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Template vs Custom Web Design

Tommy Humphreys

| September 14, 2010

Image by: BeyondBespoke.com

While bespoke suits are a nice luxury, the reality is that most of us, most of the time, buy off the rack.

When to spend on an expensive website, and when to reign it in.

Over the past five years, I've earned a living by producing custom websites, and while it can be a rewarding endeavour to build a site from scratch, in truth, it's often much more work and money than people can justify.

Seth Godin's blog proves that you don't need a custom-designed website to make a dent in the online universe: the marketing guru's writing more than makes up for the boilerplate design. That said, you'd probably think twice about hiring a web designer who didn't have a stand-out site of his or her own.

As a general rule, if you're a self-employed professional or run a small brick-and-mortar business, you probably don't need to spend a lot of money on custom web work – a template or "theme" that someone else has built, and which you can license for a small fee, will serve you well. On the other hand, if your company relies on generating leads and sales in a competitive landscape online, you shouldn't hesitate to invest big bucks in your site.

Here are a few other considerations to help you decide between template vs custom web design.

Time

Building a great custom website takes months of attention from the designer that you hire, plus that of at least one member of your team. With a template, you can be live in under an hour, and you can collaborate on content before (and after) the site is launched – all without a web designer's help.

Money

A custom design can be 100 times more expensive than a templated one, and that's assuming you're getting a good deal from your designer. Expect to pay between $15-$250 for a premium template, compared to at least $15,000 for a custom job from a local agency.

Hybrid solution

If you have a template budget but custom requirements, there is also the option of hiring a designer to modify an existing theme. This is more likely to cost you a few thousand, not tens of thousands, of dollars. My personal brand site, for example, is just a customized version of the template we built for my corporate site, and while the function is much the same, it still looks unique.

Template vendors

Of the thousands of template vendors out there, I like StudioPress, WooThemes and Pixel Union the best. You'll have to decide on a publishing platform as well (i.e., one that's compatible with template-based solutions). I love WordPress for marketing sites, and Tumblr for personal blogs; both have a plethora of beautiful themes to choose from.

While bespoke suits are a nice luxury, the reality is that most of us, most of the time, buy off the rack (perhaps with a few alterations). Same goes for most of the consumer products we enjoy: only the economy of scale offered by mass production makes almost any of it affordable. So unless your business is based on standing out from the crowd online, why should your website be any different?

Tags

NUTS' said the American

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2010-09-23 09:33.

NUTS' said the American commander when asked to surrender at the battle of the 'Bulge' by the Germans. Templates are ok for home- based bussines but when it comes to anything appraching even a 'small' company [1 millon net per year ] one needs experienced help. So don't give up. When you need help ask for General Patton and pay the bucks. It's worth it.

Tommy, I enjoyed your piece.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2010-09-17 10:37.

Tommy, I enjoyed your piece. I'm the founder of one of those one-person companies that recently went the route of doing it alone with Wordpress. Prior to this I have (a) contracted web developers on large-ish sites for my company, and (b) more recently had a designer create a simple HTML-based site that I extended myself. So I've had experience from the customer side on both approaches. But this time I chose WordPress.org and a Wordpress business theme called Cubit. I liked the theme so much I had every intention of using it out of the box without tweaking it, but I found I couldn't resist 'improving' on it, and that's led to significant changes. I can say that the HYBRID approach has been a terrific way for me to go. The theme has been quite easy to extend in a trivial way with a little HTML learning (which I've picked up over the years), but improved significantly when I 'got' how to use DIV and CSS. My point is that extending is feasible (whether I do it, or if I chose to have someone else do it). It gives me full control over the pages while not having to worry about navigation (though I've change it too). A few things that stand out for me that are important to consider: * Regardless of which route you choose, the web content still remains a huge and critical piece left to the customer. I imagine many customers underestimate how important it is. If the customer has no clue about content, then going it alone might work against them - working with a good web design company would ensure it got done. * I'm picky about presentation so it's always been frustrating to work with designers until they get that I want an unreasonable (to them) amount of design say. That's just me, but probably the biggest reason for me to do my own. * If going the do it yourself route, don't underestimate how much time it will take you - even after separating out the web content part. Also, there are many little technical hurdles that only seemed trivial to me in hindsight (and I have a computing science degree). Just yesterday I was showing a new business owner friend how I had built my site and all the bits involved (from domains through to SEO) and heard myself saying, "See, it's not that hard" just a little too often. In fact, there is a QUITE A LOT involved and the small business owner should really ask themselves whether it's right for them. For me, it was the exact way to go. Great responses to your piece that I agreed with too. Tom Gibson tgibson (at) SlipstreamAdvantageGroup.com

Kerry, I'm not blaming

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2010-09-16 22:13.

Kerry, I'm not blaming clients for needing time, I'm just trying to let people know that it's expensive to keep the meter running with creatives and technical people standing by on a fully custom job. Please share with us the dozen groups in Vancouver that you stand behind who produce and support excellent corporate websites for under 15k. Assuming things check out I will become a source of referrals for them.

