Custom Website Design and Templates Pros of Both

For small and emerging businesses, finding the most economical way to launch a website is crucial. Many turn to the large variety of web templates (sites with mostly pre-designed features) that require little or no design knowledge. However, templates can be restricting, and they might be inadequate for someone looking to give their site a specific look and the ability to do specific things. Here are some factors to weigh if you're trying to decide whether a template or custom website design works best for you:

Custom Website Design – The Advantages

A custom design gives you the ability to control the entire design—layout, colors, font, picture placement, etc. (ensuring that your look and product remain unique).

You have more freedom to add specific applications, databases, and other functions that allow your site to provide a specific service to your visitors. Templates can be very difficult to add unique features—especially if you have little or no design experience.

Chad Brubaker, CEO of emochilla.com, suggests that custom sites allow you to design your site to be consistent with the logo, letterheads, and other elements that already make up your brand image

Having a professional designer build your site ensures that proper design elements are employed and saves you time. They can be very affordable for the quality of work and amount of time they save you.

Custom-built sites also offer the distinct advantage over some template sites of being able to better accommodate important search-engine features (meta tags, page descriptions, page titles, etc.). Template sites sometimes use more generic, and therefore more restrictive, coding that limits search engine access.

Template Website Design – The Advantages

Often free or fairly inexpensive, a template site provides many professional, inviting designs that require little know-how or time to build.

For some businesses, a simple design is all they need. They might simply need to get their information out there—no fancy features.

Brubaker notes that template sites are becoming more advanced and provide more features that previously were only available through custom design.

He also mentions that many templates are industry-specific, providing applications and software with the purchase of the template.

Custom website design can be very affordable, and it might be the most cost-effective approach for those who cannot afford to spend the time working on a template site. Time is money, and if you're trading valuable time to create your own site, you might be better off spending a few hundred dollars to get a professionally designed custom website.

However, if you have the time or can put one of your employees on the task, you can save money and develop valuable in-house expertise that will serve you well in the future.