The advent of popular DIY web templates offers cheap and easy solutions for getting a website up and running – which is great for when your budget is tight and your expectations of your web presence are minimal. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of web templates makes it easy to blend into the crowd. Templates are the wrong solution if you’re approaching the web with your brand front and center, which you should be if you’re operating in a sizable industry with big competition.
From the top to bottom, everyone is balancing a budget when it comes to advertising and design. The question that any business operating in the age of smart phones needs ask is whether your web presence is the particular point at which you can afford to cut corners. A basic overview of the contemporary market landscape yields a resounding no.
Point of First Contact
For many users, your homepage will be the first point of engagement with your company and your brand. Almost half of them will leave your web page if the design is unattractive or your website is missing crucial information like a contact page.
The flip side of this is that users show a strong preference for elegant aesthetics in web design. This is often your first impression with your clientele. It’s a chance to make a statement about your brand.
Naturally, you do best by owning every inch of creative thought that goes into the shaping of your online presence.
Perks of Customization
The short-end of templates is that while solutions are quick, they’re also inflexible. The deeper you delve into pushing the boundaries of prefab websites, you inevitably start to hit walls, sometimes reasonable, and other times incomprehensible.
Anyone who has ever spent time with Avada trying to customize an element can attest to the boiling rage of wasting an hour fitting something into your webpage only to realize that you can’t change font color on a tab header.
Building your own website from the ground up eliminates these kinds of concerns with complete customization of your web presence. From layout to custom objects, and UX personalization, the only limitation with custom web design is skill. Customization affords you scalability with influxes of business. Moreover, it enables skilled designers to start with optimization from your first step out of the gate to yield an overall optimized web presence with launch.
Say Something Original
A great example of the limitations of templates came with the spread of standard bootstrap layouts that spread in the mid-2000s. Like many modern templates, the out-of-the-box bootstrap layout was sleek, effective, and accommodating to a wide array of products, services, and industries. The issue is that early on, the layout came across as innovative and trendy, but quickly became overused to the point of uncomfortable familiarity.
Your brand is what differentiates you. It’s a manifestation of the unique solutions that your company provides to the pain points of your market segment. This is your chance to signal to consumers that you have the resources to come up with a website that innovates and leaves an impression.
Expert web design revolves around shaping your consumer’s experience with your brand through their every interaction with you on the web. It makes the user become an active player in engaging with your content by inviting them to experience more. That kind of impression simply isn’t available when turning to a template design for your brand.
Big Fish
The reality is that templates just don’t cut it when you’re competing with industry leaders. Those companies make powerful, long-lasting statements about who they are and why they’re here to stay. A so-so website experience leaves room for doubt in the consumers’ minds. “Will this company be around in 10 years? Their website feels like they don’t have the resources to make it much longer. I’m not sure I want to give them my business.”
Investing in a custom website gives businesses the flexibility, presence and scalability they need to be successful.