Kerry, As you know, many

Submitted by TommyHump (not verified) on Thu, 2010-09-16 10:59.

Kerry, As you know, many hosting providers have one click WordPress installation, meaning anyone can install a theme in under 10 minutes without technical experience and build from there (Like what my friend BrentHogarth.com is in the process of doing). For a small business or a consultant, that's a great place to start. Very little out of pocket expense and setup time. An hour is not hyperbole for production following this model; content is another story. Honestly, I think 100x is on the low side if you're hiring an agency (I am not commenting on freelance). As the vanguard Kyle Bailey from E-Cubed.com said, "Any agency pulling off a custom job for under 15k is either not charging enough to stay in business or not delivering enough value." The reason for this is you have to assume the client will always take months to get their act together. That's why I said months. True, there are not months and months of coding and design hours required to make a great corporate site, but in my experience, building hundreds of them, the planning, coordination, decisions, production and editing of a website, particularly on the client side, drag 9/10 client engagements into the 3-4 month territory if not longer. If you have some secret formula please share it with us, Kerry. I could use it. All the best, TH

Again with the

Submitted by kmore (not verified) on Thu, 2010-09-16 17:05.

Again with the oversimplification. Yes in theory it is possible and I would absolutely encourage folks to educate themselves and do what they can themselves...it can only help long term. But it's ignorant to say that anyone with 1 button can solve any businesses problems and reckless in some ways to suggest that agencies ( and you and I both know i'm no fan of much of the waste some agencies produce ) are a colossal waste of time and cost exorbitant sums of money. I can name a dozen groups in Vancouver doing absolute kick ass work for companies, with projects under $15k. And what's with this new attack on clients? You have to assume the client will always take months to get their act together? What kind of client is a dummy thinking is that, this is the most offensive line yet. In fact i'm kind of flabbergasted you wrote it. If your client projects aren't keeping to their schedules and clients are running amok, then that's a failure of management on your end. Sure things come up, schedules alter, scope changes, but 9/10 projects drag out for months...again that's not the clients fault. I have a secret formula, treat your clients like partners. Work with them, educate them and do everything to make sure they're successful...and that's from 16 years and thousands of websites. Kerry Morrison Twitter: @kmore Email: kerry (at) reasoned.com

Not remotely true Dude, come

Submitted by kmore (not verified) on Thu, 2010-09-16 10:12.

Not remotely true Dude, come on, As I just sent said in my message to you on twitter, you're way better than this article. 100 times more expensive, up in an hour, websites take months of work to produce.?? This is way too much hyperbole and you know it. Every job has an appropriate solution and very often as you and I both know it's rarely at the extremes of either end of the spectrum. We live in a time where you're right, the small shop on the corner can have a slick looking, easy to use website running on Wordpress that can be packaged together faster than ever before and offer a publishing power never before seen on the web. But this is by no means the whole ballgame and it's still an oversimplification of how the process works. I help out friends and small groups all the time with this kind of "simple" process and it's still baffling for most people and for those clients that need custom work ( design & technology ) we often times work those mini miracles and pull it off in extremely short timelines. The one thing we do agree with is that value trumps most everything and if your site is accessible, with great content it matters less and less how glossy or slick it is. However most people are not Seth Godin and will benefit from an online presence that speaks to their personal brand, their corporate identity and the style combination of both.

There is a market for

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2010-09-14 17:30.

There is a market for everyone and every budget. We are all unique with unique needs I don't particularly care what make or brand my hammer is because for me it simply does not matter. It gets the job done and I don't perceive any added value from my choice of hammer. I only use my hammer infrequently when I feel the need to show off my manly skills and bash a nail or, more often, my thumb. If I was a unique and highly skilled and sought after craftsman with a distinctive brand and I required a specific or specialized hammer to drive in a specific type of nail into a very specific board then I may actually care that the local Home Depot generic hammer was at odds with the rest of my value proposition. At the end of the day, for some people "Good Enough" is all they want and or need. For others they only want the best solution. Luckily the market is filled with vendors who will gladly deliver both. What burns my ass is the hucksters out there selling generic and/or modified templates for business purposes that they are not suitable for or highly overpriced solutions that deliver little to no value.

Agreed. But. The critical

Submitted by Catherine Winters (not verified) on Tue, 2010-09-14 17:14.

Agreed. But. The critical part here is "unless your business is based on standing out from the crowd online". More importantly, it's crucial to figure out if that describes your business or not. Do you know your customers well enough to guarantee that a stock--even premium--template will cut it? Remember, a site IS like a suit: it has to fit. If your template's designed to accommodate several pieces of content, and then you go leave some of them out, or make them too long or too short, it looks very, very amateurish. Bespoke is nice, but if your cost:benefit can't justify the expense, get your suit tailored to fit--or gain a few pounds if you have to!

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