Interview With David Braun: The True Story of TemplateMonster

Today we are having David Braun here. He is a rather famous personality, which is not surprising as TemplateMonster is one of the leading companies in web design and development field, and David is its co-founder and CEO.

Interview With David Braun

Both big and small business owners understand how important is to promote their enterprises online nowadays. But not every entrepreneur is ready to pay for custom design, hire a developer, and create their online presentation from scratch.

Most frequently they use the services of companies like TemplateMonster.com. Starting to build a website on the basis of one of the numerous designs from a reliable, time-tested web design company is way easier, faster and much more cost efficient.

Having a quality ready-made design at hand, all you need to do is to install it on your domain, fill with your content, and… that’s it… your site is ready to bring you profit.
Would you like to know how web design companies work and how you can benefit from their efforts? Then, let’s ask David.

Hello, David, we really appreciate that you took time and popped up for an interview. Could you briefly tell us about your company and the idea of its launch.

templatemonster story

TemplateMonster was founded in 2002, so we are the oldest web development company on the market. It sounds fantastic, but people worldwide used our products when nobody knew about Facebook and YouTube. We watched the evolution of the web contributed into it. Hundreds of thousands websites running today were built with the help of our templates.

I have been working at a custom design studio when an idea to found TemplateMonster crossed my mind. We put a lot of efforts into the project, but, unfortunately, lost a lot of potential customers because our services seemed too expensive for them. However, one day, I saw a designer using a ready-made template. That fortuity has become a turning point when the idea eventually started to turn into a successful business.

That’s really impressive! TemplateMonster is almost 15 years old at the moment. That’s a huge time lapse for a business. Did you have rainy days during this long period?

Of course things didn’t go smoothly all this time. We survived the hard streak when something went wrong with our products. We got negative testimonials, and some of them were true. Most of them referred to our outdated templates, that’s why we just removed them from our marketplace. But negative feedback can also be useful. We analyzed it and took the right turn, understood what our customers really need, and give it to them.

What can we find on TemplateMonster marketplace except for the templates, of course?

David Braun

First of all, our marketplace contains nearly 26,000 templates designed for different types of sites, business niches, and engines including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop, Shopify, and many others. Our aim is to meet the requirements of as many customers as possible. Apart from the ready-made templates, we offer plenty of cool things for website owners. For instance, landing pages, plugins, email templates and many other products will provide you with all the essential tools for your work.

We are sure you know your customers quite well. Who are they? Do they need any extensive technical knowledge to use your templates?

We thoroughly analyze our customer base. The analysis shows that both entrepreneurs with little to no development skills and professional developers purchase our templates. Both groups of customers get their own benefits from our products.

Entrepreneurs get independence from designers, coders, and other nerds who sometimes overvalue their work and don’t care about deadlines. There’s no need to spend long hours in search of responsible, expert freelancers who may design something that you won’t like. At TemplateMonster you see the final result, a ready-made product you are paying for. What you need to do is just replace the default content with your own.

But what about those dummies who have no idea how to install the template, add their logo and other content, change colors? Most of entrepreneurs think only about the ways to generate more revenues and have no desire to bother with all those things.

Want to skip installation, customization or, say, integration with Google Analytics? Then, go directly to our Service Center. Our professionals will take care of everything and deliver you a ready-to-use site within 24 hours. Some tasks take even less time, i.e.: we install the template and plugins within 3 hours. There’s no job guys from our Service Center can’t cope with.

Why do developers who are able to build sites themselves pay money for your products? Why is it advantageous for them?

This is simple. With the help of our templates, developers speed up their workflow, deliver more projects and earn more money respectively. We have nearly 26,000 templates in stock at the moment, so, anyone can find the theme that meets the requirements of even the most demanding customers. Creating something from scratch simply makes no sense if our marketplace offers such a vast choice. Developers prefer to customize some facets of the design, and close the task swiftly.

By the way, we have launched an awesome project recently. Now developers from all over the world can get an official certificate from TemplateMonster that proves their skills. What do they need to do to get it? Just complete a course and then pass a final test (or pass the quiz at once) at our Certification Center. Having a certificate from a globally recognized web design company is a great way to gain a trustworthy online image that lets to look more credible in customers’ eyes.

