Custom Website Design Vs. Readymade Templates

When it comes to designing your website, there are a number of options. You could build a website from scratch, or you could buy a readymade template and use it as-is, or you could customize your template to give it a more unique and distinct look. Which of these options should you choose and why?

As mentioned above, your website design is what distinguishes you from your competition. In a traditional business, what would be the first thing you do to lure visitors away from your competition? You would make your store more attractive so that people who look at your store from the outside would feel like coming in. Once inside, you would place all your products in such a way that customers feel like picking them up as they go. What would be an equivalent strategy when it comes to ecommerce? Why, your website design, of course.

To attract visitors, your website design must stand out from the rest. It must be attractive and uncluttered. Every item on the site must encourage visitors to shop. At the same time, you must also take care of download times so that visitors would not have to wait forever for your page to load. Search engine optimized code is a must; so are easy menu structures and intuitive additional features. For example, a website that sells a large number of products is crippled if it does not have a site search facility. Inclusion of these handy features make your customers feel more secure at your store.

These days, you come across a large number of entrepreneurs choosing cookie cutter templates for their websites. These templates are inexpensive, readily available and easy to use. So, apparently, there is no reason to shirk them. However, when you look at these templates from your customer’s point of view, you would understand that cookie cutter templates are a big let down. To make your website stand out from your competition, it is necessary to build a custom website design. Your design must be built to suit your needs, using your company colors and embedded with your logo and business slogan. Everything about your website must be uniquely yours. Only this will help you establish a unique identity.

Readymade templates are inexpensive and easy to use. However, most businesspersons would not be able to add any functionality to the existing website. Additionally, websites that require a shopping cart are quite complicated. Altering them to suit your requirements is going to take a lot of time and effort; and even then, there is no guarantee that your code will work flawlessly.

Even if you were to customize readymade templates, you still run the risk of appearing similar to other websites. Remember that many templates sell at least a dozen times before they are taken off the shelf. You would not want your website to look like it came out of a factory that is churning out similar templates left, right and center, would you?