For any business on a tight budget, a website template might be their only option. But even those who can afford some of the more premium templates will be missing out on the benefits a bespoke website can bring in the long run.
For any business on a tight budget, a website template might be their only option. But even those who can afford some of the more premium templates will be missing out on the benefits a bespoke website can bring in the long run.
What’s so wrong with website templates?
There’s nothing particularly wrong with them - they’re a means to an end and they get the job done quickly. They do have a number of drawbacks, however:
They’re not very original - duh!
The whole point of templates is that they can serve as a starting point for anyone to adapt. That means if you find a template you really like, chances are someone has used it before you.
Sure, you can change the colours and slap your own logo on it, but it still won’t be completely unique to YOUR brand and business.
Unnecessary bloat
You know that feeling when you’ve eaten so much your shoulder hurts and you can’t see properly? That’s what it can be like when you use a website template.
Many of them come with unnecessary pre-installed extras which can cause your pages to load slower than a snail on Slo-Mo.
Trying to add to them can be fiddly
Building bespoke functionality on top of a template can be a pain in the posterior.
When the design is pre-made, you don’t always know what’s going on in the bowels of the code, so trying to implement additional features can create conflicts that can be tricky to work around.
Okay then, what’s so great about a bespoke website?
Many things!
It will be yours and yours alone
A bespoke website will be tailor-made to your brand, even down to the layout, navigation, and overall user experience. When a potential customer visits your website, they’ll think “Oh yeah, I’m definitely in the right place!”
SPEEEEED!
Bloat be gone - when your website is built from the ground up, it will only include what it needs, and that goes for elements on the page as well as plugins working in the background.
At WebSorted, we use the Oxygen builder which has some of the highest performance metrics in the game! The added benefit of this speed is that search engines will LOOOVE you.
Full control
Because your designer and developer will know exactly how the website is designed and built, it will be much easier for them to customise and update features for you over time. Being able to hand-pick which plugins are used also means greater security for your site.
If you want to have more control over adding posts or editing your website in WordPress (which is what we use at WebSorted), your developer will even be able to give you access to your own admin area which will require very little training to use.
Better Search Engine Optimisation
An important part of on-page SEO is ensuring all those little technical things like alt tags, meta descriptions, URLs, and image formatting are optimised properly. This can be hard or impossible to do with website templates, but a breeze with bespoke sites.
Ownership
When you pay for a website, surely you should own that website, right?
The bad news is, if you opt for a DIY builder such as Wix or Squarespace, you’re only really renting that website. If you stop paying the monthly fee, you’ll potentially lose access to your ‘custom’ website and/or domain name, and will instead become the proud owner of NotYourWebsite.com until you start coughing up the cash again.
Want to leave that provider? Say goodbye to your website and prepare to start again from scratch.
Thankfully, when you invest in a bespoke website, you can do whatever you want with it. Not happy with our hosting options? Need someone with a different vision? Simply don’t like us as people? We can pack up your website in a virtual Tupperware pot for you to take away and heat up somewhere else (please don’t go, we’ll treat you right, we promise!)
Can I have something in between?
Actually, yes!
At WebSorted, while we encourage you to showcase your unique brand with an equally unique website, we understand that times are genuinely hard and the budget isn’t always there.
Thus, we offer what I’m going to call Pseudo Unique Designs, or PUDs for short (I literally just came up with that - can you tell I’m hungry?)
With PUDs, we build your website brick by brick, but each brick is ready made with a design and elements which we can hand-pick to suit your needs. That means we can speed up the process but your website will still have the features it needs, with a design that is part way between bespoke and off the shelf.
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If you have the budget, going for a bespoke website will be a greatly beneficial investment in the long run. If you're budget's a bit tighter, rather than opting for a website template you may be able to compromise with a semi-bespoke design that uses individual section templates. Check our pricing calculator to see if we have a solution for you!
