A great-looking and functional website is essential for any successful business. In partnership with Squarespace, we show you the best templates to help you stand out.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that building a strong online presence isn’t a secondary concern – it can be crucial for your business’s survival. This year we’ve seen restaurants setting up online stores, gyms running web classes and offices switching to Zoom meetings – all pivots that have been crucial to many companies’ survival.
So we’ve picked the best website templates to showcase your business online. These will create an effective long-term selling point for, and window into, your brand.
When diners are picking a place online to eat or drink for date night, they’re looking at three elements: the menu, the location and the booking system. It’s important to represent all three as simply as possible and make it easy for punters to reserve a spot, particularly when bookings are essential. Secondary info such as opening hours, socials and images of dishes also act as good selling points, so championing these in a clean and easy-to-read manner can go a long way. See some templates here.
Our pick: Chotto
Online shopping skyrocketed this year, particularly in the fashion industry. One of the most difficult things to achieve with an online fashion store is presenting your aesthetic authentically and doing your products justice. How can you show sizing, fabrics and other elements that are normally hallmarks of bricks-and-mortar shopping? An easy-to-navigate site that showcases your products, with clear and practical information that customers usually seek in-store, will help translate traffic into sales. Don’t overthink the layout – it’s all about the clothes and products, not a flashy website.
Our pick: Tresoire
Having a slick website has always been important for those in the art and design industries. The template and homepage you choose depends heavily on what you’re trying to sell. Does your experience and resume speak volumes? Or do you want to let your practical work and designs do the talking? Whatever you decide will determine which template is best for you, but some essential elements include a portfolio, a contact page and a short bio. You’re the designer, so we’ll let you decide.
Our pick: Gates
Gyms, beauty services, yoga studios, Pilates classes – they’ve all had to pivot to an online model in 2020. The practical nature of this industry calls for a practical and interactive template. You want to present video classes, wellbeing tips and podcasts, yoga tutorials, and more – and you want these to feel accessible and interactive. Build a website that will showcase what you offer and the people at your business. It should also have calls to action that prompt customers to join classes or take out memberships.
Our pick: Align and Flow
Many hospitality businesses were forced to set up delivery options, care packages and online cooking classes to get through lockdown. What we’ve found, though, is that the demand for care packages and online cooking classes is strong and has the potential to outlive this pandemic. If you’re one of the many food businesses that has decided to continue its online offering post lockdown, it pays to set up a dedicated website. Set yourself up to sell food boxes, encourage customers to sign up to online classes and more.
Our pick: Hester
Whatever your idea is, launch it with a Squarespace website. Head to Squarespace.com today for a free trial and use offer code BROADSHEET for 10% off your first website.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Squarespace.
