Template or Custom-Made?

Posted on 17/12/2018

If you’re thinking of starting a new business or if you’ve decided your existing company website needs a complete overhaul, there are a lot of things to consider as part of the process. How you will host the site, which CMS you’ll use, whether you’ll outsource your web design and if so, to who. In the mix, and perhaps one of the most important up-front decisions with a new website is whether you’re going to use a template or whether you’re going to have a completely custom-made design. There are advantages to both and each option will be the best for different circumstances. A custom-made website can be built from the ground up, directly addressing your business’ specific needs, but a template website can be chosen from hundreds of pre-made outlines, which can be adjusted to suit your individual requirements.

Here we look at the template route and the benefits of using a pre-made design.

Choice

If you talk to any good web design partner, they will have a significant bank of templates you can choose from and the nice thing about that is, what you see is what you get. There are no surprises when you’re buying web design off the shelf. The hardest part is choosing from the array of options!

Set-Up

With websites that are essentially ready-made, a lot of the work has already been done. Not just in terms of the design of the layout and how the site flows, but in terms of built-in functionality, widgets and options – all of which makes it much easier to set-up the site and in turn, much quicker to finalise and go live.

Cost-effective

Choosing a design that has already been produced, with functionality that has already been built, is also a very cost-effective way of creating a new website. In our experience this is particularly useful for new businesses starting out who don’t necessarily have large budgets, but still a nice surprise for companies who want a completely new site, without it costing the earth.  

Reliable

When you buy a template website, especially from a reputable web design agency, it’s likely to come with ongoing support and updates to the theme that ensure your site remains up to date and bug free for the long-term. Sometimes when people go it alone, they are unaware of these updates and can get caught out with problems in the future.

These are some of the reasons why people are choosing template web designs and why they continue to be popular. One piece of advice we would offer companies looking to go down the template route though, don’t be tempted to do it yourself. ‘You would say that’ we hear you cry! But whether you choose to work with Glazing Vault or anyone else, your website will always have more built-in functionality and long-term reliability, than if you attempt to build your own. And our customers tell us time and time again that it’s not as expensive as they thought to have a professionally designed and built website that represents their business in precisely the way they want it to be.

For more information about the options available with website design and which is the best for you, please contact our friendly team at Glazing Vault today.