With the adoption of content management systems, lots of web development companies now have the facility to offer template designs rather than just bespoke designs.
But what do these really mean, and what is the effect they will each have on your website?
Bespoke designsBespoke designs are the best possible outcome when having a new website developed for your company/organisation. The design will be unique to your business or organisation which will instantly stand out to visitors – this also implements an extra layer of trust as it shows you have invested into the website and are proudly displaying your brand.
Bespoke designs also offer a lot more flexibility in terms of what a designer can do. If you’re starting from scratch, a good designer will be able to listen to your ideas and design feedback and implement custom design features to your website as requested.
Template designs are great, but can be limited. If you’ve not come across a template design before, it is essentially a design that has been created solely with the idea of selling it in bulk so a large number of people can benefit from it.
There are some extremely talented template designers and developers out there, many posting their work for sale on marketplace websites like ThemeForest, but the downside is that you don’t have that level of customisation that you do with a bespoke design. While many of the templates have customisation options to allow you to change colours, logos, layouts and more, it’s highly likely that there will be many other websites out there using a very similar variation of your template. While this is not the end of the world, a bespoke design is always recommended to really add a valuable asset to your business. We’re living in the digital age and a large percentage of people will look for your website or social media pages to find out more about you, so it’s imperative to ensure that these are up to scratch and reflect your brand in a positive light.
The real upside to templates are their low costs - these do not require the same amount of design time for a web development agency, so are often offered for a considerably lower price. While these are cheaper than a bespoke design, you do need to factor in the time that it will take you to set up a hosting package, sort out your domain name and e-mails, install the content management system and then install the theme, and then actually customising it using the theme features provided. This can be an incredibly lengthy task to getting it near what you require, so you may even need to look into contacting an agency to carry out the work on your behalf.
So that’s a quick run down on both bespoke and template designs for your content management system website – but what now?
Having a new website commissioned is a big step, so it’s important you are informed of all the available options before handing over any money to a developer.
If you’re unsure of which route to go down, give Cosmic’s friendly web team a call on 0845 094 6108 for free, impartial advice on what would be best for you.
Cosmic have years of experience with both bespoke designs as well as newly adopted template designs, so will be able to run through more pros and cons with you and guide you in the right direction.