Professional web design or custom themes for wordpress?
If you have a website with an old design and you’d like to refresh it, there are two options you may consider: First hire a web agency that provides professional WordPress development services to design you a custom WordPress theme, second look for a new template/theme on WordPress official website. However, either of these options has its pros and cons which you will have to take into consideration before you decide.
We listed here most of the advantages and disadvantages of hiring professional web designers as well as those of using WordPress themes, to help you make the right decision based on your needs.
Website template/theme in WordPress
WordPress is the most popular content management system that allows you to make changes to your website in an easy and quick way. You can find a lot of themes for all kind of services there. Professional web developers can combine WordPress with modern JavaScript libraries. Some themes are free while some are paid but can add more functionalities to your website. These themes are built by WordPress developers, usually in companies specialized in building themes, with the business model of selling them in bulk to as many users as possible. Developers upload such themes for reselling on websites such as ThemeForest and TemplateMonster.
Choosing a theme may seem irresistible, especially with thousands of available options.
Therefore take a look at the following point to before you choose the appropriate theme for your site.
- Main features and functionality. Look for the theme with features and functionality that will be useful for your specific situation, for example, the shopping cart for an e-commerce website.
- User reviews and ratings. Reviews from the users can give you useful information about each theme and their advantages and disadvantages. You don’t need to take these reviews at face value, just as information that can help you in making your decision.
- Support from developers and regular updates. It’s really good to get help when you need it.
In a word, if you want to find a right theme for your site, you should focus on your website’s need, the goals you want to achieve, your budget, and your personal capabilities and skills.
Pros of using WordPress themes:
- WordPress is a great option for simple projects.
- The templates are considerably cheaper than professionally built websites.
- It saves your time because WordPress template only requires little work since it’s pretty much ready for launch.
- You’ll get a pretty decent site even with a free WordPress template.
Cons of using WordPress theme:
- You don’t get the unique site. The most popular templates on WordPress have been downloaded by thousands of users. It means that there will be thousands of other sites that look like yours.
- There are significant limitations in certain aspects of the site navigation and graphic design. Even with the customization offered, WordPress themes leave you stuck with fixed navigation and graphic design parameters that you can’t change.
- There will always be a limited functionality with WordPress templates. Template sites can’t handle some of the applications that your site needs.
- Security is never guaranteed on WordPress template sites.
Professional Web Design
Professional Web Design greatly strengthens your branding through custom-built sites. Web Development Agency will build you a site that suits your specific needs, business and specifically support your brand. As a result, you’ll have everything that you can imagine implemented on your website. Also, it’s very hard to find a good template when you have a site with a lot of content.
Pros of using a professional web design:
- As opposed to cheap themes used by everybody, You have a Unique and professional site that promotes your Brand.
- Branding. Ready templates don’t let you create your own brand and this can affect your future success.
- SEO promotion for the website. Search engines can distinguish a unique design from a template site. And that’s the reason why companies using templates to build their sites rank very low on search engines’ result pages. A fact that is detrimental to their online presence and success.
- Embedded links. Even professional templates could bring danger to your business. Some developers added links to their resources in the footer code for increasing their reference mass. If these links embedded in the function or index files, it’s really hard to remove them.
- Business orientation. when you choose the professional web design, you are sure that all your requirements and preferences will be considered and implemented to the design. Also, you and your customers will feel very comfortable interacting with your website as you will be able to make changes or hence the functionality anytime you want. This can’t be done on websites built with templates because they are limited. We recommend to choose specialized corporate website development service for a business website creation.
- Usability and conversion marketing. It’s very important to take into account the user’s convenience, and Professional web designers know where exactly they should add a CTA (call to action) button or different blocks that will attract users and give them the needed information. Whereas, templates don’t let you add some unique elements like sliders, animation, infographic and so on to your website.
- Trends. Trends keep changing all the time and a template that’s new and modern now can become old after some months. The main issue here is the impossibility to adapt templates to new design trends and add some new functionality to the website.
- That’s where professional web design is one more time important because you can redesign it or add new features to it, as you want and when you want in a way to draw more audience to your site.
Cons of using a professional web design:
No one will make you a professional web design for free and this is the only disadvantage that it has. However, you can find a lot of web design agencies, which make a good design for reasonable prices.
If you want to have a unique website, you should understand that professional web design can take a time. That’s why it last through time and helps achieve success for your Business. So will have to be patient sometimes.
Anyway, you are free to choose which way will fit you and your business best – Professional web design or WordPress theme/template. It all depends on your needs and specific situation. Sometimes it’s easier and cheaper to use a WordPress theme if you have a small project without difficult functionality.
As for the unique, responsive design with interesting and extended features, hiring a professional Web Designer will be the right decision.
In any case you can contact our web specialists to seek advice.