Better Faster Cheaper
When many people hear the term custom built, they cringe and think “this is going to cost me.”
The fact is having a web site custom built is better, faster and cheaper.
Consider the analogy of your website being similar to a house. Would it be cheaper to buy a brand new pre-built pre-finished house then hire a contractor to customize it for you, or to hire a contractor to build a house the way you want it?
Many designers like myself begin with a ‘blank theme’ of their own design for websites. What that means is they have a theme that contains all of the structure required for a WordPress theme but with none of the finishings. Think of this as a basic house, with a foundation, four walls, a roof, utilities and nothing else. Using this as a base a designer can then tailor the design of the site to reflect the concept they’ve previously worked with the client to construct.
Custom built is better because the finished site looks as intended and better reflects the client’s brand. Pre-built themes are convenient and can work very well, but rarely fit perfectly with a client’s brand image. They will require a lot of tweaking and customizing through the use of a child theme. Once again imagine buying a brand new pre-built house then hiring a contractor to remove walls, change the flooring, re-paint the walls and replace the kitchen cabinets.
Custom but is faster for two main reasons. First having already created a site conecpt in Photoshop the desinger has only to write the to code to match the concept. Since the designer is using his own ‘blank’ theme that he is intimately familiar with, this is not as time consuming as it sounds. The second reason that the developer is simply adding code to build the site rather than first trying to understand the code and structure of the parent pre-built theme and then adding/removing code from template files to override the look and functionality of the pre-built theme.
Using our earlier analogy, custom built is faster because we simply install the flooring and kitchen cabinets you want the first time and save the time it takes to remove and replace them.
It follows that because custom built is faster it is also cheaper. Additionally Premium wordpress themes cost money, and many only offer support and updates for only one year at which point there is a fee to continue receiving these services.
The best thing you can do it talk to your designer.
Custom built may sound scary but the truth is if you talk to your designer they can walk you through the process of building a website and put your mind at ease. You may be surprised how affordable custom is.