Does your business rely on a website? If not, should it? After all, websites are not just a means for you to showcase your products, services, and talents. They’re a way for your clients and customers to get help with issues, keep up to date with your company, and share their experiences.
In other words, a website is one tool every business should consider as a must-have. Even in this age where most people defer to Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and Instagram profiles, a website is a way to offer more of everything – more products, more services, more connection, more information, more support.
But if your company is yet to deploy a website or the site you have is out of date or doesn’t cut it, you’re probably in the market to have one built for you. Fortunately, there are tons of options available. You could have someone within your company build that new site, or you could go the outsourcing software development services route.
Why Go the Custom Website Route?
No matter which way you go, there’s one idea you should consider. Instead of building your website from a pre-built framework (such as WordPress), your business should consider having a custom website built from the ground up.
Sounds expensive, doesn’t it? Given the advantages of a custom-built website, the payback will make up for the upfront cost. And although having a developer (or team of developers) build a custom website will be costlier than having them tweak a framework to fit your needs, it’s not like it’s a cost that will break your bank.
Let’s take a look at a few reasons why your company should be using a custom website.
One of a kind
You’ve spent a lot of time and effort to create a company that offers a unique product or service. You aren’t an off-the-rack business that sells the same widget as does Company X. What you offer is a one of a kind product with one of a kind service.
So why deploy a cookie-cutter website, built on the same framework as everyone else is using? Sure, you could buy a theme from a third-party, but that theme has probably been used by other companies or individuals. So when someone visits your site, they might recognize it from a competitor.
You don’t want that. In a market that has become inundated with similar companies selling similar products, you need every bit of help you can get to stand out in the crowd. Having a custom website, that doesn’t look like everyone else’s will go a long way to help you out of the shadows of similarity.
It shows you’re serious
For a while, a lot of businesses turned their backs on the website. Instead, they opted to focus primarily on routing potential customers to Facebook. Those businesses figured everyone was already on Facebook, so why route them away? So instead, those companies used Facebook as their primary online presence.
That quickly backfired, as the Facebook algorithms started making it harder and harder for potential customers to find those businesses.
But that’s not the only downside of depending on social networking platforms, as doing so made it look as though you weren’t really serious about your business. The same holds true for those who depend on the readily-available, pre-built frameworks for your site. Nothing says, “We’re okay with a half-baked solution” like a business trying to be taken seriously when they’ve deployed a site based on a WordPress template.
Don’t take that the wrong way—WordPress is a great platform and can, with enough work, be taken seriously. But in the end, it’s still a WordPress site. It’s like driving a Yugo when a Ferrari sits in the garage.
Want more, have more
One of the biggest issues with using a pre-built framework for a website is that you are limited to the themes and plugins offered for the said framework. Yes, you could use outsourced software development to build a custom website plugin, but that plugin will still be limited by the APIs and other connecting bits offered by the framework used. Although WordPress can do quite a lot, it can’t do everything. And the more you try to bend WordPress into meeting your demands, the faster you’ll find out it probably can’t comply.
When you have a custom website, that site is only limited by the skills of your developer. So if you have hired a strong team of developers, the sky’s the limit with what your site can do. You want more, you can have more. Do you want a big site that includes all the bells and whistles befitting your company? You can have it. Do you want audio, video, third-party login, user accounts/management, blogging, ecommerce, reviews, and everything else that comes with a powerful, feature-rich site? A good development team can deliver that for you.
But if you want your site to use a pre-built framework, all those bells and whistles will be limited.
Familiarity and responsibility
Another good reason to go with a custom website is that the dev team that builds your site will be incredibly familiar with it, from the inside out. That means when something goes wrong, they’re not only responsible for fixing it, they’ll be familiar enough with the site that they can fix it quickly. That equates to less downtime and less profit loss.
The Bottom Line
If there’s one thing business owners immediately comprehend, it’s the bottom line. And although you might have had to spend a bit more upfront for that custom website, in the end, it will save you money. With that customized site, you’ll be able to offer a better experience for the user, sell more products and services, and enjoy more uptime and faster fixes when something goes wrong.
So reach out to your favorite nearshore or offshore software development service and ask about custom website development.
If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out our other web development articles.
