When building a brand, there are several things that you need to do. Among which, one is building a website. There are several approaches that you could use to build a website.
Depending on certain factors, among which, time and costing are two major ones. There are also aspects such as the flexibility you might need with your website in terms of scaling. There is also security to take care of and a multitude of other details.
Custom Website Design Vs Theme Based Websites:
You could either choose to develop a custom website or you could choose to go with something that’s based on a theme that’s easier to set up. People with time constraints and budget constraints and a bit of skill on their side are able to set up websites based on themes on their own. WordPress, Wix and a few others are some of the names that come to mind when you talk about setting up a website on your own.
As opposed to this easier route, you may want to go for a custom developed website. This allows you a tremendous amount of flexibility in terms of designing a website the way you need with all the collateral of your choosing. Most brands with a decent budget and time on their hands who prefer to have higher security levels and the ability to scale at will would normally go for a custom designed and developed website.
However, sometimes there are big brands that prefer to go with a themed website so they get started easily and quicker. And while that website is already in action, they then slowly and steadily build a custom solution. This allows them to save time in terms of marketing and as and when they are ready they can shift over whatever assets they have on their themed website onto their custom website and expand from there.
More On Custom Website Vs Template Based Websites
Choosing between wix vs wordpress websites, Shopify, Etc
A few years ago, themed websites like Wix, Shopify, and WordPress allowed you a lot of flexibility but they were limited in a lot of ways. It was often thought that these websites didn’t provide as much security as you could get from a custom developed website. But that is no longer really the truth as WordPress, weebly, and Wix and other web platforms allow you a lot of security with the various plugins and various add-ons that have now been built by a community of developers that allow you to function uninhibited.
Moreover, some of the themed websites are now so flamboyant that at a glance they no longer look like the themed websites of yesteryears. They are quite expansive and their themes are often preferred as compared to custom-designed and developed websites.
This has led a lot of brands to make decisions in favor of using a themed website. Because oftentimes they have seen the staff they hire to build and design a custom website aren’t able to really pull the task off, leaving them in doubt.
Design Is A Critical Aspect When Deciding Between Building A Custom Website Design Vs Theme
With WordPress websites and Wix websites, designers and developers now have a lot more in their armory because these sites now allow tremendous customization. And oftentimes you need quite a skilled hand who can manage to customize a theme according to what you need. Some of the customization is almost like working on a custom-developed website.
So there is a judgment call to make, and it also depends on how much knowledge you have in this regard. Designers and developers may tell you any number of things that they feel you need to hear or want to hear. But at the end of the day, you have to make a call to see which skilled hands are truly capable of building what you need.
Marketing Is A Critical Part of Your Business: It Influences Your Decision to Build a Custom Website Design Vs Theme-based One
When it comes to marketing, the quality of a website also plays a role. So you need to be careful in your choices. Not all custom built websites may be the best solution for you.
You Need a Light Website that Loads Fast
Because they may be heavier and they may not provide the flexibility that you need for quick marketing. One of the reasons or one of the limitations within marketing a custom website is that there may be a lot of code that is written that is not really required and makes your site heavy. There may be certain things that the developers have added that aren’t really required or just take up too much space and increase loading time.
Moreover, there may be some design assets that are too heavy for your website or they are not optimized well enough to suit your website’s needs. Therefore your website, your custom website may be too heavy and unsuitable for running marketing campaigns. To emphasize the point, when we talk about running marketing campaigns and the quality of a website, it simply means that the website has to be smooth and light enough so that it loads quickly and saves your customers from having to wait.
How a Heavy Website Can Impact Your Marketing Cost
The more customers have to wait for your site to load, the more they are going to bounce off it. It’s often this very point that makes brand owners want to go for the best and simplest solution in terms of a light website that loads quickly and aids their marketing aspirations. The trade-off may be designs or layouts that are not ideal.
You may not even like them. But it might make more sense to go with such an approach that allows your marketing campaigns to work smoothly and bring you the results you are looking for. Ahead of that you also need to decide if the designs are good enough, the spacing is good enough, and the layouts are good enough to suit your marketing campaigns.
So there is a judgment call to make. However, at the end of the day, there is no point in having a custom website that’s too heavy and doesn’t do your brand any good in terms of marketing. You will be stuck where you are.
Recruiting The Right People When Deciding On A Custom Website Design Vs Template Ones
So when thinking about designing and developing a website, one of the smartest things you could do is, when you start interviewing developers and designers for your projects, you need to gauge on a scale of 1 to 10 how capable they are of working on a custom solution and a themed solution. You need to take into consideration their past successes. You can take a look at the websites they have developed and see how well they are faring in terms of loading speed and how they look and feel.
SEO: Another Critical Aspect of Building a Website
SEO aspects are critical for your website, and you must consider this at the time of deciding on what type of website you want to build. There are a number of technical details to consider, and you need to make sure your developer understands these, as these will impact the way your website is crawled. Be website architecture, canonical links, web page names, relevant keywords, etc., they all count, and they will impact your organic and paid marketing efforts.
Making Sure You Hire the Right Fit for Your Goal: Designing and Developing Your Website.
It’s also worth asking the right questions in terms of how they can optimize certain details on the websites they have built. Even if you are not a technical person, you’d be able to judge how capable a person is based on the answers he or she is giving you. It’s almost 100% of the time that you’d get a capable hand telling you exactly what’s what.
They need to be able to go into detail and describe exactly how they fix certain solutions or create certain flexibilities that other developers and technical people may not be able to provide you. Every technical hand that works on a custom site should be able to explain how they go about making a site look good, perform well, and get optimized to perform and beat any other competition in your niche. Don’t forget to ask about the limitations they face and how they would work their way around these things.
Now given that, you find the ideal designer and developer to work on your website. You do need to also consider how much time they are going to take to work and build a certain X number of pages for your website. Ultimately, you would also need to get an estimate of the cost involved in them providing you the solution you need.