You are right, Certification Center is a wonderful project. But let me ask you the next question. I think many entrepreneurs are interested in your reply. How to figure out that it’s time to redesign your existing website?
Well, it depends on the last time you upgraded your site. If you never updated it, it’s high time to fix this straight away. Trends are so changeable, you’d better not miss the moment when your site starts looking high and dry. Customers won’t take your seriously if your corporate web presentation looks moldy.

It also won’t be excess to check how user-friendly your site is in terms of navigation, readability, and other significant aspects. It’s absolutely vital to test how it works on smartphones and tablets all of us use to browse the web on the go. Your site must adjust to all modern mobile devices, otherwise you will lose clients. If your site is not mobile-friendly, you can forget about high SEO rankings. Google neglects such kind of sites.

What special projects did you craft lately?

In 2016, our team was focused on developing flagship templates. They are much more versatile compared to the regular products. Let me clarify the things with using flagships on the example of Joomla templates. We called the flagship Joomla template Jumerix. It’s not a simple template, it’s an ultimate tool to build an online magazine, business site, personal portfolio, web store, whatever. You can create a complex portal combining several types of sites into one as well.

Supposing you need a site to present your company, plus you want to share some interesting info with clients and sell products at the same time. It’s unbelievable, but using a single template, you can build a business site, add blog and store functionalities to it. Jumerix is a one-stop-shop for all the needs you may have.

Oh, I see, Jumerix is for Joomla. What other engines do you have flagships for?

Firstly, we created a flagship for WordPress because of the CMS popularity. But then we decided to develop flagships for all popular engines: Joomla, OpenCart, PrestaShop, etc.

We even took care of the guys who don’t use any CMS at all. You can find new flagships among HTML5 templates. After all, it’s one of our goals to meet the needs of everyone who comes to TemplateMonster marketplace.

How much does such flexibility cost to the customers?

Next to nothing. We don’t charge more for flagship products. Yes, this means you can get any of them for the price of a regular template. Taking into account professional 24/7 support that we provide for a lifetime, our flagships are the best deals you can find on the market today.

Flagships are amazing. But what about the regular templates? What are the reasons to choose products of your company over your competitors? What are their benefits?

First of all, I’d like to mention the cost and value of our products. Our prices are not higher than the ones of our competitors. If you want to save, search Google and you will always find promo codes to cut down the price by 10%-40%. We also offer great discounts on Christmas, Independence Day, and other public holidays.

Sometimes you find out that the price of our template is a bit higher, but, think about the value we provide. Once you become our customer, you get more goodies as bonuses to your template. For example, all our products, except for GPL WordPress themes, are shipped with HD images shown in the demo. This is one more opportunity to save, as there’s no need to buy stock photos. At TemplateMonster, you can also benefit from free professional technical support.

I thought every company provides a free support. Am I mistaken?

At present, TemplateMonster is the only website developer that provides this service for a lifetime without charging any extra payment. Our competitors provide it for free only for a limited period of time.
Some people don’t use the template at once. It’s your right to decide when to use the product you paid for, isn’t it? No one can take it away from you. But with a time limit on free support, you’ll have to pay extra money to get consultation, say, in half a year or stay on your own with your issues. That’s unfair as for me.

That’s why we are ready to help our customers any time at TemplateMonster. What’s even more important, our well-trained team works until every customer is 100% satisfied. These are not only my words. Due to our superb customer service, we entered the top three of web design companies according to the TrustPilot rating. This is a water-tight resource with verified customers reviews. So many people can’t be wrong…

Can users figure out everything by themselves, without professional help?

Surely they can. Every template comes well documented. The instructions guide the users through the ins and outs of using it. There are also numerous detailed tutorials at our Help Center and Startup Hub for those of you who are just at the start or want to know how. What’s more, we run a blog to share a lot of educational content with our audience, particularly, free ebooks, webinars, tips, tools to become more productive, and much more. At TemplateMonster, you won’t just learn how to build attractive and functional websites lightning-fast, you’ll learn to enjoy the process.

Thank you so much for this nutty interview, David. I believe TemplateMonster’s customers base will increase after people will read it. Keep on doing the great job! Conquer the new heights and may your company thrive! Best of luck!
Have a question for David? Ask it at the comment section.

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