If you’re contemplating a new website for your business, the most important decision you’ll make involves whether to build a custom website or use a DIY template website option. Your website is one of the most important tools at your disposal for growing your business. It’s crucial that you end up with a finished product that can accommodate the evolving needs of your company over the next few years.
Your website serves as the anchor for all of your digital marketing efforts, and more people than ever are using the Internet to access information regarding products and services. Approximately 87% of individuals start researching products online before deciding on the best option to suit their needs. Without a strong website, it will become increasingly difficult to appeal to the needs of your target clientele.
If you have a limited budget for your new website or need to get it completed quickly, a template website may seem like an appealing option. On the surface, you will reap these cost- and time-saving benefits when you choose a template website. However, you’ll also get what you pay for – a website with limited ability to address the needs of your business.
You may find this article helpful: 10 Questions to Ask a Web Developer Before Hiring
Understanding the Difference Between Custom and Template Websites
Before evaluating the differences in performance between these options, it’s important to understand how these website solutions differ in the way they’re constructed. Essentially, it comes down to two main factors:
- Control
- Who completes the work
As the name implies, a custom website is built from scratch to address your unique marketing goals. You’ll work with a web developer who can tailor your site in a way that caters to the needs of your audience. You’ll benefit from the expertise of a digital marketing agency that can ensure your website is built according to best practices. You maintain control over the entire process and have a finished product which delivers the exceptional user experience necessary to grow your business.
Template websites are built off of a pre-existing theme, called a template. While you can use your own images and content to make this website highlight the products and services you offer, you have very limited ability to adjust the template. As a result, it’s much more challenging to create a finished product that addresses the unique needs of your business. In addition, you’ll be responsible for doing all the work yourself. Unless you have a seasoned web developer on your team, it’s very difficult to build an effective website on your own.
5 Reasons Your Custom Website Will Perform Better than a Template Website
The performance of your website can be evaluated on several different levels:
- Search engine rankings
- User experience
- Audience engagement
- Lead conversion
Custom websites consistently perform better for all four of these metrics. There are several reasons why custom web design provides you with a greater ability to achieve your marketing goals.
More Effectively Grows Your Brand
Your website is an important tool to grow your brand. It gives your audience an opportunity to become familiar with your mission and messaging. This is an important aspect of the marketing process, and it’s crucial to your ability to attract new customers and retain existing ones.
A great deal of customization is required in order for your website to effectively convey your brand:
- The colors must match your brand colors
- Your logo must be prominently displayed
- Your content must tell your story in a clear, persuasive manner
- Style choices must reflect the personality of your business and appeal to your target audience
Custom web design gives you the ability to manipulate all the elements on the website, ensuring it will look unique, differentiate you from your competitors, and grow your brand. When you create an emotional connection with your audience, it is a powerful tool that will build trust and brand loyalty. This will help convert more new customers, allowing your business to thrive.
Template websites simply don’t provide the ability to convey your brand and tell a unique story. Instead, your website will look very similar to all the other sites built with this template. When your website looks and feels generic, you miss an important opportunity to connect with your audience on a deeper level.
Improved Functionality
Custom websites offer you greater functionality in several important areas:
- Responsive design – An increasing number of people are searching the Internet on mobile devices. Your website must be formatted to work properly on desktops, tablets and cell phones. Most custom websites are built with responsive design, which ensures your site functions properly on all of these devices. Most template website options don’t allow for responsive design, making it challenging for your site to perform properly across all three platforms.
- Smooth navigation – Your website’s navigation structure should reflect the needs of your audience and make it easier for them to get to the right page. Custom websites give you the ability to create the right navigation structure for your unique needs. With template sites, you’re constrained by the navigation hierarchy built into the template.
- Security – Security is often an issue with template websites since hundreds, if not thousands, of sites are all hosted on the same server. If a hacker compromises one of these websites, it makes every site on the server vulnerable to the same security threat. Custom websites provide more safeguards against cyber attacks from hackers.
- Streamlined code – Template websites often contain clunky plugins and features which make them bloated, resulting longer to load times and poor performance. Custom websites provide a more streamlined solution that allows for higher levels of site speed and overall performance.
- Compatibility – Custom websites are built in a way that ensures they work properly on all major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Template websites aren’t designed and tested across all of these platforms, and this may cause users of specific browsers to experience problems when accessing your website.
Search Engine Optimization
Why is having an updated website important? One of the biggest reasons is that it can significantly improve your search engine optimization (SEO). Without a website that is built according to SEO best practices, it will be extremely difficult to rank well in the search engines. If no one can find your website, it won’t be a very helpful tool to grow your business.
Many template websites are built using-out-of-date coding, which will make it much harder to rank on the first page for Google searches. In addition, these sites often have a slow loading time, which negatively impacts your SEO results. Without an SEO specialist who can optimize the website according to the latest best practices, you will also have a hard time competing with websites that utilize these strategies.
When you work with a custom web development team, your new website will be constructed according to SEO best practices:
- The latest coding will be used, ensuring the website loads properly
- The navigation will be arranged in a way that provides a good user experience
- An SEO specialist will perform back-end optimization on the entire site to ensure the search engines know which pages to rank for specific keywords you’re targeting
- Custom content will directly address the needs of your audience and improve your search rankings by strategically utilizing all semantic search-related keywords associated with each page
- Responsive design will provide a better experience on mobile devices, which is an important ranking factor for Google and other search engines
Scalability
Your business will grow and evolve over time. When this happens, you need your website to be able to accommodate the changing needs of your business and your customers. This may involve:
- Expanding your product and service offerings
- Changing the navigation structure to more effectively cater to the needs of your website visitors
- Handling a larger flow of web traffic
- Adapting the functionality of the website to reflect a modified business model
- Updating your website to ensure it meets the ever-evolving nature of SEO best practices
Even if a template website meets your needs right now, it may not have the ability to grow and evolve with your business. The functional limitations associated with these websites mean that you’re basically stuck with your current structure, even if the needs of your business change over time.
A custom website gives you greater flexibility to add new features and make adjustments in order to scale your site as your business grows.
Support
The technology used to build and maintain a website is very advanced, but it’s not perfect. Issues arise on occasion, and they’ll need to be addressed quickly to avoid losing web traffic or falling in the search rankings.
When you choose a template website, you won’t have tech support to help you when your website goes down, pages aren’t loading correctly, or other errors occur. Will you know how to fix these problems? More importantly, do you have the time to spend troubleshooting these issues?
Custom web development teams provide extensive tech support to help you resolve these issues as they arise. You can relax knowing a team of experts is handling the issue, and it frees up your time to continue running the day-to-day operations of your business.
Webolutions Can Improve Your Website Performance
At Webolutions, we offer comprehensive custom website services to address all of your digital marketing needs. Our team will spend a great deal of time getting to know you in order to understand your business. This will enable us to design a website that will help your business thrive.
When you work with our team, you’ll benefit from:
- A digital marketing strategy focused on helping you grow your brand and attract more customers
- A customized website that engages visitors and makes you stand out from your competitors
- SEO-best practices that will help you rank well on the search engines
- Ongoing services to ensure your website continues to address the needs of your customers as your business grows
- Round the clock support to ensure any issues are promptly addressed as they occur
Your website is one of the most important aspects of your marketing strategy. It’s crucial to build a site that will set you up for growth and success moving forward. When you work with Webolutions, you’ll have a dedicated marketing partner committed to helping you take your business to the next level.
Please contact Webolutions today to learn about your custom web design options. We serve clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.
