Today e-commerce is growing, and many different types of companies are shifting to the online platform to expand their target market and sales. The selection between the custom-made and templates-based e-commerce website is one of the very first strategic choices every entrepreneur has to make when launching an online store.

As it has been mentioned, each of these approaches has its benefits and weaknesses, which can tremendously influence your internet business. To assist you in making this decision, this blog looks into these two choices. After reading the blog, you can choose the right custom-made or template based woocommerce, bigcommerce, or Shopify website development services.

What are Custom-made E-commerce Websites?

The custom e-commerce website is an online store that has been developed specifically for your needs and brand. Each template provides total design freedom as well as full customization of the page’s layout and usability. This is created and built by web related experts including developers, designers and UX experts among others. It helps you to design your particular brand, consumers, and company’s requirements.

Advantages

1. Tailored User Experience: Website customization is done with an objective of satisfying the user needs and ultimately creating value for the end users by increasing the overall conversion rates.

2. Unique Design and Branding: A custom website lets one create a completely unique professionally designed e-commerce website that will best fit the image of the business. There is full control over all aspects of the website — from the color and fonts and up to the location and functionality — all of them can meet the company’s branding needs.

3. Better SEO: Custom development makes a more specific SEO that improves the company’s positions in search engines, which leads to natural traffic.

4. Security: Customized solutions include strong security features which will limit the risks of cybercrimes and increase customers’ confidence.

5. Flexibility: You are fully in charge of the website operations; it enables the incorporation of unique functionalities that meet particular business needs.

Disadvantages

There are obviously some disadvantages due to which demand for woocommerce website development services, and other template-based platforms is increasing.

1. Higher Costs: Tailored development incurs more costs by the beginning of the project as compared to when one is using templates or frameworks.

2. Longer Development Time: It usually takes more time, starting from the designing up to the development and deployment stage; this may affect your market entry strategy.

3. Maintenance: Regular maintenance and updating can be very demanding and this may need expertise and this is expensive and takes a lot of time.

4. Complexity: It is often said that custom websites may be harder to manage due to their technicality, unless the business has a team of specialized IT professionals.

5. Dependence on Developers: This may result in the confrontation of some problems if the certain individuals or some development teams who you come to rely on for updates and cures are no longer available.

6. Risk of Over-Customization: Over customization results in unnecessary areas on the website; this can make it difficult to manage the website and may contain redundant features.

What are Template-based E-commerce Websites?

Template-based websites are the sites that are designed using readymade templates that are cheap, less complex and in effect faster to develop. These websites are best appropriate for startups and small businesses that need a conventional website that is cheap, and only has basic operations.

Advantages

1. Cost-Effective: Sites developed with templates are usually cheaper compared to sites developed with coding from scratch hence recommended for small enterprises and new businesses.

2. Quick Deployment: These websites can be established more easily since the templates are already created and all that is necessitated is to enter the market.

3. Ease of Use: Almost all templates have clearly arranged layouts for user interfaces and they enable a user to work in a simple ‘drag and drop’ environment without necessarily requiring technical input.

4. Wide Selection: There are numerous templates to choose from and sorting them according to business, as well as by style, will enable one to easily select a suitable design.

5. Built-in Features: Often, you will find many templates provided with additional tools such as search engine optimization tools, a mobile design that adapts to the device, and integration with social networks, which further enriches your site’s functionality without further coding.

Disadvantages

1. Limited Customization: Using templates will provide some level of design customization but the layout and functionality of that template are usually limited which can hinder the uniqueness of the user experience

2. Generic Design: Templates can make different websites look alike and this can affect the uniqueness of the brand and positioning in the competitive market.

3. Scalability Issues: Any template-based website may be easy to develop, however, it’s not much optimized to serve the growing traffic and more complex functionalities.

4. Performance Constraints: Template websites generally contain unevaluated code or even unwanted features, which serve as a disadvantage when loading the sites since the display of the contents slows up and so affects the user.

Choose the Right One for Your Business

This, of course, depends on the specific goals and objectives that you have set for your company’s website, business requirements and processes. You can go for custom design websites because of the enhanced features of the vast custom design, functionality, accessibility and responsiveness.

Custom websites can prove to be expensive, but they should not be seen as a sheer expense since it drastically helps your business for a long time as it can change and evolve with your business.

However, template-based websites take an overall short creation time, are cheaper and even easier to learn as they are perfect for beginning your website presence. These websites are not suitable in the long run particularly if indeed you are earning your regular income through your website.

Because the template designs are not created for your needs, they will have to be modified, which in a way costs you more. For any help concerning website development, contact Web Panel Solutions. They are leaders in Shopify, Big commerce, and woocommerce website development services. They also work on custom made ecommerce websites.

Source: https://webpanelsolutions.medium.com/custom-made-or-template-based-ecommerce-website-which-is-best-8c8bcf9f7b90