Working with companies on their website designs is an amazing opportunity that I’ve come to appreciate and enjoy. At NEXTFLY Web Design, we have the opportunity to work with businesses of all shapes and sizes from large, national organizations to a small boutique company with a niche product and target market.
Due to the variation of customers, we also have a difference in the budgets they have available to approach their website design or redesign. At NEXTFLY, we pride ourselves on building website design options that fit all companies and their needs.
One of the options that might be a good solution for a company that is not the traditional custom website design route, would be to work with a pre-existing template design that is already designed and developed, but needs customization to work with your company.
What is a template design?
A WordPress template is a ready-made layout created for WordPress — that serves as a solution for building a website from scratch or revamping your pre-existing website design. Templates are build with a backend functionality that easily allows you to customize your branding, elements of your homepage layout as well as your inner pages.
Many template designs come with multiple page and posts that are built out, allowing you to pick and choose how you’d like your website to look.
There are many advantages to working with a WordPress template website design, however, there are also disadvantages. Due to this, I’d like to list them out so you are able to understand all that comes with going the template website route.
Advantages of a Template Website Design
- Cost – One major advantage of working with a template website design is cost. Due to the fact that you are working with a website framework that has already been designed and developed, there is a lot of cost that would be involved that you’re able to bypass. This makes it easier for individuals that are a part of a start up or small business with a minimal budget to obtain a website design that will better suite their needs as well as their wallet.
- Time – To go hand and hand with costs, another thing you are saving is time. Designing and developing a website can take weeks and, maybe even months. With a template website design you can get up and live within minutes of your purchase.
- Creativity – Putting together a website design does require some creativity. You have to think about how you want your home page to be laid out as well as your inner page designs. Working with a template, however, does a lot of this work for you. The homepage is already built out, as well as many interior pages that you can utilize when putting together your “Team”, “Blog”, “About,” and “Contact” pages. All you have to do is load the content into these areas, and you’re good to go!
As I said, there are many advantages of working with a template, but there are downsides as well. Those are listed below.
Disadvantages of a Template Website Design
- Functionality – Although there are advantages of skipping past having a custom website designed and developed, there are many downsides. Since you are limited to the framework of your template, you also have to work around it. You don’t have custom functionality that is built out specifically for you and your company and might regularly ask “can I have it look or function this specific away”…and the answer might be “no”. This functionality might need to be custom-built out by developers, making you find work arounds or put additional funds down in order to have the functionality build out exactly the way you envision.
- Malware – When you are working with a framework that is built for the mass public there are a lot of vulnerabilities that become involved. Since the website’s code was not custom built for just one company’s website, there is more of a likelihood of viruses. Due to this, it is important to constantly update any plugins you might have on your website and even purchase a Security Bundle from us to build a defense of heightened security to keep you protected.
- Creativity – Although I did include creativity in the list of advantages, it can also be a potential problem. Since your template design is in a public marketplace that is able to be viewed by the public, there are many other people that could use the same theme that you did! A business nearby or, potentially, even your main business competitor has access to that same website design and might feel that it works for them the same way you did yourself. You might discover soon after launch or, a few months after, that there’s a company that has the same design you do!
Take this list of advantages and disadvantages into mind when choosing the best route for your business. If you have any questions in regards, touch base with us and we’ll make sure we point you into the right direction for your businesses new website design.