When you focus on professionalism, you cannot build websites based on £50 themes – this is the main answer to the question of why good specialists do not offer such services. A valuable website is one that is fully optimised for a specific client, has a dedicated design, works quickly, securely and with a focus on business effectiveness. That is why it is important to create websites that are made using full design processes, in accordance with best practices and know-how on how to achieve effectiveness.
A website created for a customer works much faster than one created on a random theme purchased online. Building a website from scratch allows you to better tailor the site to the customer’s expectations, the nature of the business and the goals set by the customer. A specialist has the ability to edit the design, make changes to the code, and implement individual solutions and scripts.
Basic problems with low-budget and amateur websites
Low-budget websites created in a cottage industry manner are most often projects created by one person, not a team of specialists. This is one of the reasons why they will never be able to compete commercially with products created in a full design process and with a focus on company profit. It is well known that such websites have problems with:
- updates,
- security,
- speed,
- performance optimisation.
Unprofessional website designs also cause complications when attempting to edit the design. This is mainly due to unreadable code. They cannot be fully adapted to the client’s vision and business needs, because the ready-made template can “fall apart” at any moment. For the final result to be exactly what the client wants, the theme itself would have to be 99% consistent with their vision. It is also worth remembering that a publicly available purchased theme will never be completely secure. It may just as well be bought by a hacker who will find vulnerabilities in it and hack into the website created with it without much trouble.
Amateur projects are also behind the curve in terms of dedicated design and, above all, focus on business effectiveness. Such products are not aimed at companies that operate commercially, but at people from the non-profit sector who need websites for hobby projects, such as photography or the blogosphere in general. Commercial use for low-budget projects only makes sense for local micro-businesses that do not have sophisticated marketing, such as plumbing, electrical or shoemaking services.
The pitfalls of attractive themes
One of the most common arguments for choosing amateur designs, apart from price, is the availability of attractive ready-made website themes. It is not worth succumbing to these illusions! Ready-made themes were created to provide all possible combinations, and as a result, they are unable to deliver any in an optimised way. Each of them contains an excess of elements in several combinations. For the customer, this is in no way unique, and from a technical point of view, it is very slow. The website is cluttered with all these elements, which turn out to be unnecessary anyway.
As for the above, the speed of the panel and the website itself leaves much to be desired. With ready-made themes, it is practically impossible to achieve results close to 90-100 points on Google’s Page Speed Insight scale. In other technologies, this is an obvious requirement. A slow-running website has a much lower conversion rate than a fast-running one. Currently, speed also affects the positioning of a website in search results. This is all the more evident as mobile traffic is now generated to a greater extent on mobile devices. The speed of the mobile version of ready-made themes leaves much to be desired.
In addition, there is often a problem with updates and website maintenance. A website based on a ready-made theme usually has a minimum of 10-20 plugins, whereas a well-implemented backend has 1-4, and WordPress with a frontend has another 3-6. It is worth remembering that plugins added to themes are also paid for, often without the possibility of updating. This increases the annual cost or makes updating impossible.
An even more serious problem is the fact that with 10-20 plugins, security does not exist. Installing another 2-4 plugins that secure WordPress does not provide any long-term effects.
Why is it not worth creating amateur websites for business clients?
It is not worth spending time creating websites that are done in a rushed and amateurish manner. It is also not worth investing in themes bought for £50 from foreign websites, only to then adapt them to the client. Such ideas are better left to freelancers as solutions for low-budget projects that need “some kind” of website, rather than a well-functioning marketing foundation for business development.
In view of the above arguments, as a company that wants to deliver the highest quality websites, we currently reject all enquiries from clients who expect low-quality products. We focus on companies that need well-functioning marketing mechanisms for their business and have the potential to scale that business, so that both we and our clients can grow together.
