboarding pack

is the onboarding process and it has a whole workbook

for people for how to recognize their ideal client, how to write

website copy for them, and it has other information about branding and

images and stuff. It's like this really robust pack. It also has

a technical information sheet where it goes through, do

you have a domain, where's it registered, with login details, everything that you need

to be able to get this website hooked up as well. Because when

people buy a website and they buy a domain, they often

don't consider what they need to do to connect one to the other. And I'm

sure you've come across this a lot. The onboarding pack

also has an entire website content

document which the clients write their content into.

It's a fillable PDF and it has, you know,

here, homepage, section one, section two, service one, service

two, a spreadsheet for shops as well. If you are going

to build shops for people or have template for

shops, you might like to set a number on

the amount of products you're going to upload for them. Because trust

me, you can fall into the trap where someone says, oh yeah,

yeah, I'll send it over and you look and there's like a thousand products,

there are hundreds of products and you can't just upload it through a CSV

import or something like that. So do consider what your boundaries

and what your limits are here. For me, mine is 20. I will

upload 20 items to a shop and then I will show them how to do

it themselves. But I've always found that 20 is quite a

good number for the amount of categories and things

like that that are available. Particularly because when people are coming for

these sites, smaller templates, they're on a budget, they don't have as many

products there as well. Likewise, we can say 20 with blog

posts if you're uploading blogs, something like that. But do consider that, because

it really can be a bit of an eye opener with that

one as well.

We've spoken so far about the type of template shop

you're going to have, who it's going to be for, who it's going to appeal

to now, how you can support them

in getting the content as well. And as I say, my experience has been

that the more that I support people with the content, the

happier my clients are. But the more projects actually get off the

ground and the more websites that get bought and the more websites get

built and get launched, and it all works really well as well.

So if you're not sure about how to get content from the client or

how to get content easily. You might like to look at the website in its

onboarding pack and it's available from the Websites Made simple

website, which is websitesmadesimple.co.uk.

once you've supported them with the content, they need

to have a think about what you want to do around the aftercare as

well. So as I say, if you're looking at that very low budget

and it's just a case of here's the website files, here's how you

upload it, off you go, then you're probably not really going to

have very much of an aftercare package. But

Aftercare is a something that's really

useful for people because even in these days people can still

be really nervous about website tech as well. So knowing that you

are available for support for a month, some offer it for

three months. I personally have website hosting

and maintenance plans as well and I would say 90% of

my clients choose that option. They're a little bit reduced in price

to the custom builds as well. And that usually reflects the fact that there are

less plugins and less technicalities on the website as well.

But it means that they pay monthly, it's on a direct debit.

And then we have. I actually have my tech guy, Stu does all of the

maintenance, we offer it as a monthly thing, but he does all the maintenance weekly

on the websites. And people know that as well because he'll test the contact

forms, he'll test shopping baskets, he'll drop them an email and say that he's done

this as well. But it is a really good

trust building exercise because sometimes when we offer

templates and we just say, you know, here we go, people

don't have a great experience with it. But when we offer that all round

service, people do have a really good experience and they

recommend it to their friends. And I get quite a lot of work through referrals

on both my custom Build and my SimPlay site. I

get a lot more referrals from the Simplii sites because there

are a lot more people in the market at the price that simply

sites are priced at. And because it's a quick turnaround,

we've got more people going through the system faster and that's also more people

on the hosting and maintenance plan as well. And so it means

that the website hosting maintenance makes up a good

portion of our income of the company's income as well. So do

consider that templates can feel

like an easy solution Particularly when web designers are

struggling with income, they fill all sorts of

gaps, don't they? Because you want to be designing, you want to be having

fun and designing is fun. You get to kind of tick all

of those boxes and you get that fast turnover as well.

The next thing I would say is look at how much you're going to charge

for it. And as said, the kind of bottom end of the scale is the

200, 250 pound template for people who are going

to DIY the project. And then the upper end of the scale

is the two and a half thousand pounds plus for people who

are offering a template option or going to buy a template, but they're

going to populate it themselves as well. And then there's everything at

every price point in between. And trust me, I have seen

every price point in between as well. You can make really money out

of template websites, and I probably don't need to tell you that, but if you're

listening to this podcast, the chances are you probably aren't

making the money that you want to make out of template websites.

If you're having someone who is

wanting something that's very, very easy and

feels a little bit kind of intuitive, you

might like to use something like wix. If you want to focus

on shops, have a look at Shopify. You probably know

I am a WordPress website developer and designer as well.

I do all of my template stuff in WordPress as well. I use

the same software each time, so it means that all of my training videos,

all of my website user manuals are created using the same

software. So it also means that I have been able to

standardize all of my website manuals because I've been able

to say, this is how you change an image, this is how you add a

blog posts, this is how you add something to the navigation, this is how you

change text, this is how you use titles and you name it, we've got video

for it. I've also got this on my Vimeo support channel as well.

So there's lots and lots of stuff that we have available there.

And if you feel like you're chopping and changing between

software, you might feel that you start to run yourself

ragged with the client support there as well. So I definitely say

choose one thing to start with and get really good at that one thing

as well. And remember, with template shops, you still

need contracts. Even if it's just someone buying something from you

and then taking it off, you're still going to need the paperwork as

well. So it's really where the client onboarding pack

comes in and sits hand in hand with the web designers contract pack because the

contract pack also has things like hosting agreements.

It has the maintenance agreements as well. It has what we're liable for what

we're not liable for. One of the things that I have

is that if people are hosting their website with me we are not

liable for what they may go on to put on their website

or what they might have going through their email accounts. If

we see something that breaches our

moral code or something like that we are allowed to remove it from our

servers as well. So if you have a template shop or you're

thinking of setting up a template shop, I hope you have found this

episode useful. Do write in and let me know as well. You can

find me at

hellobsitemadesimple.co.uk, i would

love to hear from you. I would love to hear your experience with the

template shops as well. And until next time Happy

web designing.