Why Most Recommend Against Using Design Templates?

When we look at the billions of the websites across the internet, the popularity and dominance of the website templates are unquestionable. To an extent, it is true that the website templates do dominate the web market. A website template is great for starters as well as a good option for many freelancers, small and medium businesses.

However, design templates have some strong drawbacks rather limitations. Given below are compelling reasons why we suggest custom web design is the better option to opt for.

 

 

Reason 1:  Design templates are inflexible

All would agree to the fact that almost all design templates have hardly got any customization features. Apart from the ability to add some images and texts, there is apparently little room for any creativity as far as templates are concerned. Usually, all design templates make use of similar design models and thus does not look to add value to any website as such. Most website owners prefer unique structures and layouts and would love to be away from templates.

 

Reason 2: Readers/Users disapprove them

One of the major drawbacks associated with design templates is the fact they make use of heavy advertising. Website templates are mostly built for promoting their interests to readers/users rather than helping websites to serve their purpose. Most templates are unfortunately poorly designed or assigned with generic titles .The features are quick to  be recognized by the users and website masters. With a limited or negligible scope of creativity and unprofessional looks, the brands could take a beating and suffer for using website templates. Some lucky website owners realize this mistake quickly and make use of custom website designs.

 

Reason 3: Website templates are inexpensive

The main selling point of any website template is that they are cheap. Then how come that is a reason to be stated here? First of all, we need to understand that when you are buying cheap, the features you have in the product is also going to be minimal. In other words, you get what you are paying for. Another perspective to be looked upon is that when you look at some of these website templates, they have hardly bought any difference between the different websites. This mostly leads to negative responses from the online community and  are potentially fatal to the brands.

Simple to put it across, when you are looking to build a positive brand image, invest your time and effort for your website. Choose website designs and make unique and usable for your website and customer base.

 

Reason 4: They’re not distinctive

Websites are required to cater and reflect the needs of the specific industry/niche. When it comes to template companies, most of them do have templates to address some if not all of the industries.  However, most of them make use of a single template and do small modifications to that template to serve the wide range of business. This method of using one template for all industries does not work, simply because all businesses love to be unique. Moreover, considering the previous points, these templates would hardly be applicable to the unique needs of an ever-changing business.

 

Reason 5: There are bugs/issues with most templates

Another big issue connected with the templates. Most look great and even amazing on the surface. However many have bugs and serious bugs in their codes. Most website owners do not realize this until it is too late. Some self-built templates offer additional features at a premium, which in many ways are higher than that would have been the case if the custom designs were adopted. Moreover, there is a huge probability of having more defects with templates compared to custom designs as most of the designs are developed by experts who follow proven methodologies for website developments.

 

Reason 6: They’re often unresponsive

In today’s world, building an unresponsive website is absolutely unthinkable. Many readers/users have abandoned using the desktops and laptops and moved to smart devices. The exponential growth of these consumers also reflects on websites and the need to be responsive. Many self-built and free website templates out in the market are simply not responsive .Brands cannot simply risk using  these templates, with their competition increasing thanks to the smart devices.

Although there are techniques as well as plugins to transform a non-responsive template into a responsive one, the time and effort associated with website templates are simply huge .And with the other drawbacks mentioned above, the task attains Herculean nature. This is where many webmasters appreciate custom designs, which requires significantly less time and effort. On the plus side, they are up to mark as far as the latest features and trends for websites are concerned.

 

Reason 7:  SEO is Problematic

Some of the templates available could have been designed with SEO in mind. However, with templates being cheap, most designers never think of SEO in the templates and even if used, the techniques sadly have no guarantee to have a positive impact on the search rankings .Some might argue, well there are plugins and techniques to take care of these issues. However, many designers and developers agree that the efforts required to boost SEO for these templates are higher than what is required in the case of custom designs.

 

Reason 8: Templates resist change

Similar to ever changing and technologies, websites also undergoes evolution especially with respect to the development techniques. As such website designs also changes. While making use of website templates look easy, it is in a way a step backward & locking into the past, rather than living in the present. Moreover, the numbers of new advanced features that can be added to these templates are far less than what is required in today’s competitive world.

 

Conclusion

Templates need to be taken only as a starting point and nothing more that. Many would be enticed by the free and easily available web design templates. Unfortunately, they present a wide range of issues that makes them less effective for today’s needs.  With the reasons mentioned above, most would have realized the importance of custom designs.

Apart from being built for the specific needs or the broad business category, they are always cost-effective than most options. Custom web designs also allow greater control over creative elements and content .The designs are personalized at the conceptual level. This helps in delivering a better user experience to users on any device and also aids business to develop a meaningful relationship with their customer base. Best of all web designers would be able to perfectly align the website to specific needs of the industry/business/niche.