In today’s ever changing business world in which every company, be it small startups or large conglomerates, is constantly external-facing and competes on a global stage. The main characteristics of all these are a distinct and authentic brand identity and an emotional connection with the audience is more critical than ever. And it all starts with the website.

Right at the very beginning, you face the choice-to choose between templated and customized websites. Some can suggest that a templated website is fast and cheap and you can create the customized website later when you have an applicable budget, do not forget one moment — thousands of other businesses are using the same layout as yours, same look, same features. So, that basically means you need to compete online without any authentic features. Will that bring you a stable line of clients? We are not so sure. So, that’s why today we shall analyze top reasons why you need to use customized websites over templates right from the beginning.

Reason #1- Templates means massive limitation to your branding

While many people cannot identify it as a solid problem, having the exact same template in your niche is signing the death penalty for your new business. As  every brand needs a unique identity and way of interacting with its clients, only customized websites can provide from the scratch, while templated ones look generic or don’t reflect your business on the market at all. 

For example, if you are running a templated e-commerce website (selling unique models of shoes), potential clients will not be looking at the design of them much longer, just the look of the templated website will make them think about you as ‘another mediocre brand’ in the market.

By using a templated website, you limit the structure, style of your company, and need to adapt to the features already included, while customized websites give you an opportunity to design a website which aligns with your brand’s message and will definitely stand out in a crowded market.

Reason #2 — Huge performance errors

Template websites are full of the elements you don’t need, and the key factor here is that you cannot do anything with it.All of these elements are integrated there, and they can majorly disturb the website overall functionality. Here’s the full outcomes that you can face from the full integration with the templated website option:

• Problematic mobile design of your brand: Most of the businesses at the later phase (especially during the increased number of sales) desire to integrate their services to the app version. But as soon as the synchronization process starts, due to the templated nature of your website the whale process can be damaged permanently.
• Overloaded features: Template websites come with the features that you cannot get rid of, because most of the time you just don’t need them. And while some business owners can neglect it during the building phase, during the launching phase your site will slow down. The lagging can lead to 40% of potential customers leaving your website within 3 seconds of scrolling it.
• Bad Website Navigation: As your business grows, you start to integrate more and more services to it, and if during the initial phase, a template website allows you to adjust a couple of functions, later on you cannot implement anything new to it. The proper updating is not possible and as a fast growing business you will face the problem of driving away up to 55% of visitors due to the poor website navigation.

Besides visual errors, templated websites also lead you to the functional gap, as it has no adjustable system to your business needs unlike customized websites.

Reason #3 — No SEO-No Sales

Successful online presence of your business consists of 3 parts: visual, functional and SEO. And if to the first two ones you can somehow adapt at the very beginning, you cannot do anything with the lack of SEO. These core components of SEO that you need to have on your website, simply do not exist on the templated ones:

• There’s no content section in templated websites-For pages like your homepage, service page, about page, and sales page, it is important to have space for actual content (we mean the actual text). As the fundamental optimization leading to the high rankings cannot happen without it.
• Outdated pre-existed SEO-Another fundamental error that all templated websites have is pre-existing SEO settings on your website, or even worse, an accidental request for Google to fully ignore a page accidentally clicked on your template. It cannot be changed and basically will put all your efforts into vain.

SEO is the top thing along with visual representation and functionality that every growing startup needs. Templates are okay when you’re just launching — but once you start making an enormous number of sales, a custom website becomes a long-term investment that will pay you back in conversions and brand authority on the local and global market. You can build a top notch customized website with Intactdia,by simply making a discovery call, you will open endless opportunities for your business online representation.