Do You Need a Custom Website?

In our last article, we discussed two marketing strategies that you can employ without spending too much money and focusing on what matters most. Today, we’ll explore the advantages of having a custom website and when it is a better avenue for you and your online presence. 

First, a quick question: how many websites do you think exist on the web? Tens of millions, hundreds? Not even close. How about over 2 billion worldwide? This means your online presence exists in an ocean, where everyone wants to be seen. 

Most of the World Wide Web’s websites are not custom. The large majority are built with website builders, such as Spotify, Wix, Shopify, Square, and our favorite, WordPress, which itself accounts for a third of all online addresses! This means that there must be good reasons why you would venture for a website built from scratch. What are some of the reasons? 

Freedom

Having a custom website allows you to do pretty much anything your heart desires. By building a website from scratch, there is no restriction set by software that tells you how to build your website. 

Less maintenance  

As features from website builders are created by their users themselves for a large chunk, frequent updates for plugins are necessary to keep them compatible with the main software. With a custom website, maintenance costs (whether in money or time) are reduced, as your website depends on framework, and they do not update as frequently as WordPress plugins. 

Faster, lighter and more secure 

Professionals that are accustomed to build websites from scratch will usually provide lighter, more secured and even faster products than their website builders’ counterparts. The reason is that the website builder is a software itself (such as WordPress), which includes default features that makes your site heavier from the get go. A custom website does not need those features. 

I will not lie to you: custom websites are definitely not for everyone. With today’s standards, getting what you want the way you want it from a custom website will be more often than not more expensive than website builders’ solution. More reasons why you should opt for a website builder rather than a custom website are as followed:

More expensive

This should not come as a surprise: custom websites are more expensive to build than using platforms such as WordPress and Shopify. For Canadian businesses, you should expect to pay with a digital agency a minimum of 5 000$ for a simple, custom-made web address. For the typical small or medium business, a website builder will more than plenty for all your needs, and is drastically cheaper. 

Coding knowledge required

If you are not comfortable with HTML, CSS, Javascript or PHP and their libraries, and if what I just said rings no bell, your only solution is to hire a professional. I have previously mentioned that custom websites are built using framework: they make building custom websites faster and save you time. Your web developer should know that. Learn more about frameworks from our friend at hackr.io by clicking here. 

They take more time to build 

Although your developer or programmer’s skills will dictate how long your project will take, it is safe for you to assume that a custom-made website will have a higher turnaround time than using a website builder solution. The reason why website builders are popular are because of the convenience of no coding provided, as well as how fast it can be put online. 

Custom websites are definitely the way to go for complex projects that require to accommodate heavy traffic. However, if you are building a website for the first time, I will personally recommend that you make the round of all website builders and research if most of your desired features can be accommodated by one of them. WordPress himself is a great example, as it powers a third of the world’s websites. Needless to say, your budget is the greatest factor for which solution should you go with. 

Have questions about which solution to pick? Comment in the section below! Don’t forget to share our article on Facebook!