WordPress Themes: Pre-Designed or Custom? Which is a Better Choice for Your Business?

In my recent post, “Buyer Beware: Is Your Web Designer Really Designing?”, I, perhaps naively, expressed my curiosity about the number of popular “premium” (“pre-designed”) WordPress Themes that appear to be designed for designers. I also suggested that the average entrepreneur or marketer (one that isn’t a web designer or a web developer) would need at least some assistance with the configuration and customization of a new WordPress website.

In other words, the real price for a pre-designed WordPress website is likely to cost considerably more than the $0 to $100 one might pay for the rights to use the Theme. And, while pre-designed Themes (or pre-designed templates of any kind) can still significantly lower the cost of creating a new website, this “one-size-fits-all” approach does little to help your business stand out from the crowd in a positive way— at least not without some modifications.

Now, in case you didn’t know, WordPress is also becoming a popular choice for managing content on small websites— not just blogs.

So, let’s take a closer look…

Getting Started with WordPress

One of the first things you’ll need to decide is where to host your WordPress website (which again, doesn’t have to be a blog). At WordPress.com, you can choose from 70+ free themes and the cost for hosting is free!

If you’re just getting started, this may be the perfect way to get your feet wet with WordPress. In my case, I signed up for a free WordPress site on WordPress.com as part of a quick introduction to WordPress. Of course, I have since designed/created my own theme (yes, the one you’re looking at now) which leads to my next point…

Planning for the Future

If you want to use a commercially-marketed, pre-designed WordPress Theme (a premium theme), or hire a designer to design a custom Theme from scratch, you will need to choose your own hosting company and install the WordPress software (and Theme) yourself— instead of going with a free WordPress.com hosted site. While this may sound intimidating for the average entrepreneur, some hosting companies make the software installation fairly easy. And, many WordPress Theme designers offer adequate online documentation and support for installing and configuring their Theme. Custom Theme designers will usually do the installation for you, but ask before you hire one to be sure.

So, for most small businesses, self-hosting is a minimum requirement for just about any WordPress website. Such an approach will provide the kind of flexibility you will need, sooner or later.

Ready! Set! Go! Or Not.

So, you’ve selected a hosting provider with a one-click WordPress installation and great support; and after a day or so of careful research, you found the perfect pre-designed WordPress Theme. In just a few days or weeks (rather than months for a custom Theme), you’ll be in business!

Or, maybe not…

Keep in mind that many pre-designed WordPress Themes may not include the beautiful placeholder photos that you see in their live demos. So, you will need to provide your own images— which you would probably want to do anyway, right? However, the quality of your images, and the way they are handled (i.e., composed, selected, cropped, re-sized, retouched, compressed, etc.), will have a major impact on the appearance of the Theme you selected (and more often than not, a negative one if you’re not a good, experienced designer).

If you can put aside the emotional attachment you may have with your own images (e.g., “but I took those pictures myself” or “but I only paid $5 a piece”, etc.), you may be initially disappointed with your new Theme, and you may not know why or how to fix it.

Of course, you’ll also need to write and add your own text (as you might with a custom Theme), unless you hire a professional writer. However, there are other things to do: from updating/modifying WordPress’ general default settings; to installing and configuring plug-ins; to creating and/or adding your logo; to modifying the color palette to match your brand; adding pages; search engine optimization; backing up your database and files; etc.

For experienced designers and/or developers, some of these things are fairly trivial— but not for the average entrepreneur or marketer, who may not have the time, inclination, skills, and/or software to do a proper job.

Budgeting for Help

So, if you choose the “pre-designed” approach, you should probably set aside at least $1,500 to $3,000 for assistance with the implementation— that’s over and above the original cost of your pre-designed Theme, and that typically excludes the costs for outsourced copywriting, photography, custom graphics, and hosting. And yes, those numbers can be lower or much higher. I’m also assuming you already have a logo (which you should almost always address long before completing your website, as it will dictate, at least to some extent, which colors and fonts you will want to use).

The Biggest Problems with Pre-Designed Themes

While the cost of a pre-designed Theme is still very attractive (even if you hire someone to help with the implementation), there are definitely trade-offs you should be aware of.

Perhaps the most obvious one is that the same Theme you just purchased will probably be re-sold, again and again, to others, including your competitors— some as many as 1,000+ times!

Additionally, many Themes are intentionally generic in appearance and functionality, as they must appeal to a wide audience to be commercially successful. All of this makes it a lot easier for your competitors to duplicate your efforts, while making it a lot more difficult for you to differentiate.

Of course, a Theme can be modified to the “nth” degree so that it is practically unrecognizable. However, you (or the person you hire) can also spend just as much time, if not more, tweaking a pre-designed Theme to death, than if you had gone totally custom in the first place. And worse, you can still end up with a website that is totally wrong for you and your target audience.

