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A pre-built WordPress template is cheap and tempting. But is it the right choice for your business? In this guide, we’ll explore the difference between pre-built and custom WordPress sites, and how to choose the right option to help your business grow.
If you’re having a website built for your business, there’s a good chance you’ll be having it built on WordPress. The current estimate is that 43% of all websites in the world use the WordPress CMS. Among websites using content management systems, that market share is an enormous 62.8%.
Beyond that surface-level fact, though, the choices are vast. Most importantly, you’ll need to make a call on whether you want to go with a pre-built WordPress theme for your website, or a custom-built theme.
The difference between these two options is stark. In fact, choosing one over the other can have major implications for your business. So let’s dig into those differences and how to make sure you make the right decision.
Let’s start by defining what a WordPress theme is. Then we can look at the differences between off-the-shelf and custom WordPress themes.
A theme is one of the central building blocks of any WordPress website. It is the collection of files that govern how your WordPress website looks and functions. It includes style sheets, code, templates, core branding and styling rules, and much more.
A lot of websites use a single theme, but many custom sites use multiple themes, utilising child themes.
A child theme is a second separate folder of theme files, installed alongside your main or parent theme. It allows you to override and make changes to the parent theme without actually overwriting its files.
If you made customisations and changes to your parent theme, these would potentially be lost with each update. But keeping WordPress updated is important. Using a child theme removes this issue. The changes you make to the child theme won’t impact your parent theme files, but will take precedence over them in terms of customisation and site appearance.
Now let’s move on to the differences between custom and pre-built themes.
Using a pre-built theme is essentially a plug-and-play solution. You choose from one of the thousands of designs, which define the way your website will be laid out, types of images to use, and more. Then, you simply plug in those images as well as the text on different page types included within the theme.
WordPress offers a library of free pre-made templated themes. Then there are theme library websites dedicated to free and paid off-the-shelf themes. However, using these means you are always working within the constraints of someone else’s creation. Trying to make your business and idea fit into it, rather than building it around and specifically for your business.
However, you can also have a bespoke WordPress theme built specifically for your business. A theme that’s unique to you and built from the ground up with your specific branding requirements and functionality included. Everything is custom built to make sure your website can help you achieve your business goals and appeal to your target audience.
A custom theme can also offer a lot more control over important performance factors, resulting in faster, better-optimised websites. Something that is important to be competitive in organic search, and to provide a good user experience.
The definitions above might already provide you with some clues as to why many businesses choose pre-built themes from the WordPress library or a 3rd party.
Let’s now break those reasons down into more detail. Why do many businesses gravitate towards off-the-shelf WordPress themes for their websites?
They’re often free unless you choose a premium theme. In which case the costs will still likely be £100 or less in most cases.
You don’t need much if any knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP or any other web development expertise. The plug-and-play nature is especially appealing to small businesses without the resources for a development partner or team.
Once a theme is selected, you can get a site up and running in just a few days. You just pop in your content, images and so on, and away you go.
Ready-made themes are typically designed by professionals, and that shows. Many of them are undeniably attractive at first glance.
Of course, not all that glitters is actually gold. Whilst pre-made themes can be an excellent option for personal sites and small businesses, many larger businesses are enticed by reasons like those above and fall into the trap. Leaving them with a theme that is restrictive and hampers growth.
For others, a pre-built theme may have served them very well at one time, but they outgrow it and start coming up against issues and limitations. They’ll often pour money into trying to work around these issues, bailing out a sinking ship.
Some of the common problems and disadvantages of going down the off-the-shelf theme route are:
Many of the most beautiful and popular themes are not actually well-optimised for users or performance. They have to pack more in to cater for the different types of people and businesses that may wish to use their theme.
This results in bulkier, slower-loading websites due to bloated code. With extraneous CSS, Javascript, and plugins, which lead to significant traffic, conversion, and revenue losses.
Themes often rely on plugins to provide core functionalities. Those plugins, along with the themes themselves, may be vulnerable to security holes.
