Why Custom Web Design & Development Is More Beneficial Than Cookie-Cutter Templates

The difference between generic email and website templates and custom design and development is similar to the difference between store-bought cake mix and baking from scratch. A box of cake mix is great in some situations, but what if the recipient has an allergy or dietary restrictions, or if the cake needs to be slightly bigger to feed more people?

Every brand’s situation is different, and cookie-cutter templates are limited. So often we receive requests from clients to modify or customize one of these one-size-fits-all templates because the functionality isn’t accomplishing exactly what they need for their business.

Here are a few ways a brand can benefit from custom design and development of emails and websites:

Branding & Standing Out in Your Industry

Custom design can help capture your brand’s specific image and message, adding uniqueness and consistency across media. Templates are built in the same format for every user, with a limited selection of colors, fonts, and layout options. This leads to all content that uses these templates to look somewhat the same, and visitors notice. Sending an email that is noticeably different from the others in someone’s inbox helps you stand out in the crowd, and shows that care and effort were put into this communication.

Better for SEO & User Experience Optimization

Sometimes less is more. Site builders such as Swift, Elementor, and WP Bakery are typically resource-heavy since they’re designed to include several types of features that usually aren’t needed on every site. These can drastically slow down a site, which affects SEO ranking since search engines favor faster, more efficient sites. Want to get on the first page of Google? Use a custom site with only the functionality that is really needed. Your visitors don’t need to wait for extra plugins, CSS, and JavaScript to load for features that aren’t even being used on your site. Slow loading times can also affect conversion rates, reducing them by an average of 4.42% each second.

Design and development professionals can also help with recommendations on which features to include or not, and how to include them without sacrificing site speed. For example, some features such as image-heavy carousels or maps may look impressive but have a high time cost when it comes to page loading speed, but limiting the number of map pins, size of images, and amount of information processed by JavaScript can help.

Long-term Value

The up-front investment cost of custom design and development can be higher than using generic templates, but companies investing in custom solutions report 83% higher digital success rates than those using templates, from better first impressions to lower bounce rates, better conversion rates, and higher ROI.

Custom websites can be easier to maintain since they are only utilizing the minimum required plugins and features. Site builders usually ship with a high number of (often unnecessary) plugins that need to be constantly updated or they can pose a security risk. Plugins also need to work with all the other code on a site, so the more plugins installed, the higher the risk of incompatible code that can cause issues with functionality or even errors that can break the site. Keeping plugins to a minimum significantly reduces this possibility.