Also, while reputable Theme designers include modest Theme support in one way or another, they don’t include the sort of strategic advice that small businesses need to avoid making expensive mistakes. Usually, the advice is primarily related to the Theme installation, and understandably so.

And finally, pre-designed Themes are not a complete branding solution. It’s very easy to find yourself with a website that looks totally different from your printed and other marketing collateral. Remember— visual consistency is critically important— across all media. Otherwise, your prospects and customers won’t easily recognize you when you attempt to communicate with them, and furthermore, such an ad hoc approach can have a very negative impact on the way the market perceives your business.

On the other hand, what can you expect for less than $100?!

But Do You Really Need to Go Custom?

Obviously, a good custom Theme will require a larger initial investment than a pre-designed Theme. It will also require more work on your part. But why?

In my case, I haven’t worked with a single client in 15+ years who didn’t need at least some strategic guidance and support. At the very least, a good designer will ask you to clarify your objectives. I also want to get a better sense for the audience you are targeting; your top competitors; your success metrics; your likes and dislikes; the ways in which you plan to generate traffic; your branding requirements (if any); and technical requirements. If I sense a weakness in your strategy, I’ll politely challenge you and help you make it stronger.

Otherwise, if we wait to address your strategy during the Production Phase (the very last phase of creating a website), changes will be unnecessarily expensive because both— the design and the coding are affected.

When you start with a pre-designed WordPress Theme, you are essentially starting with the Production Phase (which is never a wise thing to do).

For more on the benefits of defining your strategy, read one of my other posts: “12 Steps to a Successful Website: A Client’s Guide for Creating a Winning Strategy“.

Another common mistake I see— most clients need to be reminded that a “user-centered”, rather than a “self-centered” approach will help them better serve and communicate with their target audience, and ultimately improve their chance for success.

I often use a technique involving “User Personas”, which are used as a springboard to generate a list of “outside the box” features and content that we may not have thought of otherwise. This knowledge is then incorporated into the design of your website, and the elements that appear on each page, are visually prioritized— relative to your visitors’ objectives and your success metrics. To date, I have not seen any pre-designed Themes that come close to incorporating this kind of intelligence.

To learn how you can take advantage of User Personas, read another one of my posts: “User Personas: The Secret to User-Centered Web Design and a Better ROI.”

It also helps to get a better sense for what your competitors are doing well— and not so well. Therefore, I usually review the “goal” pages of my clients’ Top 3 competitors to determine ways to exploit their weaknesses. And of course, this knowledge is also incorporated into the design.

I also create a “mood board”, which is my way of creating a “visual vocabulary” to help express, creatively, and on an emotional level, what my client’s brand stands for. And then, I create 3 different concepts— one of which will ultimately be applied to the final design.

I could go on and on about why a custom designed Theme is better than a pre-designed Theme. But the point is, you really owe it to yourself to be fully aware of what you’re getting, and not getting, with a pre-designed and custom Theme.

How About a Good Compromise?

One thing we’ll continue to see are WordPress “Frameworks” which are basically skeleton Themes (or pre-defined, functional “wireframes”) that are intended to minimize repetitive tasks typically associated with Theme creation. While Frameworks are a good solution for developers and designers of pre-designed Themes, it takes a lot of imagination for the average person to see the creative possibilities. So, for example, instead of seeing those gorgeous photos (a.k.a., “eye candy”) that you’ll find on many pre-designed Themes, initially, all you will see are gray boxes and columns of un-styled text.

There are definitely pros and cons to this approach, but that’s a topic for a different post (and probably a different reader). Otherwise, Frameworks are not a “silver bullet” for significantly decreasing production time, as far as custom Theme creation is concerned.

So, What Have We Learned?

Pre-designed Themes, while attractively priced and typically faster to implement, may require a larger budget and more work than you initially realized. Furthermore, without a lot of tweaking, pre-designed Themes do little to help you differentiate in a crowded marketplace. And, they make it easy for the novice to make basic presentation and coding mistakes that can cause more harm than good. They also make it easier for non-designers to masquerade as experienced designers— at least until they actually begin modifying the Theme.

Custom Themes, on the other hand, are usually tailored to better meet the needs of your specific strategic objectives and your target audience. They offer more opportunities to help you stand out from the crowd, but they require a larger up-front investment that may be unrealistic for some startups and small businesses. They may also require more due diligence when searching for a reputable designer or firm.

So, don’t go into this blindly— take the time to research both solutions and put together a realistic budget. Talk to the designers of custom websites. Talk to others who specialize in “tuning” templates. You may be surprised to discover that the gap in cost between pre-designed Themes and custom Themes is a lot smaller than you think.

Tommy Oddo is a web designer and digital artist who lives in Austin, Texas. Entrepreneurs, marketers, and in-house teams hire him to make their websites and digital products more engaging and easier to use. Follow him on: Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, and Facebook. Subscribe to future articles via RSS and/or Email.