How Templates Save Time & Money

The origin of the idiom “reinventing the wheel” seems to be hard to pinpoint. And that’s appropriate because it’s not clear when the invention of the wheel itself actually occurred, either.

But the sentiment is well-known:

No need to do the basis of the work all over again. 

Instead… reimagine, reconfigure, and reapply.

Like, should we transition from round aluminum wheels to square aluminum wheels? Of course not. Let’s not reinvent. Let’s try radial tires as the next logical refinement.

Now imagine those handy little forms we fill out on a web page when buying something online: Name, shipping address, email, phone number, and method of payment. And voila! Our packages arrive at the door.

That order form was once a manual fill-in. After that, one could “save it” to make it easier for next time. And now, of course, it fills itself in somewhat automatically. But it has generally been the same thing over and over again. However, it’s still effective. Still efficient.

That’s a microscopic view of how to save money on web development… use templates. The fill-in form has been invented already. So is the home page. And so is the page that provides a quick overview of the services a company provides. Etc.

Those types of pages are available as templates. And with an array of pre-existing options, there are solutions that can match a company’s unique look and feel.

To Customize or Not

Some websites do indeed require custom work. Custom development work and coding cost more. Making a cake from scratch is harder than using a box of pre-made cake mix. But either approach has its place.

Maybe the site represents some sort of elite brand and marketing approach where nothing at all is to appear like anything else or function like anything else in the marketplace. It’s fully tailor-made.

Or, maybe much of the site can be templated, but the level of ADA compliance requires custom work. It could be a combination of custom and templated. 

The marketing agency or the end client can choose where they want to derive value. And for the basics… fill-in forms and menu bars, and About-Us pages, a template can suffice. 

In fact, the article Laws of UX outside the screens¹ reports that templates can be beneficial to user experience. The author cites commonly accepted web-design principles that provide consumers with familiarity… easy ways to digest and navigate their online visits. The more logical the experience, the better the outcomes will be.

For example, that fill-in form request for “name and address and payment method”… always offer that up visually and experientially in a similar, sensible way. Visitors want that to be an easy, recognizable task.

A template accomplishes that.

Many Resources Available

There are services that make templates available to developers, or they may develop and offer their own. For example, an outsource web-dev partner might provide a marketing agency with options for the end client’s “Meet the Team” page, which introduces the site visitor to the employees of the company. Six versions are shown. Templates with different twists, but all of them are already developed.

One is chosen. Yet all of those options can be considered again and again for other clients down the road, even though the descriptions of the employees on that page will change from client to client.

Huge savings on every project. 

That leaves more money on the table for the agency. The client just wants the Meet-the-Team page or the order form page, or the home page to look nice and do what it’s supposed to do. The agency can charge for that value while simultaneously saving money on its development of it.

Then the agency can provide additional value elsewhere… maybe it’s with more client hand-holding and account management. Or maybe it adds more personalization to the site. Or the agency brings in an outsourced subject-matter expert for that special ADA compliance we mentioned earlier.

There is a cautionary note, however. Often the web-dev team will be asked to modify another vendor’s template or plugin to the point where it becomes non-updatable. That is to be avoided. Templates and plugins get supported over time by the originator, so be cautious about further re-rigging.

In general, look for templates and plugins that are well-supported by the provider. That gets updated as needed. That is compliant and stays in compliance. Not all templates are created equally, but for those that are created well, the agency can deliver the perceived value to clients at a savings of time and money. 

A somewhat early-known reference links the idiom “reinvent the wheel” to the NASA statute, which effectively created the space agency in 1958². There are other references around that general time. 

So the exact origin is sketchy. 

Anyway, in that Act of Congress, it was stipulated that inventions from NASA would become the property of the United States. According to etymologist Pascal Tréguer, Representative Emilio Daddario (Dem., Conn.) argued against that provision. Whereas an opposing view was offered by Senator Russell Long (Dem., La.), who stated that if the secret sauce was not made the property of the U.S., it would result in participating contractors always “reinventing the wheel” regarding these new projects (paraphrased).