Custom WordPress websites or templates?
That is the question. If you want to build a new website for your business, a custom WordPress website is your best option. As custom WordPress developers, we are often asked what makes a custom website better than a template website.

Here are top reasons why a custom WordPress website leads to superior performance.

1. Save yourself time

While it may seem faster to choose a template site and CMS and simply plug in your own content, customising your site will save you time in the long run.

Why? Out-of-the-box themes or templates are coded inconsistently from one to the other. Remember: these themes are all built by different developers, each with their own coding style and preferred structure. So, even with a template website, there can be a high learning curve. When making any changes to the theme, whether it’s HTML structure, CSS markup, or PHP code, you or your developers have to reverse engineer the way the site is built – which can take longer than building the entire site from scratch .

By developing your own custom WordPress site, you’ll be on top. You know how the website is built, so making changes is easy.

2. No extra baggage

One of the biggest advantages of customising your WordPress site is the ability to strip your site down to just the essentials. Off-the-shelf theme development companies only care about one thing: quantity. For these companies to be successful, they need a lot of people to buy their website. But every website user has different needs.

These templated themes come with many page layouts, tons of plugins, and all kinds of unnecessary bloat — known as “theme bloat” — that you’ll probably never use. And if you have to customise your site (which you will someday), you’re just throwing more at a bunch of features. On the other hand, when you develop your own custom WordPress site, you have complete control over the functionality of the site.

This means a lean, lightweight website with only the features you need. Not only does this mean an easier user experience from the back end, but it also means less unnecessary code and queries on the front end of your website, which also means a better experience for your website visitors. This leads us to the next point…

3. Faster websites

When you can control every line of code on your website, you can be sure that every line of code is being used. This means your code can be completely optimised to be as simple as possible, which means faster load times and a smoother user experience. With ready-made templates, you’ll be at the mercy of your site’s speed, with limited ability to optimise.
Remember: these themes are all built by different developers, each with their own coding style and preferred structure.
But their research also shows that 50% of visitors abandon pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load. It’s in Google’s best interest to make sure they only serve ultra fast sites. So make sure your website is one of them.

4. Better search engine friendliness

While there are many ready-made templates that offer so-called “SEO ready,” the reality is that custom sites will always have better SEO over templates.

Google’s ultimate goal is to provide users with the best possible website. When designed properly, a custom site will provide a better user experience than a template site – making Google happy.
Aside from a better front-end experience and faster page load times, custom websites offer a ton of other SEO benefits. Customising your WordPress site will give you more control over your page layout, your site’s link architecture and how much content you can create, page metadata, and even advanced SEO components like schema markup.

You also get more control over elements like H1, H2, and H3 headings without being tied down by the default heading tags that some themes provide.

5. Security and support

With a ready-made templates, more built-in features can mean more security holes. You cannot be sure of the reliability and security of the system you are using. Investing in a custom website also implies putting resources in a developer who will work with you to ensure your business is secured and that you will always have the answers you want.
David Cejas
David is a full stack developer and managing director of Studio Quatro. With over 9 years of experience in digital marketing, web design and development, he is an expert in the field. He has a passion for helping businesses reach their goals through innovative solutions.
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