When creating a website, the question always arises as to whether you want to use a template or have a custom-designed website. While this is a difficult choice, we are going to explore both these options in this article. By the end, you'll be able to make an informed decision, weighing up the advantages and drawbacks of a custom-built website versus a template website.
Pros of a Bespoke Website Design
Your business’ website is the first impression a potential customer gets of your brand online. Thus, you want to make a good impression and be memorable. Bespoke websites are tailored to your specific requirements. They look more professional, and there is more scope for customisation. This means that a custom website can easily represent your business because it can truly reflect your brand identity.
A totally unique website that stands out from the crowd
Bespoke websites are unique. They look good because they are different from the millions of other websites that are already online. A bespoke website easily reflects your brand because it is unrestricted by themes, colours, spacing or fonts. Custom-built websites can also be finely tuned for SEO-optimised content and featured snippets, which help to be easily found on search engines.
Complete creative control
Experienced web developers understand the importance of good-quality websites and bespoke web design. The beauty of a custom website is that you have complete creative control over the finest details of your website design. You can choose everything, including your layouts, colours, fonts and images. It will all be custom-built and unique to your exact specifications.
Scalability and flexibility
A custom-built website is generally easier to scale and more flexible when it comes to changes. It may have advanced functionality, such as that which is needed for an online store. Web developers can create a quality website that will grow with your business. It would also be optimised for performance and high traffic volumes.
Cons of a Bespoke Website Design
More costly
A unique website created from scratch is more costly than a template-based website. This is because it is built specifically for your requirements and is distinctive. While this is good for your online presence, it may be more costly to create and maintain.
Requires expertise
You’ll need the experience and expertise of seasoned web designers or developers to create your bespoke website. Web developers would start by understanding your specific project requirements before creating your bespoke website. They would also optimise your website for search engines so that it could rank higher, bringing you more web traffic.
The developer would also add security features to your website to protect it from hackers and cyberattacks. Hackers prefer template websites because they can use a single piece of coding to hack multiple sites and steal their information. While bespoke websites can still fall prey to malicious attacks, using a high quality web development and maintenance agency can help keep your web security up to date.
Can take more effort to maintain
Custom websites may need more effort to maintain. If they have advanced functionality, then regular maintenance is a necessity. However, a proficient site developer would make use of style sheets and organisational strategies to make your website easier to maintain.
Pros of a Template Website
There are many high-quality website templates that can be found online. Many of them cater to different devices, such as mobile devices and tablets.
Simple and beginner-friendly
Beginners will find that creating a template website using a content management system is fairly easy. You won't require much coding knowledge, especially if you are using a website builder. The interface is also generally easy to navigate. If you are creating generic static pages, then you could do this quickly and easily.
Quick to set up
It is easy to use a pre-created template to create a template-based website. It doesn't take long to customise a template website and everything is quite self-explanatory. Your business could be online within hours.
Many template sites have plugins to help you ensure that SEO (search engine optimisation) is also set up. This is an important part of setting up a website so that it can appear on the search engine results pages.
Cost-effective
A pre-built template website is more cost-effective because you can use a single template multiple times. An experienced web developer would probably use the same template across multiple websites. Less time goes into the design and development, which reduces the costs involved.
Cons of a Template Website
Limited customisation options
Customising template websites is hard. This is why so many websites end up looking the same. If you want to change certain styles in order to align your website with your brand identity, you may need the expertise of a web designer or web developer. However, they would probably need to create additional code to override the existing template code.
Changing something simple like colours, fonts or font sizes may prove to be difficult, or the option may not even exist. This means that you would be stuck with the preset template layout.
Inflexible and hard-to-scale
Template-based websites do not have the same flexibility that custom websites provide. They are generally quite limited in scalability as well. A template site may even be troublesome when it comes to growing the website. This is because they are built on a template which does not necessarily accommodate site growth.
Less likely to stand out from competitors
Website visitors may find that multiple websites look similar. They may have the same layout, fonts and colour schemes. If your website doesn't stand out from your competitors, your visitors may not recall your business or your brand.
Can lead to needing to redesign the website further down the line
While using a website template to begin with may seem like the answer now, it could mean building a new website from scratch further down the line. This means extra time and costs.
Template-based sites can be useful if you need to get online quickly and don't have the time to create a custom site. But, ultimately, taking the time to create a bespoke site from the start could be more cost-effective in the long term.
Conclusion: Which is Best For You?
Now that we have looked at bespoke website design versus template websites, the choice is up to you. You will need to establish what your requirements are, what your budget is and what sort of digital footprint you want to create. While template websites have their place, if you really want to stand out and leave a lasting impression, a custom website should be your first choice.
If you are looking for web design agencies that create bespoke websites, then Ryde's web design services are here to help you. Ryde is a web design agency that specialises in ExpressionEngine and UX design. We provide cost-effective, bespoke web design and development. Ryde's clients enjoy beautifully crafted and fully customised websites built with ExpressionEngine that adapt and grow as your business grows. From conception to creation, we are here to develop and maintain your website. Get in touch with Ryde today to take your online business to the next level!