Custom or Template Web Design?

Custom or template? That is the question when you’re considering what type of website to design for your business. Many people are often tempted to go the template route because it’s cheaper and easier to just download a theme. But we all know you get what you pay for, and you want your business to be represented well, not to look cheap.

If you’re trying to decide which one is best for your business, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you want your business to have a professional online appearance?
• Do you want prospective clients to have a great first impression of your business?
• Do you want to stand out among the competition?

If you answered yes to any of these then a custom-developed website may be right for you.

We’re going to take a closer look at WordPress themes and templates as well as customized options so that you can choose the website design that represents your business the best.

What are WordPress Themes & Templates?

A content management system (CMS) makes it easy to update content on a website without needing to know code.

WordPress is a popular CMS because standard websites can have a design that is integrated with them. The site can look like anything, and each part of it can be set up to be updated using WordPress — quickly and easily by content producers.

The design of a site that uses WordPress to save and display the content on the site is known as a WordPress theme or a WordPress template. There are factors to consider with both pre-built templates and custom themes.

What Can Pre-Built WordPress Templates Offer?

If you need a website to go live next week, download a pre-built theme from a WordPress theme repository. It may not be exactly what you envisioned, but it’s better to have something up than nothing.

Pre-built WordPress themes offer these benefits:

• Not as expensive as custom sites
• You can get it done quickly. (Many sites can go up in less than an hour and there’s no coding involved.)
• It’s user-friendly and almost anyone can do it.

If you want something that specifically represents your brand and style, a template probably isn’t going to cut it. That’s when you need to start looking at custom WordPress themes.

What Do Custom WordPress Themes Offer?

A custom WordPress theme is going to reflect you because it’s not a cookie-cutter template. It’s something you’ve designed for your business, not anyone else’s. Here are some other benefits to consider:

No Limitations

When you use a template for your website, you’re going to be limited to what you can do. With a custom theme, you can place objects where you want, look at more fonts, and have more visual elements to choose from. This is extremely helpful if you have a specific idea of how you want your site to look.

It’s Scalable

If you’re just starting out, you may not want or need many bells and whistles for your site. As time goes on and your business grows, you may realize you need to add items and other functions to make your site more appealing and user-friendly. A custom site allows you to do that. 

Easy to Update

A customized site will always be updated. You can’t say the same for a website template. When you or the team you’ve hired is behind the wheel, they can routinely check on your site to see if updates are needed and make sure they get done.

Custom sites are not all about appearances. You need to also consider functionality. Here are some things to consider when it comes to how your website works.

• A website should be easy to manage. Even if a website is built on WordPress, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the content on a page can be easy to edit. If a website is built the right way, with training, it’s easy for anyone at the company to update the content on the site.
• The website should be SEO-friendly. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of making a website findable through major search engines — notably Google. You want your website to be seen by new customers who are looking for a company like yours. A website that is SEO-friendly has lean code, takes SEO standards into account (such as one h1 tag per page, editable meta tags and page slugs, and canonical URLs), and the website loads fast.
• WordPress should only have a few, high-quality plugins installed. WordPress is a solid base, and plugins enhance what a WordPress website can do. For example, many websites need a contact form, and there are contact form plugins that make setting up a contact form a breeze. There are thousands of WordPress plugins available to use on a site. Plugins are often updated, and if there are many plugins set up on a site at the same time, they can conflict with each other and cause a website to go down. Using a few high-quality plugins will ensure the site stays up, and that the feature that the plugins add to the site will last.

A custom-developed WordPress website is a long-term solution for a company that wants to show off its character with a durable, SEO-friendly, and easy-to-update website.