Template vs Custom Website
Deciding between custom web design and templates can be difficult, especially if you are not aware of what makes each option unique. To help shed some light on the intricacies of each option, we will not only break down their differences but their pros and cons as well.
Let’s begin.
What is a Custom Web Design?
A custom web design refers to a new web design built from scratch by an experienced team of designers and creatives who work directly with clients to make revisions based on their specifications.
Before the actual website build begins, there is usually a creative meeting where a business owner’s intention concerning website aesthetics, targeted audience, and their overall wants and needs are broken down to attain a better understanding of a company’s website objectives.
What are the Pros of a Custom Website Design?
- Scalability – Scalability refers to the ability of a website to grow alongside your company. When your business experiences growth, you’ll either need or want new integration, functionality, and content, which is a seamless endeavor with customized websites.
- Flexibility – The flexibility concerning customized websites stems from the user’s ability to build, add, and modify their site at will. Whatever a user envisions, a team consisting of creatives and designers can bring it to life.
- Adaptability – Whether your business is shifting gears, or you’re looking to implement a more modern aesthetic to your site, you can make updates to your existing site or create a new one that better fits the direction your company is headed.
- SEO-Friendliness – An important component of successful SEO campaigns is the design of your website. Focusing on developing an SEO-friendly layout can help your page rise the SERP (search engine results page) rankings, which will increase the online visibility of your website.
- User-friendliness – Frictionless interactions with your brand enhances a user’s overall experience, which encourages them to stay on your page longer and perform intended actions, such as subscribing and sharing content.
What are the Cons of a Custom Website Design?
- Price – Because of the freedom fully customized website design provides for its users, the price is can be steeper in comparison to other web design platforms that use other modes of building, such as templates. The variables that make up the cost would include the labor, creativity, and skills it took to build the site of your dreams.
- Timeline – Building the perfect website will not happen overnight. In order to create a truly effective and visually stunning site, it’ll take time to reach the final product.
What is a Template?
Templates or themes refer to pre-made webpages that can be built into your website and easily edited.
The Pros of Website Templates
- Time-efficient – Building a website using templates can be done quickly if you are in a rush and need to have something built and published in a timely fashion.
- Small budgets – If you are dealing with a small budget and just want to have a website up while you save to have a more professional website built, investing in a service that provides templates will suffice.
The Cons of Website Templates
- Can offer bad user-experiences – Websites built using only templates can offer a bad user experience because they are often slower, less secure, and translate poorly to mobile devices when compared to customized websites.
- Low customization – While templated website platforms may suggest a high degree of customization, that’s not entirely true. You have the power to alter the layout, font, color, and other stylistic elements of a webpage, but you are restricted to using the elements provided by the platform.