Regardless of the type of business you are running, having a functional, intuitive, and attractive website is a prerequisite for your brand to be taken seriously by consumers. Most people do thorough online research before committing to a purchase or subscription service. Even if you are running a news portal or a personal portfolio website, your website’s experience will shape your credibility and perception among visitors.
WordPress is the content management system (CMS) of choice for a huge chunk of website owners. To build a website, WordPress users have the option of choosing pre-made themes along with templates, or to choose custom web development, which is a more intensive and customized solution. There are benefits and tradeoffs when making either choice.
Suppose you are a small—to medium-sized business owner or a corporate decision-maker and you’re wondering which web development route is best for your business goals. In that case, we’ve conducted this extensive analysis to help you decide. Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
Pre-made themes are a series of files, which include templates, that determine how a website is displayed on the frontend, or on the user’s end. A theme controls the appearance and functionality of the entire website, whereas templates control specific pieces of content, such as a landing page with the navigation menu removed, or a blog post with featured image, or a post-conversion Thank You page.
WordPress was not the first CMS to implement pre-made themes and templates; Geocities, Blogger, Drupal, and Joomla all had pre-built theme deployment earlier on. However, it is WordPress which has taken the concept to the next level by making custom themes and templates more accessible, and customizable. WordPress attracted a large number of developers to work on custom templates and themes, which has turned into a community.
Any WordPress developer can get a free or premium theme from WordPress.org or 3rd party providers. Here are the key features of pre-made themes and templates:
Usually, small business owners go for pre-made themes and templates for their websites. Other users include bloggers, technology startups, and personal portfolio websites from professionals, photographers, or artists.
Given that most websites online are built with WordPress, and most WordPress websites deploy pre-made themes and templates, it must have significant upsides for many users. Here are the major attractions of pre-made WordPress templates:
Now, let’s discuss the alternative to pre-made templates.
This is essentially handing over the responsibility of building your template and entire website to a WordPress developer, whether in-house or freelancer or a WordPress development agency. The agency or developer will first connect with you to understand your business’s values, mission, products or services, or your goals in creating the website. Then, they will conduct a wireframing exercise and present you with some proposed designs. Once you approve the designs and site structure, the technical development work will begin.
You will get a website built from scratch just for your business. You have control of every element and functionality on the website. The plugins your WordPress development agency chooses to include will be carefully chosen with the intended goals of the website in mind. Your website won’t be slow and clunky, and it will stand out as a truly original space on the internet.
Small and medium enterprises, plus corporations that value brand equity, tend to go for custom web development. If you have any specific functionality requirements that can’t be fulfilled by the available repository of templates, that is another sign you need a custom solution.
Your website is as important to your personal, service, or retail brand as a professional appearance and a physical storefront. Even if you have a physical store, it’s likely that most people will decide whether to visit or purchase your offerings or hire you based on your website. Check out the list of some of the top benefits of custom web development:
A couple of challenges associated with custom templates are:
We hope you found this comparison between pre-made WordPress templates and custom web development helpful. If you have a small budget for your website, pre-made templates are your recommended option. However, if you want to run a business, effectively promote your professional skills to companies or clients, or run an e-commerce store, it is highly recommended to go for custom web development to maximize the alignment of your brand with your WordPress templates.
Author Bio: Zain Imran is a technical Content Strategist for WPExperts.io. He is an Electronics Engineer with an MBA who enjoys relating technologies to business operations and outcomes. Researching and writing technical content is his passion. Apart from work, Zain enjoys sports, exercise and fitness, and gaming.
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