Every business needs a website to showcase its products or services to a broad audience. The website you choose for your business can dramatically impact your success. One of the first decisions you’ll need to make is whether you want to use a pre-built template or invest in a custom-designed website. When deciding between a custom-designed website and a pre-designed templated website, there are some essential things to consider.
What’s the Difference?
A custom-designed website is built from scratch, based on the specific needs and requirements of the business. A custom website is designed to be unique and tailored to the brand guidelines of the business. Every aspect of the website – from the layout, colors, typography, and functionality – is created to serve a particular business’s goals, vision and objectives. The final product is a unique website that is customized to the client’s requirements.
A pre-designed templated website is a website that is built using pre-existing templates that are readily available for purchase. A business can select a template that is closest to their brand image, and then make some alterations to match their brand. Such websites usually come packaged with pre-set designs, layouts, and color schemes, limiting the ability to make significant changes to the design or layout. Essentially, a pre-designed template is a “one-size-fits-all” website that can be used by anyone.
Functionality
Template
Most pre-designed templates come with a basic set of features, limiting the possibilities of customization.
Custom Built
A custom-designed website is highly scalable and can be easily modified or adapted as the needs of the client or their audience change. As the business grows, the website can easily evolve along with it, ensuring that it remains relevant and effective. Such sites can feature advanced data-capturing techniques, membership portals, a more extensive range of payment options, and superior compatibility with apps that are specific to the business’s needs.
Security
Template
Because a template is based on the same code no matter what kind of site is using it, templates are vulnerable to hackers. Once a hacker figures out a way into the template code, they can easily get into any site that used that code.
Custom Built
Because the code for a custom-built site is unique to each site, it is more secure. Unique and custom code is like a door with a padlock on top of the regular lock—it’s far more challenging to get through.
Speed
Template
A template is built for a variety of people to use, which means it likely carries extra features that your site may not need. Unfortunately, those extra things can make the site slow to load. The average site visitor won’t wait more than 3 seconds to see a website, which means that extra time could cost you visitors.
Custom Built
Custom-built sites are developed with only the essential parts for that business. This is important when it comes to the speed of the site. Without the extra bulk of unused code, the site runs and loads inherently faster.
SEO
Template
All of the extra code discussed above is also a contributing factor in SEO. Because the code for a template is built to accommodate many different types of businesses, it’s much more general and not specific to your business. Pre-designed templates might lack this kind of optimization, meaning that businesses need additional guidance and support to use SEO effectively.
Custom Built
SEO is vital for businesses that want to rank highly on SERP (search engine results page). When a custom-design website is created, it can be search engine optimized from the ground up. Because the code for the site is built specifically for that business, the site is coded to have SEO features infused into its architecture and code, making it easier for businesses to rank higher on SERPs and optimized to increase visibility and attract more traffic.
Branding
Template
A pre-designed website uses templates that are available to any business. The great part about templates is that there are lots to choose from, but depending on your savviness when it comes to editing a website, it may be challenging to get a template site to look the way you want it to. One of the keys to branding is having a consistent visual presence and a templated site may vary from the businesses’ brand standards.
Custom Built
The most obvious benefit of choosing a custom-designed WordPress website is the uniqueness of the design. With a custom-designed website, every aspect of the website is designed to cater to the specific goals and objectives of the business, ensuring it will not look like any other site on the internet. Much like the other aspects of a custom-built site, even the branding portion is customized to stand out from competitors and be more memorable to site visitors.
Budget
Template
Pre-designed templates offer a more budget-friendly option as the templates are prebuilt and require only some modifications before launch.
Custom Designed
While custom-designed websites offer the most amount of customization and adaptability, they are costlier as they require more design effort and development time
Hammersmith Support Can Help
At, Hammersmith Support we only build custom websites for our clients and we take great care to understand all of their needs. By investing in a custom-designed WordPress website, you will have a website that is unique, tailored to your needs, and serves as an effective tool of communication.
Are you ready for a custom-built website? Schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation and let’s talk through your questions and discuss how Hammersmith Support can help you and your business.