Website Templates vs. Custom Designs

There is no shortage of website templates available today for your next church, non-profit, or small business website. They come in all shapes, sizes, and feature sets all designed to provide you, the end customer, a sea of low cost options. Contrasting with this, is the option to hire a designer to provide you with a custom designed website with your exact colors, graphics, and style to present your site in a truly unique way to your site visitors. Both options have the potential to give your site a professional look that will get you noticed. But, lets take a moment to look at the positives and negatives of both so you can make an informed decision.

Website Templates
Positives: Low Cost, Quick Delivery
Negatives: Limited Options, Lack of Uniqueness

Custom Designs
Positives: Unlimited Options, Unique Identity
Negatives: High Cost, Long Lead Time

With these variables in mind, you need to determine which option is right for you and your organization. As a guide, here is a brief description of organizations that could benefit from each.

Website Template: Smaller organizations with a low budget should consider the design as a place to save some money. Although design is important, functionality is the key to a good web presence. Put the majority of your web budget into the functionality of your site. Your visitors will appreciate a well thought out menu structure, features that help them make a decision, and a site that works when and how it is design to. Although choosing a template may not provide you with the exact look and feel you wanted, you'll still have a professional looking site that serves your visitors well.

Also, larger organizations trying to launch a project in a very short amount of time can get a quality site online quickly by using a template rather than a custom design. If you need to launch in a hurry, consider at least starting with a template to get your site online. You can always have a custom design built down the road.

Custom Design: Larger organizations with the budget for both the design and the functionality of a quality website should strongly consider a custom design. More than likely, the size of your organization indicates you'll have a large number of site visitors. This increases the chance, although still unlikely, that a visitor may recognize the template you chose from another site they've seen.

Also, larger organizations typically spend a lot of resources on other materials like brochures, mail-outs, and other marketing materials. Your site should be modeled after the general look and feel of all your communication pieces so that site visitors will recognize your brand when they visit your site.

This is not to say that small organizations should never consider a custom design. If your organization is highly dependent on your web presence, even small organizations should consider a custom design to help them stand out on the already crowed web.

You are responsible for spending your website budget responsibly. Consider all your options thoroughly and don't let your web designer talk you into something you can't afford. On the other hand, don't underestimate the importance of a good design to your organizations web presence.