Website Design - 19 Oct 2015

Template Websites vs. Custom Websites When Using WordPress

If you are looking at getting a new website for your business, then you may be weighing up the positives and negatives of template websites vs. custom websites, so in this article we explain what the differences are and why it matters.

Template websites refer to downloadable templates or ‘themes’ which can be installed to your WordPress website. These are available either free of charge, or for some of the more cutting-edge designs, a one-off fee is charged for their use.

On the face of it, this can be a viable budget option for your website, as the template may look the part in the preview, but getting it to adapt to your requirements may be more troublesome. On the other hand, custom websites are built uniquely for the customer, allowing them to cater to the clients’ exact demands.

One of the biggest arguments of template websites vs. custom websites is the amount of customization that you are offered. When constructing from scratch you start with a blank canvas, allowing you to implement the exact ideas and themes that you desire.

With a template website you may start out with trying to amend it to suit your demands, but tinkering around can not only be a long and arduous process, but also detrimental to the website too. Often when changes are made to the coding of the website, it may affect the performance on certain browsers or multimedia devices, therefore making customization more difficult than first imagined.

One of the first arguments you are likely to encounter for template websites vs. custom websites is of unique appearance. Using a template website may seem like a shrewd idea, but if your website looks like a carbon copy of a competitor’s, due to you both using the same template, is this a good business move?

Having a unique and recognizable website is useful for your brand image and marketing, so a unique appearance can make you stand out from the template crowd.

Lastly in our short template websites vs. custom websites debate is the different levels of efficiency they provide. Custom websites are designed so that content can be added in a way that suits the client, while also allowing the website code to be cleaner. This is in comparison to template websites, which are likely to have much more bloated code, as they try to cater to the demands of a wider range of audiences.

There can be an argument made for both options, but generally speaking, if you are able to invest in a custom website, then it is a smart and highly recommended move.