Many theme developers abandon their creations and fail to create updates to keep them secure. Whilst other themes that are purchased from 3rd party sites can be difficult to update as it can’t be done directly through the dashboard.
In fact, the vast majority of the 70% of WordPress sites vulnerable to attacks have pre-built templated themes to thank.
Every templated theme gives you the basics. But what if you’re looking for unique functionality specific to your business or target audience? Because the theme is not built for you, you’re likely to be out of luck.
This is where many businesses fall into the plugin bloat trap. They rely on increasingly larger numbers of plugins to wrangle their theme into some kind of working order. We’ve audited sites like this with upwards of 60 plugins!
This is not good for performance or maintaining a secure website. It also adds to the workload associated with updates, and the likelihood of updates or plugin additions causing code clashes, bugs, or major issues.
When you love the look of a templated theme, there’s a very real chance that your competition might as well. With off-the-shelf WordPress themes, there is no such thing as exclusivity.
Some of the most popular themes are used by more than 100,000 websites each. It’s tough to help your business stand out when your closest competitors’ website looks exactly the same.
What if you need to expand and evolve your website as you grow? Pre-built themes tend to be rigid. While they’re quick to start up and might make sense at a certain point in time, they’re often not scalable. Meaning you’ll run into issues somewhere down the road.
This is the position that many of our clients are in when they first approach us. A great example is Don’t Buy Her Flowers, who outgrew their website. They realised that a custom build was the way forward.
All the issues mentioned above are surprisingly common. Which is why it’s important to understand the potential limitations of pre-built themes, and how they stack up against the needs of your business.
That brings us to the alternative: bespoke WordPress website themes, custom-built for your needs. While they may be a bigger commitment in both time and budget, there’s a few reasons why making this choice is almost always worth the investment.
Building a successful online presence isn’t just about having an attractive website. It’s about having a website that appeals to your audience, provides them with what they need, offers a good user experience, and demonstrates your unique value proposition. It also needs to be easy for your team to keep updated, and work seamlessly as part of your overall marketing stack and strategy.
A custom build allows you to begin with that as your starting point. Ending with a website specifically designed to achieve and align with your business goals.
Because everything is optimised for your needs, a good custom WordPress developer will build a lean site theme and keep it updated.
There won’t be any unnecessary code bloat or excess plugins that could slow down your website or provide an opening for security breaches.
They will advise you on the best way to optimise your images and implement 3rd party code, to minimise the impact on performance.
It almost goes without saying, but a custom website is unique to your business. It allows your online presence to accurately reflect your brand. Your website can present your core values and USPs without having to make concessions.
If the development process includes competitor and industry analysis, you can be even more sure that no competitor’s website will look the same. Whilst you still provide your users with a great experience and meet their expectations.
Modern web design is far from a one-time project. Your website has to continually evolve and adjust with you, accounting for a growing business and potentially changing target audience.
You also need ongoing maintenance to minimise downtime, bugs, and other issues. That’s much easier to accomplish when partnering with a developer on a custom design that can evolve alongside your business.
Put it all together, and a custom WordPress theme is a much better investment in the long term. The initial cost and time investment might be higher, but spending more upfront will pay off big time. With better performance, greater longevity, and a more successful website.
That, in turn, results in a greater ROI. Allowing your website to become a core marketing tool and factor in your business growth.
You might be able to tell from the above that we believe in the importance of custom WordPress themes for mid-sized, large and enterprise businesses.
For any business looking to turn its online presence into an asset for business growth, custom design is a must.
That’s why all of our websites are fully bespoke, created for each client from the ground up. None of our projects include an off-the-shelf templated theme.
Every project we work on includes a thorough strategy, planning, design, development, and testing process. That means every website is tailor-made for specific business objectives, target audiences, and conversion goals.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of a custom-built WordPress site and whether it’s right for you, get in touch. We can help you better understand the costs, timeline and benefits associated with that process.
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