Nothing is more ex-site-ing than building a website. However, most people don’t know that there are two methods for building a website: custom websites and template websites. The main goal of this blog is to help you understand the approaches when it comes to building a website in general, so you can choose which one best fits your needs.
What is the difference between a custom-based website and a template-based website?
A custom website is like making a pizza from scratch, whereas a template-based website is like buying a frozen pizza from your local supermarket: templates are collections of website designs that have already been created for you.
Both are great choices for building a mobile-friendly, user-friendly website! But when it comes to innovation, features, and functionality, a custom website has fewer limits. With a custom website design, you will have more control over how your website should look and you will be able to change and adjust the design to your liking. These websites were made so that you can play around with them and add or take away as many functions and features as you want.
Advantages of a custom website
A strong online presence is very important for growing your business and, in general, serves as an anchor for most of your marketing. Let’s take a look at the pros of a custom website.
Flexible for SEO
Custom websites offer a more effective approach that enables website performance and speed. Web developers that create your site from scratch are in a better position to optimize it for search engines. Thanks to the better-optimized coding that web developers write, websites will be more likely to meet Google’s standards.
Scalability
A big part of developing a website is its capacity to scale. No matter what you’re working on, you should always assume that a large number of people will try to access it in the near future. And that is why your website must have excellent scalability.
A website’s scalability is its capacity to operate efficiently as its workload increases. A website that scales well will be able to keep up its level of performance even as it is tested by increasing operational demands. When you build a scalable website, you will be able to handle more customer requests even when the site is very busy. You will also have less downtime if your server crashes.
Making changes down the road
If, at some point in the future, you’d like to make any tweaks and changes to your website, this will be a big advantage for you down the road. Every company establishes a target for future growth when it comes to its services, resources, spending, and business strategies. And the company needs additional web space to communicate its progress as it grows. This means there will be a need for extra pages, submenus, online campaigns, interlinking of more online assets, or simply to increase customer interaction. With a template-based site, such modifications are more limited, so you’ll have to figure out how to integrate them into the company’s digital assets every time.
Disadvantages of a custom website
A custom website would be your best bet between the two options, but while we’re on the topic, it’s also important to discuss its disadvantages.
More expensive
It takes more time and effort to build a custom web design, so it can be more expensive too. Budget-wise, a custom website may not be suitable for all businesses, especially small businesses and startups. This is the reason that most startups and small businesses choose the template-based option to reduce their web development costs. But it is always an option to choose a custom website at a later stage.
Longer timeframe
Because custom web designs start from scratch and take time to build, it may take longer to make your website. Therefore, you could choose a template web design rather than a custom website if you need to build a website within the next few days or weeks.
Advantages of a template website
Faster time frame
Templates can save you a lot of time because you don’t have to start from scratch. So, if you don’t have a lot of time, it may be better to choose this easy way to save time.
Cheaper upfront costs
There’s no doubt that a pre-built WordPress theme can be less expensive than a custom one. So, if you are just starting out and want to test the market to see if people want your product or service, you will be able to get by with a pre-built WordPress theme for now.
Disadvantages of a template website
Customization limitations
There are many restrictions on how much you can change a template. It’s a bit limited in terms of changing the navigation, text and picture sizes, icon choices, and page layouts. The built-in features or plugins of a theme must be used in these cases. To do this, look for plugins that work well with the theme. If you have quite a number of plugins, the images and the copy must fit within the theme’s designed slots, or else you face the risk of a slower loading time for your website.
Other companies are using the same templates
Keep in mind that these templates are available to everyone in the world. While other sites are using the same template as you, yours will have different images, colors, and copies, but their web design will look similar to yours. One of our clients, a Jamaican rental agency, asked us to change their template website to a custom website because one of their competitors had a website that looked a lot like theirs.
Why we believe a custom website is better than a template website
Actually, it’s fairly simple; the challenge with a template-based website is that you end up trying to squeeze your business into the frames of a template, and by choosing this approach, you are limiting your potential success.
But keep in mind, if it is your first website and your budget is tight, it is totally fine to go for a template website. However, if you’re looking to take your business to the next level, your website is an important tool to give your business more flexibility. Therefore, go with a custom website.
