Why template sites are better than custom made

Why templates sites are better than custom made

Everyone thinks that since they watched a YouTube video in the mid 2010’s or over covid on how to make a custom website, that that’s the way to do it for your small business. They think that custom is best, it’s like buying a custom suit, worth the investment because it will fit you so much better. 

I’m here to tell you you’re wrong, save your time and just make a site using one of the many templated site makers out there. Now this is hard for me to say, and stick with me on this one because I’ve been on both sides of this argument. One of my first companies ever was a web development firm making only custom websites, hard coding them myself to have the “ultimate experience” for the clients. This is what I originally went to college for. I was hard stuck for a long time that custom websites were the only way, UNTIL I started my first entertainment business. When I first launched my arcade I had created a fully custom website for it; I spent a month before opening creating this masterpiece that I was so proud of, and honestly it was a great website.

My problem with custom websites wasn’t at the launch of my business, it was great and everyone was happy. The problem arose when 6 months into my business when I was in the deep of it, working 60+ hours a week running the business, when I needed to make changes or update the website. I’d have to dedicate my whole night going into the code and editing things to look just right through the website. 

So eventually about a year into my business when we were growing to a larger location, I took this as an opportunity to put out a whole new website. But this killed the inner web developer in me because I launched my new website using Squarespace. How does a web developer go from a fully custom coded website to Squarespace? It’s an easy decision when I have to decide if on top of running my business if I want to spend 20 hours creating a new templated website, or 100 hours coding one from scratch. That is what changed my mind.

I have been preaching to clients ever since on why they don’t need a full custom website, small business owners are SUPER busy people, although you may know how to go through the code and make your changes, I can almost guarantee that you can do it 5-10x faster if you’re doing it through a templating service. Instead of spending all that time editing your website you can spend the time responding to customers, making upgrades, doing your taxes, spending time with your family, you’ve got a million other things you could be doing.

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THE BENEFITS

Now I’m not going to go on about a singular platform, there’s many different platforms you could use depending on your skill level and how much you want to commit. I find the best and most popular ones nowadays are Squarespace, Webflow, and Wordpress. Wordpress makes up for 43.1% of all websites, so I would say it deserves a mention. (Source) 

The main benefits behind using a website service aside from saving you a ton of time, is you’ll probably create a much better website. These services make it hard for you to make an ugly website, writing your own code, it will probably turn out ugly to be honest.

Automatic mobile and desktop optimization, these platforms will make sure that your websites look good both on mobile and desktop. 57.8% of all website visitors are on mobile, so you want to make sure it looks good. (Source)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), yes you can definitely build in your own SEO in a custom site, but these sites automatically build in your SEO for you. There are definitely upgrades you can make beyond what these platforms will do for you automatically, but having something from them is better than having nothing because you don’t have time to do it yourself.

Ease of edits, when I was running my entertainment business for the longest time I was the only one who could make edits on my website. But then I quickly realized once I was on a templating platform, I could easily hand off little tasks like updating pricing, pictures, and promotions off to my staff so I could focus on bigger things. You don’t need to be a tech expert in order to edit things on the site.

Uptime and support. If you’re running your own website and your own hosting and your website goes down, you basically have to drop everything you are doing to fix that ASAP, especially in the entertainment industry. Our websites are one of the most important assets we have, and we need those to be up so we can accept bookings, attract customers, and so people can reach us. If you’re utilizing an external service, that’s their problem. Not only do they have significantly more uptime, they also have a team of support agents there to help if anything goes wrong.

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IN SHORT

Yes you may know how to make your own website, doesn’t mean you should. Save your time and energy for more important things in running your business, and get this taken care of.

Now the exception I would say is if you want to hire out your website to someone else entirely, if a local agency is handling it then that gets the ease of mind off of you. But don’t let them sell you on a “custom website”, because after working in agencies for a decade I can safely tell you no one is making you a custom website, they have their own internal templates, they just use “custom” as a keyword to charge you more.

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