Pre-Made Themes vs. Custom Themes in WordPress: How To Pick What’s Best For Your Business

Today our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development is asking you: What is the very first thing you notice once your browser loads a website? We bet the domain name, the About Us page and the overall content come second to the design presented! There’s a huge chance you’ve just stumbled upon a WordPress-based website and the very layout you see is actually a theme – today we’d be discussing all the differences between pre-made and custom themes trying to figure out which one is your best go-to strategy!

See, WordPress themes are huge – as a matter of fact, they are among the reasons the CMS has gained such enormous popularity among both web developers and users. It’s thanks to them we all are able to experience a platform to its fullest. Themes are responsible for the overall design and layout of a website, along with aspects such as typography, color, menu distribution and all other design elements that truly make a platform unique and help showcase a brand’s identity.

Since WordPress is incredibly user-friendly and many non-tech users have the full capacity to navigate through the CMS and get the most out of its nearly endless features and possibilities, the platform offers a plethora of pre-made themes in its repository, both free and paid. This way users can easily choose from hundreds of options when it comes to how their website is going to look in the end. On the other hand, pre-made themes come with certain limitations that sometimes stop businesses from fully showcasing their initial design plan and strategy. Hence, custom themes gain more attention than ever, drawing a wider audience by the minute.

Join us as our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development is here to tell you all about pre-made and custom themes in hopes of helping you decide which option better suits your business needs.

Let’s begin, shall we?

WordPress Themes In a Nutshell

We’ve already mentioned that WordPress is the world’s most famous content management system – it powers over 40% of all websites altogether! Can you imagine the scale of its success?

Of course, there’s a very good reason for this – next to being highly scalable, secure and easily optimized, WordPress is conducted in a way that allows anyone to use it. It’s not necessary for you to be a tech-savvy individual in order to manage to come up with a website in no time. Part of the quick setup is the usage of themes – WordPress has tons of those in its repository waiting for you to enter and pick the most appropriate one for your business needs.

So basically, a WordPress theme consists of a folder of files that simultaneously create the design of your site. When we refer to a theme, we have in mind the template files, stylesheets, images, and JavaScript files. All those pieces combined have the power to dictate how your website is going to look and showcase its main layout and design features. All people have to do is browse through the catalog and pick the theme that best serves their business needs. In the repository, users can filter themes by categories (blogs, WooCommerce platforms, etc.), price, accessibility and all other important aspects you could think of.

The great thing about themes is that they allow you to have your website up and running while also coming up with a thorough explanation regarding their installation process. You can also preview every single theme and decide whether it indeed manages to fit the entire website’s concept.

Both free and paid pre-made themes are a good and quick solution for everybody who wishes to end up with a platform as soon as possible. However, enterprises and major businesses often opt for custom themes – those are themes specifically created by web developers for an even more enhanced and elevated look of the website.

Once we’ve briefly touched upon the subject of themes, our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development is about to tell you all about the main differences between the pre-made and custom themes – we hope the following info will help you decide which theme choice would serve your website justice. Let’s continue!

Pre-Made Vs. Custom Themes – Discussing All The Pros and Cons

Pre-Made themes are certainly here to stay – after all, they provide quick setup and great design, among other things. If we need to pay attention to their numerous benefits, we’d name the following:

• There are hundreds of them – users can effortlessly find the most suitable option for their platform
• There are pre-made themes for virtually any type of platform – whether you’re going for a blog, an enterprise or SME website, an LMS platform or a WooCommerce store, you’d find themes specifically tailored to those types of online establishments
• Changing the theme doesn’t lead to losing content or website information
• Many of the pre-made themes are SEO-friendly, making website optimization easier than ever
• Many of them are accessibility-friendly, making them a good choice for a broader crowd of visitors

Basically, every pre-made theme is conducted in a way that allows you to launch your website’s full features and tools. However, there are some disadvantages that may cause you to reconsider whether the pre-made theme is your best go-to strategy for your business.

• Anyone can use them which decreases your website’s overall uniqueness and exclusivity
• If you are opting for specific requirements and features, perhaps no theme would be able to live up to your business’s standards
• Premium themes could be quite costly while the free pre-made themes oftentimes come with numerous limitations and require further upgrades
• Pre-made themes often come with limited customization options – this means that while you have the control to modify and customize a theme to some extent, hundreds of features would remain unusable
• If a pre-made theme is no longer being updated, its users may end up experiencing problems, issues and even security breaches

Our Enterprise Agency for Development won’t be surprised if you’ve already raised your eyebrow at the pre-made themes. If you believe the cons are outweighing the pros, fret not – we have a solution for you and it’s called custom themes! Let’s see what they have to offer.

Custom Themes and Why They Appear To Be the Best Business Website Solution

As their name suggests, custom themes allow extreme customization – after all, that’s their biggest advantage! A lot of businesses opt for custom themes right from the start of their web development processes – choosing custom themes ultimately gives your platform a sense of uniqueness and exclusivity since the theme is specifically created and optimized in a way that greatly serves the website’s purpose in terms of design and functionality.

Of course, outside of uniqueness, going for custom themes comes with a plethora of other advantages:

• You get the best code possible – one of the main differences between pre-made and custom themes is the fact that in custom themes the web developing teams start writing your theme from scratch. That said, there is a minimal chance of issues and bugs since the web developers behind the project have full control over the entire process. In other words, if an issue occurs, the web developers can quickly resolve it as they will be working with their own code.
• Businesses can get rid of plugin malfunctions – in WordPress plugins are huge. A great majority of websites use them in order to elevate their website’s functionalities and tools. However, in some instances, plugins can become problematic due to a lack of upgrades, security breaches and slowing down the platform’s performance. With custom themes, web developers can code out all the functionalities the brand needs without having to install third-party plugins. Web developers could even write custom plugins and further elevate the entire experience and performance. All this leads us to the next advantage.
• Having a custom theme greatly improves the website’s speed – nowadays speed is among the most sought-after website requirements since it offers a splendid user experience. Pre-made themes and the excessive usage of plugins often could slow the website down leading to people quickly leaving. Custom themes, on the other hand, are coded in a way that makes them run smoothly and increases speed and performance.
• It manages to boost the website’s SEO ranking – SEO is everything when it comes to brand success and popularity. Custom themes are extremely SEO-friendly and outweigh the pre-made ones in this aspect.

Our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development is certain we’ve managed to convince you why opting for custom themes is the best choice you could possibly make. When it comes to the cons, however, there isn’t much we could share.

Since custom theme development requires a professional team of web developers, some people state that the higher price of hiring such is a con. When you come to think about it, it would probably cost you way more to deal with a problematic pre-made theme and a website that’s not performing well than opting for professional service.

Successful Businesses Choose Custom Themes and So Should You

We hope our article was informative enough and that it will help you decide what’s truly best for your business website.

If you believe custom themes are your go-to strategy, then don’t hesitate to ask us for assistance. We specialize in custom WordPress development and would be more than happy to come up with a great theme for your online platform. Cheers to success!

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