General Overview

When it comes to websites there are thousands of options to choose from, say your business needs a website and you are wondering what to choose from the vast sea of technologies and platforms, CMS’s, frameworks, and the list of strange-looking (and sounding) words can go on and on, however, there are 2 major categories or technologies that can be easily understandable: custom web design and template “design”, now, in-Raise is all about WordPress so we are going to talk about the difference between them both and why you want a custom-designed website and not just a commercial theme.

But first, there are a couple of facts about WordPress that you need to know!

• WordPress is mainly powered by templates yes, however, with the right knowledge (like in-Raise’s knowledge) you can have a custom website as well, so is not like all you can get is a template and is not like WordPress is just for blogging as the rumors say.

It was actually only that one fact that was important to emphasize, and if you don’t believe look around this website, it was made with WordPress of course, and I can assure you there are at least a thing or two that you haven’t seen on any other website.

Now, the main idea of why you want a custom website centers around the fact that every business has its own unique characteristics, its own company culture, its own values and principles, and that is why you need your website to reflect all that about your business!

So, here are the main reasons why you want a custom-designed website for your business and not just one built with a commercial theme.

Reason 1: Uniqueness

Let’s be honest, installing a WordPress theme or an Elementor template kit and change around the text and images is something that most people could do, but seriously, if anybody can do it, what guarantees you that your competitor won’t do the same thing? Imagine how bad it would be for a user to be searching for businesses (restaurants for example), in a specific market and location, to find 2 or 3 or even more exact same-looking websites?

The only thing that would say is that there is nothing special about your business, as harsh as that sounds. Again, if every business is unique, they all have their very specific characteristics, shouldn’t their websites reflect that? For me, the answer is yes.

Getting a unique website made by a very good designer can guarantee that there would be design elements that are unique only to you, that your brand characteristics will be all around the site, you can give the feel you want to your audience and most importantly it is very certain that there won’t be an exact looking website like yours.

Reason 2: every business has a different story, values and culture, and that should be reflected on their websites

It might sound repetitive, but again, the reasons why you need a custom website move around the fact that every business is unique and so their websites should be as well.

Even in the same segment of the market, for example, restaurants again, there are Chinese food restaurants, Mexican food restaurants, pizzerias, restaurants specializing in Fried Chicken, restaurants specializing in sandwiches and if I wanted, I could make a list with hundreds of different types of restaurants. But the focus point is, that, even though they are all restaurants, they are all different, they all have a different story, they all started in the business different. They all have different values and different company cultures, and the way they cook the food is different as well, and all of that should be reflected in a unique business website.

Now, in the same way, that every business is different, the customers are different as well, so for every business, there are customers that will find themselves more identified towards a brand than the other. And, the first place a customer is going to search for information about your business is your website! Hence why it is important to have a website, and even more, a unique custom website that can showcase your business uniqueness.

Reason 4: in a custom website you can find and edit your content in the places you expect them to be.

There are thousands of commercial themes, and all of them are built in different ways, and honestly, I do think that all of them are built with a good user experience in mind. But sadly, there are lots of themes where you have to edit stuff in the most bizarre places.

For instance, you have a home page, and you want to edit something on the homepage, the first place any user would go to is to the “pages” in WordPress and find the homepage in there, click it and search for the text or image or whatever it is they want to change in there. But sometimes when you do that the content simply isn’t there and that is so frustrating!

Like seriously, why do you have to go and edit the stuff you expect to be on a page, somewhere else! And on some themes, it doesn’t matter how much you search, the stuff simply is not there, sometimes the content itself is hard-coded on the HTML page and there is simply no way to edit that unless you connect to the server with FTP, but really, why should a business owner go through a nightmare like that!

With a totally custom website (at least with the ones built by in-Raise) the content is where you expect it to be, you want to change something on the homepage, then you go to the homepage “page” in the WordPress Dashboard and change it, you want to change something in an “about us” page, then you do the same thing, nothing should be in strange places that most people don’t even know how to get to.

Now I’ll be honest, a WordPress website badly developed can be a real mess and a real nightmare, but if the website is built with some sense and a clear view of what is required, the experience is awesome. Because let’s be honest, everybody likes it when things work the way they should work when stuff is in the place you expect it to be, and the same thing applies to a website of course, when you click the update button and the edit you just made takes in place in the front-end at the first try, fast and easy, that is happiness right there.

Reason 5: when a new version of PHP comes, since they have so much code it can wreak havoc.

PHP is one of the programming languages that WordPress is mostly built with, to make it as simple as possible, is what WordPress runs on, on your server’s hosting. It turns out that over time there are updates to the PHP core. Mostly to enhance speed and other optimizations.

Now with some updates, there are sometimes that pieces of that PHP core are deprecated and can not be used anymore, and what happens if a theme uses one of those pieces? Well… Nightmare happens, I myself have witnessed that with 3 websites, all of them using a commercial theme (Avada), and the sites simply broke and fixing them was real hard work.

But anyways, with a well-developed custom website, since you only have what you need, then the chances of something major breaking are very low. I won’t say they are nonexistent but, they are lower than with a commercial theme. And honestly, after working in this area for quite a few years now, I can say I don’t remember a single custom website built by any of the companies I have worked with, break.

Now, I do admit that those sites I saw breaking were totally forgotten by their owners, outdated plugins, the commercial theme powering them outdated as well. So is also not just about the PHP updates, is also about the maintenance a site requires. If you think maintenance is something you need for you website but have no time, in-Raise Design Studio can help you with that, let’s get in touch!