Now that you’ve realized how important having your own website is for your business, let’s weigh in on how to get it done. There are two schools of thoughts when building a website – have a custom website or use free-to-use, ready-built platforms such as WordPress.
There are always pros and cons to almost any thing. What you need is to find a reliable, knowledgeable, and creative website designer who can help you with your branding, positioning, visibility, and awareness goals. Your decision is likewise ruled by your budget, size, needs of your business, timeline, and functionality. At Maxeemize, we work with different clients on both ends of the spectrum. Depending on their purpose for building a website, we can look into a custom-designed or use WordPress platform.
Having said that, let’s have a look on custom website design versus WordPress website:
Custom Website
A custom designed website has a number of advantages, foremost to that is it’s bespoke and scores high on uniqueness. Some custom designed websites are geared for large or complex sites that normally have unique functionalities. Hence, it would be necessary to find a specialized web designer for the job. Other advantages of custom websites are:
- Functionality that are feasible with custom-designed sites unlike the limitations on WordPress
- More search engine friendly
- Use design that is according to your brand DNA
- It grows with your business
- Tailored e-commerce solutions
- Safer and more secure than template sites
- Has more support because it has its own developer who can fix any bugs
On the negative side, custom websites are costly and time consuming. Any changes that must be done may also rely on the availability of developers’ time.
WordPress
WordPress is a website building tool that is free to use. It was initially designed to create blogs but has evolved over time as a complex platform for building websites. It needs only basic web know-how to operate. Some of the distinct advantages of using WordPress are:
- Budget-friendly
- Shorter time to create website, needing mostly to focus on content and design
- Rich library of ready-made themes to pick and choose from
- Secure platform for website due to large community of developers working together to spot security loops or bugs
- Allows for easy and quick updates, additions, or changes on your site
- Search engine rankings are easy with its SEO plug-ins enabling the site to have Meta Description, H1 tags, and Meta Titles
- Themes help make the site effective on mobile devices, tablets, and PCs
- Has built-in blogging platform
Some of the drawbacks for using WordPress to create your website are:
- Difficult to customize the themes as per your preferences. You might end up hiring someone who knows well the functionality of WordPress to be able to maximize use
- Vulnerable to hackers despite regular updates and security patches
- Some updates and patches may require a professional web developer to install
- Need regular maintenance
Both custom website and WordPress website have their own takeaways and serve different purposes. It would be wise then to think about your own needs, budget, and time when choosing between custom website or WordPress. You can always start with a WordPress site and should changes in your situation occur and budget permits, shift to a custom designed website.
Maxeemize is able to help you with your website design needs and guide you in your decision making. We will be with you in assessing what the right fit is for your business to help you achieve your goals. We have the expertise, knowledge, experience, as well as creativity to deliver unique solutions that produce better results for your digital marketing strategy! Contact Us so we can discuss how we can help you.
