Custom versus template websites: Should you DIY or call in the professionals?
Famed French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself”. But Bonaparte lived some 200 years ago and things have changed since then.
There are numerous free DIY services available, but they can look generic and are limited in their capabilities. DIY websites also aren’t scalable or flexible enough to adapt to accommodate large-scale growth. This means they don’t offer a long-term solution for most businesses.
When you call in a professional, you get what you pay for – a beautiful, functional custom website that is tailored to your specific needs and designed to support your business throughout its lifespan. Southern Digital Consulting can create a beautiful custom website with all the features you need to:
- Appear in Google
- Protect your customer data
- Engage your website visitors
- Turn website visitors into leads
- Track website activity
- And so much more!
Custom versus template websites
Websites like Wix or Squarespace offer templated websites that you can build yourself. But just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should. Templates websites can be limiting and often don’t give you all the features you need to make your website work for your business.
Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are effective tools for promoting your business in today’s increasingly competitive online world and for building credibility and generating traffic to your website.
Investments in SEM and SEO can yield long-term benefits and SEO, in particular, brings with it a host of added value.
A number of different factors impact SEO but intuitive navigation and user-friendliness are key to higher search engine rankings. As a result, SEO provides you with an opportunity to better engage with your customers and to build meaningful relationships with them in the process.
But successful SEM campaigns require extensive research and development and SEO is a specialized skill. Web developers are better positioned to create custom websites that effectively harness the power of SEM and SEO to draw users to a website and keep them there.
Customization
If you want your business to stand out from the rest, you need a website that does too. DIY websites rely on the use of templates and offer relatively limited scope for customization. Developers provide the freedom to create a website that better reflects your branding and incorporates your image choices as well as your layout and navigation preferences.
Loading speed
DIY websites take longer to load because the companies hosting them are also hosting a large number of other websites and because DIY websites are multi-purpose by design. They are built to serve more functions so that they can be used in a wider range of applications.
This means they come with a cache of built-in functionality – some of which you might not need but can slow your website’s loading speed. Known as bloatware, this can also negatively impact overall user-friendliness.
Safety and security
When you build a website on an existing platform, you expose it to the same threats as other websites on that platform. Developers can help you better mitigate against threats. They also likely have the capabilities to implement more sophisticated security measures than you do and can sometimes host your website for you.
Flexibility
DIY websites can’t don’t have the capacity for increased traffic volumes and they can’t adapt to your changing needs. The process of custom building a website provides more room for long-term flexibility to accommodate growth.
