Restrictions of Using Website Templates
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Many CMS platforms, Webflow included, make it easier than ever to build a website using a template. There are plenty of benefits to using templates and many have been professionally designed that the average user would never know. Building a website with a template means you can create a fully functioning website with no coding experience that is presentable for your audience. This can be ideal when you are a new business starting out and need something cost-effective and quick. However, if you’re growing your business and extending your service range, it may be time to evolve away from a template and move towards a bespoke website.
Loss of Brand Identity
To ensure your website is tailored to your company, your branding will need to be implemented through logos, fonts, and colours. This can all be done with templates, however, when they’ve been designed for a specific look, once you start changing these elements you risk losing the sleek look that made the template attractive in the first place. Especially if you’re not from a design background, these changes can be detrimental to the template. You may discover that once these are changed, the template doesn’t look as good as it did originally.
Templates aren’t made to fit your brand, you have to fit your brand into the template. With this constant shoehorning, your company look can end up being a reflection of the template you chose, rather than the template reflecting your unique brand identity.
Regardless of your business, having a unique and memorable brand image allows you to stand out against your competitors. This should be carried through every facet of your marketing and your website is a vital part of your online presence, making it important to be representative of who you are.
Loss of Functionality
Templates work well if you have a basic or static setup but if you’re looking for any niche functionality, then this is going to be difficult to achieve. Your website needs to work for you, and if conversions or leads depend on being able to accurately showcase this, you can’t risk compromising on it.
Oftentimes when users visit a website they know what they are looking for. If you can’t provide this to your user then they are going to leave. Think of some of the biggest websites - Amazon for example survives off of its search functionality, if this was limited to the basic search that didn’t work how users wanted, then they would be much more likely to look elsewhere.
Lack of Support
The majority of support options with CMS platforms are generic or have long waiting times, and when it comes to the template you chose, most of the time the CMS is not affiliated with the template designer and can therefore offer no support. Building a site may seem easy with no coding skills, however once the website begins to age and updates need to happen, this is where cracks can occur without help.
Even if you have a service list that doesn’t change or a simple call to action, it is still vital that checks are made to ensure the site is working as it should. Updating your website with company news or insight indicates both to the user and search engines that your company is still active. If you don’t update your website and run into issues surrounding outdated plugins and broken functionalities, this can negatively affect not just your leads, but your brand image.
Technical Constraints
Templates run the risk of being full of outdated and inefficient code. Especially when you are not well-versed in code to make technical changes, these issues can negatively affect SEO and your websites rankings. Security risks, plugin restrictions, and bloated code are all things that will not be apparent when initially choosing a template and implementing it. These issues will arise later down the line and prevent your website from performing at its best. In the worst case scenario, these issues can leave your website open to hacking.
At Jolly Good Web, we never use templates, all of our sites are designed and built specifically for each of our clients. We believe that websites shouldn’t be static. A template suggests that any company can simply slot themselves into a pre-made formula - this isn’t how we view our clients. We believe every company is living and breathing and websites need to be a reflection of that, starting off life as an optimised build and adapting as your company grows and your users’ needs evolve.
Does your business need a bespoke website that avoids the limitations of a templated site?
