Custom Sites Vs. Pre-Made Templates: What’s Better?
When a business needs a new website, there are two options:
- Purchase a template
- Develop and design a website with custom code
In 2017, the choice is harder than ever. On one hand, there are many templates to choose from across different platforms. On the other hand, custom websites are known to be more powerful and dependable.
Making the right choice depends entirely on your budget, what you want your site to do, and how you want your business to be perceived. Let’s look at how custom sites compare against pre-made templates.
Templates Have Limitations
There are limitations to what you can do creatively with your template website. Though some templates can give the user many options (e.g. fonts, colours, sizing options, etc.), it doesn’t lead to unique results. Your website will be in a sea of thousands of other template websites. Custom web design, on the other hand, gives you complete control over the look and feel of your website. Do you have a specific vision for what your site will look like? Is there a certain way that your site needs to behave? Hiring an experienced web developer will put you in creative control of your website. A strong web developer/designer can provide invaluable experience and skill to help you realize your creative vision.
Custom Sites Are More Scalable and Flexible
A custom-developed website can always be expanded. Need 100 new webpages? Call your web developer. When trying to manage a template, you’re locked in a box. Custom features are hard to come by with pre-made templates. Templates are largely not adaptable to the unique needs of your business.
Custom Sites Build Credibility
If a customer sees a “Created by Wix” tagline in the footer, they’re going to have some assumptions about your business. Businesses who use templates appear lazy, cheap and unprofessional. And even if this isn’t the case, the customer won’t differentiate your business from the horde of other sites that use templates.
A prospect will judge a book by its cover. This is the reason why good web design is so important. A custom-built site gives off a good first impression that will build your credibility and authority.
Templates Are More Affordable
It’s no secret that using a template is much more affordable than hiring a developer to build your site. In many cases, however, you get what you pay for. If you hire the right developer, you can have a site that’s scalable, visually attractive and built to last.
Many who elect to use templates because of the low upfront cost will often later switch to custom sites anyway because they need to expand their web presence. If you can foresee this happening in your business, it would probably be better for you if you built a custom site from the beginning.
Conclusion
A custom web site can be the better options in many ways, but templates do have some positives as well—minimal cost and upstart time. If you want dependability, scalability and credibility, pre-made templates cannot compete with custom sites. The price of a cheap template can be tempting, but if you want to build a website for longevity, a custom site is the better option.
For good advice about what you should choose, contact us today