What is the difference between an exclusive and non-exclusive web template?
Way back in 1994 when we first started designing website templates for our fellow webmasters, we offered both exclusive and non-exclusive designs. In those days when digital dinosaurs still roamed the earth there were not nearly as many web sites online as there are today. The majority of folks online were male computer geeks like myself. Most were not design oriented and had no right brain. Their specialty skill was coding and programming and they did not know the first thing about color analysis, effective web design techniques, etc. Non-exclusive templates sold for an average of $250 each and exclusive meant that the design would only be sold once to one buyer.
Non-exclusive templates were sold at a much lower price and were sold to multiple buyers.
Naturally, this raises a question to some folks. In today’s world, if a consumer purchases a non-exclusive web template, shouldn’t they be concerned that dozens or hundreds of web sites might have the same design as their site causing design saturation?
This is of course a natural human response but when looked at from a wider perspective based on reality, it can be answered quite easily. Since there are literally millions (or billions) of web sites worldwide and thousands of new sites born every day, your site’s chances of “looking” like another site is slim. And even if it did, why be so concerned?
The chances of all of your visitors finding your site and the site that looks similar to your’s in all those millions of websites are minimal. (Unless the look-alike site is your competitor, of course.) In reality though, would your visitors really think poorly of your company if they even noticed the similarities? Not likely. Would it cause you to lose business? No.
The majority of people who surf the net do so looking for information. As long as your site is easy to navigate and they can find the information they need quickly, they are not concerned at all about whether your site layout is exclusive.
The only webmasters and companies who might be concerned about template exclusivity are large corporations who have well-known trademarks worldwide, like Expedia or Ford Motor Company. They would have their own designers, although they might (and have) purchased a starting point template from us at BasicTemplates.com. If Ford Motor Company and Expedia isn’t concerned about exclusivity, then why would anyone else be? 🙂
It is also important to understand that our web site templates are easy to work with and many webmasters change them graphically thus making them look quite different when they are live online.
So why do you see so many high-priced templates being sold as “exclusive”? They feel it justifies a higher cost of course. For the majority of web sites that are not concerned about an exclusive corporate identity, an exclusive web site template is not necessary. Let’s hope this clears up any fears, myths or concerns about non-exclusive templates.
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BasicTemplates.com designs Website Templates with External CSS and has been providing webmasters worldwide with affordable template designs since 1994. BasicTemplates currently offers 650+ designs which may be purchased individually or get complete access to all templates via an affordable membership plan. Most templates were strategically designed with interchangeable graphics and elements to increase the potential number of design layouts for the end user. Each layout utilizes an external style sheet for easy site maintenance and to ensure fast page load.
