Planning to Use Readymade UI/UX Design Templates? Here's What You Should Know
UI/UX design is the founding stone of a digital platform's success and largely determines how well your platform will perform. Moreover, the design serves as a guideline for the programming team and gives an idea of different features, elements, architecture, etc.
As a result, it is essential that a business planning digitalization pays special attention during this phase in order to ensure optimal quality of the design. Any negligence in the UI design can hamper the platform's UX and result in a disastrous platform failure.
However, it is also commonly known that crafting a UI/UX design is a lengthy and time-consuming process. This is where the role of readymade UI/UX design templates comes into the scenario. These readymade templates come in handy for many businesses and are popularly used at present.
This blog will provide complete information on using readymade UI/UX design templates in case you are planning to use one for your platform. Make sure to read the blog until the very end, as we have analyzed readymade UI design templates from various angles and have provided an insightful view on the topic.
Let’s start the blog by discussing the importance of creating a high-quality UI/UX design and its significance in a platform’s success.
UI/UX Design: The Building Block of Digital Success
UI/UX design is one of the most critical stages of the development process and forms a crucial part of a product's development lifecycle. It is in this stage that a product's look and feel are determined, making it highly important in terms of user experience.
It won't be wrong to say that UI design can either make or break your platform and largely determines its success. Moreover, it is worth noting that designing a platform is not just one particular stage but rather a process in itself involving numerous steps. To elaborate, the design process includes feature research, sketching, wireframing, prototyping, and design testing.
Naturally, each of these stages has its own time and investment requirement, which adds up to the final time and cost of UI/UX design. The larger your platform is, the more screens/webpages the designer team has to craft, and the higher the figures will go.
This time and capital investment can often be impractical for businesses, especially startups, and can lead them to abandon the idea of digitalization altogether. However, worry not, as there is an alternative to this problem.
Today, a business does not necessarily have to go through all the steps of the design process but can use readymade solutions for this matter. This concept is known as readymade UI/UX design templates, an alternative that is widely used by businesses of all scopes and sizes.
In the upcoming section, we will discuss the advantages of using readymade UI/UX design templates and will understand what makes this option a popular approach among businesses.
Advantages of Using Readymade Designs
Low Cost
We discussed earlier that designing a digital platform is a complete process involving numerous milestones. Naturally, the more time your platform's design process takes, the higher the overall cost of design will go.
This investment can often turn out to be impractical for businesses. On the other hand, compromising the quality of design by skipping a stage or two can result in declined performance and UX of your platform. Businesses often find themself in a difficult stage at this point and are left with limited choices.
However, readymade design templates are an excellent alternative in this matter and enable businesses to get a UI/UX design at no to minimal costs. To elaborate, there are numerous web and app builder tools that enable users to choose from numerous pre-made design templates.
All that you need to do here is drag and drop different elements, and your platform will be designed and developed automatically. These builder tools are many times free or charge a minimal membership fee to the users, making platform design and development an economically viable process.
Reduced Time-to-market
Many times when a business plans to develop a digital platform, it lacks the time availability that goes into the design and development process. However, it is commonly known that the design process is the foundation of a digital platform and should not be rushed.
As a result, businesses cannot help but wait for the design and development process to be completed before they can launch the product. However, readymade UI/UX design templates are a billion-dollar solution to this problem.
To elaborate, using readymade UI/UX design templates is a far less time-consuming alternative to designing your product from scratch. You can even complete the design process within a day, as opposed to custom designing, which can take weeks or even months.
Therefore, if you are a business looking to launch your product in the digital market with less time availability, readymade design solutions are an excellent alternative.
Easy to Implement
Designing a digital product is often a challenge, even for some of the most experienced UI/UX designers, as one needs to create a design that fits the platform's niche and serves as a perfect representation of the brand.
This objective requires creating a high-end design and requires exquisite design skills as well as expertise. Even after all the required skills and expertise, there is no guarantee that the design will succeed. In this case, the designers will have to start from scratch and will have to conduct the entire design process again.
A business can avoid this challenge by simply going for readymade UI/UX design templates. These templates enable businesses to get a readymade design solution that fits their market niche.
Today, most web and app builder tools offer design templates in different categories, like eCommerce, on-demand service, company profiles, etc. This makes your job easy and saves time that would otherwise be wasted in the design process.
Wide Availability
When planning to build a digital product, businesses are wary of each and every step they take and want the best solutions for their business. This also goes for the design of the platform, as it is through design that the businesses can determine how their platform will look after its development.
As a result, businesses righteously take a lot of time to finalize a design, as they consider numerous options and variants before coming to a conclusion. However, with custom designing, it is often challenging for businesses to get enough variants that enable them to compare and then determine the better option.
On the other hand, with readymade design templates, business owners can browse from a plethora of options and variants. There are numerous builder tools available on the internet, and each of these tools offers its own unique design templates.
Moreover, these readymade designs also come with certain scope for customization, which makes it possible for businesses to mold the design to their liking. This makes readymade UI/UX design templates an excellent solution for businesses looking for variety and options.
