If you are ready to create a new business website or update your current company site, you can decide to either build a custom designed or a template-based website. Before making your final decision concerning site building options, you should become thoroughly familiar with the advantages and limitations of both.
When making your decision, major factors to focus on are your company’s budget, current and future projects timelines, the extent of branding necessary, your site design preferences and overall quality of user experience. Your long and short-term business goals should also be considered. Remember also that every project is unique and requires a different set of primary elements and completion criteria.
Important Differences in Template and Custom Designed Websites for Business
Primary differences between template and custom designed websites for business today include various aspects of site design and functionality.
Main Advantages of a Customised Business Website
Customised website design follows certain specifications that incorporate company preferences and needs for productive operation and promotion. Aspects of customised site design can include textual content creation and placement, visual content to include photos, graphics and videos, interactive features and navigation plan. Although custom designed sites generally require more work, creative input, time and money to complete, they can be structured to include everything that you need and want to appear on your company web pages.
Customised website design and development entails more advanced technical skills and expertise than mounting a template site requires. However, it can be worth the extra technical skills and cost involved to ensure that your business website presents everything you need and desire to have exhibited in the most effective style and manner possible.
Main business benefits of having a customised website include the following features:
• Unique Content and Design. – An experienced web designer and developer will build a unique, innovative site for your business that will present your brand products and services in a specialized style and layout that will stand out significantly from other company sites in your industry.
• Valuable Marketing Tool and Method. – Your unique company website design will incorporate and reveal your long-term marketing strategies clearly and concisely.
• Responsive Features. – A customised business website can effectively feature your company marketing strategy and increase your web traffic and sales conversion rates.
The main disadvantage of a custom built business website is that it is more costly and time consuming to design and create than a template based site. Also, the fact that custom designed sites are responsive does not make them more desirable than template site designs since a large number of modern sites in general are designed to be responsive for use across multiple digital devices today.
Major Benefits of a Template Based Business Website Design
Template websites for business are available online as pre-set designs, often at a low price or even free of charge. Using website builders and compatible design and development tools, site owners and operators can locate a template that appeals to them and then add and customise content and features. Various web-based content management systems (CMS) also enable users to use pre-designed templates to build their sites.
Primary benefits of choosing a template based business website include:
• Cost-Effective. – Less money is needed for the initial investment for launching a template based business site than a customised website, and template sites are less expensive to maintain.
• Fast and Easy Launch. – Since templates are pre-built, you can have your template based company site up and running quickly and efficiently.
Disadvantages of template based sites for business are that they are not unique in design and often have limited capacities for additions or edits of their preset designs.
Before making your final choice between a customised business website and a template based site, be sure to consider the pros and cons of both and then decide which is best suited to your company’s industry, your design preferences and company budgetary needs to ensure best possible levels of business growth, increased sales conversion rates and greater company profits.
