Custom vs Template Websites. Which Is Right for Your Business?

A website represents the brand at first glance, so businesses should design it to create a strong first impression on customers. Depending on the business scale, developers can build a website using either a custom vs template website approach. But whatever the design may be, it should accurately reflect the brand’s identity 

Custom Website- Web developers and designers create custom web development services from scratch for large-scale businesses. They tailor everything to match the brand and specific requirements of the business. These services focus on speed, user experience, and responsiveness. Developers can also implement SEO more effectively in this type of website development.

Template Website- This is mainly for small-scale businesses that want to go live within days. Users choose pre-styled templates, which they can customize only to a certain extent using platforms like WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace. There is no such hassle, but a generic appearance of themes for different websites is possible due to the availability of significantly fewer customisations and repetitive templates. The implementation of SEO is simple, accompanied by mobile-friendly designs. 

Comparison Based on Key Features: Custom vs Template

Experts often recommend choosing a template website for small-scale businesses because it is budget-friendly. It is ideal for small businesses with a limited budget. Custom websites are often not a good choice for small-scale businesses as they require more budget. Startups often choose a template website because it offers a lower upfront cost and serves as a budget-friendly option.

Control and Scalability- When it comes to custom vs template websites, custom websites are more suited to power and scalability. They provide a broader scope for clean and efficient code and can handle traffic spikes without crashing. They also offer multi-language support and can expand globally with CDNs. On the other hand, template websites have very basic scalability and often come with slower loading times. The features are bloated and are not preferred by large-scale businesses.

Focusing on Performances, SEO, and UX- For an enhanced user experience, a website should be custom-designed as it should justify the brand identity. Unlike other websites with a generic template, it should differ from others that use the same template. 

High-traffic site(rebranding and redesigning)- Custom web development promotes transitions, storytelling, and custom animations, which help redesign the digital experience. Template websites do not have a factor of uniqueness, and they are not optimised for core web vitals, which directly affects the SEO and UX.
* Custom web development is the best way to rebrand or redesign the website to preserve and increase traffic.*

Structure Control- Template web development does not allow proper control over the structure, which limits us from being able to customise the headings, URL, or metadata fully. Custom development websites will enable the user to develop more trust and authority by having complete and proper control over the structure, leading to the use of backlinks, adequate schema markup, and clean code. 

Conclusion

Both custom vs template website options have their pros and cons. Starting your business with any one of them is of no harm until and unless they benefit your brand identity. It depends on the requirements of the business and what type of website design it wants to follow. Features like time, the experience you want to offer, budget, and the need for customisations in the website play a huge part in the design selection.
Custom web development services often aim for higher traffic and scalability, tailored for large businesses to achieve the desired results.