Websites are a huge aspect of a company’s digital presence. Some might argue that having social media presence should be enough given the available reach. But most cases show that nothing replaces having a personalized dot com.
Why does my Business Need a Well-designed Website?
Websites provide a whole lot of benefits for a company. It gives a customized digital address that can either act as any of the following:
- A portfolio website to showcase work.
- A knowledge hub for frequently asked questions (FAQs) and customer support.
- A value-giving platform with a blog, video page, or other interactive ways to engage and nurture leads.
- A landing page to compellingly upsell your service or offering.
- An online store to sell products and services.
- A platform to tell your company or brand’s story.
- A place to showcase case studies and testimonials.
- And so much more.
But it’s not just enough to have a website. Fifty-seven percent of internet users say they wouldn’t recommend a business website with a poorly designed interface.
A lot of work goes into creating a good website— ensuring a seamless user experience, having a stunning design, site speed, and so on. The ongoing debate when deciding to create or redesign a website is whether it’s better to use a website template or build one from scratch.
Pros and Cons of Custom Website or Templates
Customized websites and templates are options with their own sets of pros and cons. Seldom is there ever a one-size-fits-all scenario in website design and development. So, a better route would be to look at those advantages and disadvantages and decide which fits your context best.
Custom Website
When building a custom website, a team works from scratch. Everything starts with a clean slate, and there’s more room for creativity. But that’s not always a good thing. So let’s discuss each of the significant pros and cons of a customized built-from-scratch website.
Pros
- More creative freedom — When developing your own site, a company and its web designer and developer have more freedom to pursue avant-garde approaches. Starting from scratch could be a better option if you want your website to stick out and have a unique design.
- Best for websites with more customized functions — Functionality is a crucial aspect of the website development process. If a website exists to showcase work and provide content simply, this won’t be an issue. But if you’ll need to add more functionalities such as a customer chat, booking page, mortgage calculator, and so on, building from scratch will be more practical.
- Deeper search engine optimization — SEO is crucial to website visibility. And optimizing a website when building from scratch allows for more back-end hard-coded strategies. This edge would make a site appear more on Google and other search engines.
If you are using Shopify and your Shopify store isn’t able to cater your business as you wish, you might consider migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce. WooCommerce is considered as one of the best alternatives to Shopify by offering customization and has a wide range of apps and extensions available to expand your store in the market
Cons
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- Takes longer to build — Creating a website from scratch vs template approaches vary majorly in terms of timeframe. Generally, creating something from scratch will take longer. Thus custom websites will have a later deployment date if two websites with these two approaches begin simultaneously.
- More work with a developer — If you’re trying to minimize working with a developer to cut costs or keep your operations lean, custom building a site might not be a good solution. Starting from scratch will require more hours and input from a developer or development team.
- Will need constant support — Once a custom website goes up, it will be necessary to have a tech team on-call or hired in-house to keep an eye out on the site as factors like browser compatibility, bugs, or responsiveness issues could arise at any given point.
Template Website
Using a website template or static site generators involves buying or create a ready website package that will include all the elements, code, and widgets needed to launch a fully functioning website. Here are the pros and cons of this approach.
Pros
- Design updates as long as the provider is active — Using website templates from an active and reliable provider will almost always mean lifetime access to support and updates as long as that developer provides them. This advantage removes many issues with website compatibility or bug errors.
- Faster deployment — Because a website template is almost always completely ready, the web creation process will be a whole lot faster. Often, the only thing left to do after downloading the template is to add branding elements, website copies, and content in, then the website is ready to launch.
- Less expensive — In cases of more straightforward websites for blogging or portfolio purposes, customized website templates are less expensive. WordPress and Shopify templates, for instance, will often go for as little as $50 for a good website template.
Cons
- Bigger chances of similar websites — The thing about templates is that you aren’t the only one who will use that template. So, there’s a chance that you or your visitors could land on another site with a similar template. That means there will most likely be a website that looks wholly or somewhat like yours, depending on how much customizing you do on your website.
- Could consume more memory — In cases where a developer adds more customizations, a website with a template could take up more storage and thus affect website load speeds.
- Less customizability — If your company wants to develop an e-commerce website or any site with more functionalities, a template might not be the best option. That’s because templates might have functional limitations, which will cause issues with functions like chat support, payment gateways, and other integrations.
Considerations When Choosing the Best Solution
Choosing to build a website from scratch or use templates have their strengths and weaknesses. Here are three considerations to take into mind before selecting a web design route.
Function
First, identify what your website aims to do. The function of the site will determine the best approach to building your dot com. List down all the functions you need and present them to a website consultant or developer to see if an existing template could provide all those functions. If there isn’t, it’s best to start fresh.
Site Speed
Every one-second delay of website loading results in an 11% drop in page views and a 7% drop in website conversions. Decide which option will provide you with a faster website given all the functionalities your site will offer.
Developer Support
Most website professionals today use website builder software, but there will be some developer support even then. Figure out how much support you have first before launching a site. Are you hiring a developer and designer full-time? Will you be working with a web design agency? Look at the qualifications of your support team, like if they took up the best degree to work on the specs that your website will carry.
Mobile Responsiveness
Seventy-four percent of website visitors are more likely to return if it’s mobile-responsive, so choose the option that will give you a more mobile-friendly website. If a template does that trick, then go for it. But if all the customizations will only mean starting from scratch as the better option, then that should be the approach.
Understanding the scope of the project is crucial to website creation or redesign success. Talk to a professional and weigh the options after seeing all these considerations. Only then should you decide how you want to get your website up and running.
