Are you looking forward with an investment in a new website for your brand or business? Before moving forward, one question remains. Do I go with a Custom Website or Template for my website? What best suits your business? What’s the differences?

 

Using Template

It’s common to start a website using a wordpress template. These websites provide with a broad range of opportunities. But not all templates are responsive or work well with your vision. Although this can help you get a website up fast and easily, it’ll limit your options for more complex features or e-commerce functions.

Some things you want to know are that templates and themes come with built-in features so that the user can have customizability but this weighs down the website in terms of load speed and SEO performance. You could get a web development company to fix this, but that’s like asking a certified ford mechanic to look at your Toyota. Most likely themes and templates aren’t in the same coding format as your developers. Even if they do making the fix, once a new update for wordpress or the theme itself, your website will show issues due to a customization made by your developer.

Pros/Cons

  • Lots of other businesses can could be using the same template which means your site won’t stand out as much.
  • You are limited on how much you can customize the site. What you see is what you get.
  • May not 100% work on all devices
  • Some templates are not built to be search engine friendly. They need to be customized to fit your business.
  • Any custom or added technologies are not possible to be installed as templates run on a structured system.
  • Templates are great for low budget. There is a cheaper upfront cost.
  • Templates have a shorter development time.
  • Template sites will mostly likely not have as good of a support system as a custom website.

 

Custom Website

Custom websites involve a team behind your business and brand. It starts at the creative process to know your brand and goals to produce the best results. SEO plays an important role in the success of any website. There are rules to follow when developing the website. Not all templates are capable of these rules. This is why a custom website is much better, the developer can optimize the site to allow google and other search engines to read your website thoroughly and give the end user a more relevant search result, giving your site a better ranking. This goes beyond keyword research.

Custom websites tend to take longer than templates, this is because everything is custom designed and developed for a particular business. It will save time in the long run it’s a lot easier to customize the site to ensure your site does exactly what you want it to do. Custom websites allow your site to be responsive across all devices (such as phones, tablets, laptops, etc.) & browsers.

Pros/Cons

  • The website will have a completely unique design that will incorporate the company’s branding and will be based around the needs of your business.
  • A customized website is adaptable to your company’s needs
  • The site is tested to work across all browsers.
  • The site will be built to be search engine friendly.
  • A customized website is more expensive than a template.
  • The process to create a custom site takes longer than a template site.
  • The site will grow with your business.
  • The company that built your site is there for support if you need it.

 

Would you rather spend your time figuring out how to make your website behave a certain way, or have professionals take care of your business’ online presence while you concentrate your attention on running your business.