These were a few benefits of using readymade UI/UX design templates. Naturally, you must be thinking that using these design templates is the best idea, right? Well, let us tell you that there is more to UI/UX design templates than what we discussed here. In the upcoming section, we will discuss the drawbacks of using these readymade templates in detail.
Disadvantages of Using Readymade Design Templates
Reduced Brand Value
It is commonly understood that your digital platform is the representation of your brand among your target customers. Naturally, the way your platform is designed will largely impact how your target users will perceive your brand.
One of the most common disadvantages of using readymade design templates is declined brand image and diminished brand value. To elaborate, readymade UI/UX designs make it challenging for businesses to distinguish their brand from their competitors.
This is because of the wide and easy availability of readymade design templates that more and more businesses prefer to use them. Consequently, consumers are left confused due to numerous platforms with similar-looking designs and interfaces.
As a result, the customers end up perceiving one platform as a copy of the other, therefore resulting in its declined image and value.
Limited Flexibility
UI/UX design is one of the best opportunities for businesses to deliver a customer experience that represents a brand's values and quality. This includes creating an architecture that is unique to your business and perfectly fits your requirements.
Other aspects of this factor include carefully planned element placement, feature planning, and, most importantly, theme, color scheme, and typography. All these elements of UI design, when combined, result in a top-tier interface.
However, with readymade design templates, one can do very little about design customization. These templates come with a fixed set of color schemes and typography and limited scope of architecture customization. This limits the flexibility and control of the business over the platform's design, where they have to settle for the available options.
Challenging Navigation
Navigation is one of the most important aspects of UI design and largely determines how good of a user experience your platform will deliver. As a result, business planning digitalization must extensively focus on creating a design that facilitates seamless navigation.
This includes creating an interface where all the elements and features are easily visible to the users and enable them to effortlessly find their way through the platform. This requires extensive design planning, where the UI/UX designers strategically plan the placement of each and every feature.
Of course, this is not possible with readymade design templates, where one cannot modify element placement or themes. Therefore, if you are planning to build a complex platform, you are likely to hinder the navigation aspect of your interface by going with readymade UI/UX design templates.
Limited Scope of Migration
Migration is one of the most important aspects of developing a digital product. Businesses migrate their platforms for numerous reasons, from better performance to increasing business requirements and beyond.
Moreover, one can never tell how the future can reshape your requirements, making it the best idea for digitalized businesses to create a product that is easy to migrate. Of course, this requires high-level coding and an exquisite understanding of the platform's codebase.
This is a requirement that readymade design templates do not fulfill. To elaborate, readymade design templates make it challenging, often impossible, for businesses to migrate their platform. Since most of the design templates come with automated coding, it is challenging for programmers to understand the written codes and migrate them.
In the end, businesses often have to develop the product from scratch again using new technology for a successful migration. This not only requires additional time investment but can also result in tremendous business failure and loss of market trust.
As a result, using readymade design templates puts your business at risk of loss and failure and completely eliminates the scope of migration, therefore limiting the extent to which you will benefit from digitalization.
These were a few of the many major drawbacks of going for readymade UI/UX design templates. Naturally, you must be wondering what is the best way to design your digital product, right? Well, let us tell you that by going for a custom-made UI/UX design, you are likely to create a high-end design.
Moreover, by outsourcing your design project to a design and development agency, you can overcome all the shortcomings of custom UI/UX design. The upcoming section will throw light on UI/UX design outsourcing for a better understanding of the subject.
Outsourcing UI/UX Design: A One-stop Business Solution
Design and development outsourcing is one of the most popular approaches to building a digital product. Here, you can hire an expert agency that specializes in the complete development process and has experts for each stage of the development lifecycle.
In terms of UI/UX design outsourcing, these agencies offer businesses to outsource their design requirements and take complete care of their needs. What you get in the end is a high-quality design for your project that aligns with your requirements.
Some of the ways in which these agencies ensure these objectives are:
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By keeping communication transparent at all stages of the design process
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By following agile methodology and setting follow-up milestones throughout the process
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By hiring experienced designers that hold ample expertise and skill sets to work on your project; and more.
Overall, outsourcing your UI/UX design requirements to an agency is an excellent way to get a highly functional, visually appealing, and personalized design for your platform at a significantly low time and capital investment.
Summing It Up
UI/UX design is one of the most important aspects of the development process. As a result, businesses need to focus on this process and craft a design that delivers a world-class UX and maximize their success prospects.
One way to achieve this objective is to use readymade UI/UX design templates for the matter. These design templates are highly useful as they enable business owners to get a design for their platform at a significantly low time and cost investment.
However, using these designs comes at the cost of declined user experience, increased market risk, and more chances of business failure. As a result, businesses choosing this option have to be highly wary and must thoroughly weigh the pros and cons.
Alternatively, one can also go for the custom UI/UX design approach and outsource its design requirements to an agency. This way, you are certain to get a high-quality design and overcome the challenges of using a readymade template for your project.