Why Custom Web Design is More Important Than Ready-Made Themes

In today's digital landscape, creating an online presence is pivotal for businesses and individuals alike. When contemplating a website, the decision between using ready-made themes or opting for custom web design is crucial. Most of the people are looking for a way to efficiently use the unlimited potential of the world wide web for self and professional growth without spending too much time on its maintenance and studying how to operate with web dashboards or write code. So, the solution is Custom website design.

With custom website design, all the features of the website like colors, layouts of the web pages, transitions and scrolling animation, call-to-action elements, responsive adaptation and many other design aspects will be custom created, tested and coded specifically for the requirements of the particular website and its target audience.

There are lots of benefits to Customise your website rather than choosing the ready-made theme. Here, we are going to highlight some advantages of custom website design that will help you know all the sides and hidden factors and will be much easier for you to choose the ready-made theme or get your custom website. Before that let’s take a little concept of custom website design and web theme to understand the difference better between them. Let's talk about why custom web design holds a competitive edge:

What is Custom Website Design?

A custom design requires a larger investment both in time and finances, but allows for a very high level of design and functionality input and delivers a bespoke end result that gives a business credibility and sets it apart from its competition. The approach takes with a custom website design project is very different from the ready-made theme approach. From the outset, a team of web designers, developers, digital marketers, and copywriters work with you to develop your ideas and your vision. The architects who design and then develop your dream website from scratch. Changing colours and fonts and adding a company logo is generally the extent of customisation allowed for.

What is a Ready-Made Theme?

A ready-made theme is a simple, low-cost ‘off the shelf’ option for budget-conscious businesses that offers a predefined one-size-fits-all visual design and interactive layout. Sometimes it called pre-made or template. You may have noticed that a lot of websites these days have a very similar look. Ready-made themes are created by 3rd party theme developers. The look and feel of a ready-made theme, such as  When looking at ready-made themes the rule of thumb is that everything you see in terms of layout, transitions, and animations will remain the same and its only your company colours, fonts and logo and content (copy and images) that will be added to personalise it.

Advantages of Custom Website Design

2. Enhanced User Experience (UX)

Custom designs prioritize user experience. Every element, from navigation to layout and functionality, is meticulously crafted to optimize user interaction. A user-centric approach ensures a seamless and intuitive journey, fostering engagement and retention.

3. Scalability and Flexibility

Ready-made themes come with limitations. Custom designs offer scalability, adapting seamlessly to your evolving business needs. You have the freedom to implement specific features, integrations, or modifications without constraints imposed by template structures.

4. SEO Optimization

Custom designs enable tailored SEO strategies. Optimizing the website structure, content, and meta-information according to your business goals enhances search engine visibility, driving organic traffic and improving rankings.

5. Uncompromised Performance

Custom websites are built with performance in mind. They are lean, devoid of unnecessary code, and optimized for speed and responsiveness across devices. This ensures a smooth and fast-loading experience for visitors.

6. Ownership and Control

With custom web design, you own your website entirely. There are no restrictions or dependencies on third-party providers, allowing complete control over the design, functionality, and data, reducing vulnerabilities and potential risks.

Disadvantages of Ready-Made Theme

1. Ready-made Themes aren't as Flexible

Ready-made themes are often built to save you from a CSS or an HTML a headache. It creates a framework to put your website content into which acts as a “plug-and-play” option. Because of this, ready-made themes aren’t as flexible as custom design. If flexibility is your top concern, the custom design may be the better option.

2. Similarity with Other Websites

Your site may look like everyone else’s. Skilled designers can minimize this problem with the creative use of graphics and customization within the template, but the most popular themes have been downloaded thousands of times.

3. Limitation in Graphics Design and Navigation Capability

A significant degree of customization is possible in templates, especially the more expensive ones, but you are largely stuck with the parameters of the template for your graphic design and navigation. This can be simple design parameters, like limited choices in icons, or more serious issues like the inability to have a function you want in the way that you’d like it to work.

4. Most of the Themes are Used by Other Businesses

One of the downsides of using a web theme is knowing that it’s used by other businesses. With visual branding and unique website content, we can drastically change the look of your website so it’s different than other businesses using a similar web theme.

5. Achieving a Responsive Website

It is a tricky task with a ready made template when you are looking to customize it to achieve desired look and feel. Since the template developers might have used the different coding methodology, your developers may find it difficult to make all the sections 100% mobile responsive while adding any custom functionality.

6. Persecute You

The disadvantage that will always persecute you, no matter what ready-made theme you choose - a limited possibility of customization. In most cases, you will have to stay within the bounds set by the author of the theme and configure only simple things like color, fonts, and images.

7. Security Can Be An Issue

People who enjoy writing malicious code find template websites especially tempting, because they represent the opportunity to hack multiple sites at once. Developers will sometimes customize a template site using plugins which is a bit of code that adds a particular functionality in an attempt to improve security in particular, but unless your developer really knows what he/she is doing, this can actually make the problem worse. In addition, if you choose a template that isn’t regularly updated to keep up, your site will become more vulnerable to hackers.

Conclusion

While ready-made themes offer convenience, they often lack the uniqueness, flexibility, and tailored functionality that custom web design provides. A custom-designed website is an investment in your brand's identity, user experience, and long-term growth. It's a reflection of your commitment to stand out in the competitive online sphere.

Ultimately, the decision between ready-made themes and custom web design hinges on the objectives and aspirations of your brand. Prioritizing uniqueness, brand identity, enhanced user experience, and future scalability positions custom web design as an indispensable tool for achieving digital success.