Don't Buy a WordPress Template!

Your website should be an accurate and visually appealing representation of your business, and not anyone else’s. WordPress Templates force you to use a generic and universal design, which may or may not have anything to do with representing your business accurately. When you’re trying to establish branding that precisely reflects all the qualities of your company and its products and services, the generic approach leaves much to be desired. The marketing advantage that template-makers love to promote is that they’re easy to use and very intuitive for the many visitors that they hope you’ll have to your site. The reason that they’re so easy to use is that they adopt a cookie-cutter approach to design and construction so that they look like thousands of other websites on the Internet, which do the exact same thing, and in many cases, even make use of the same content and graphics.
WordPress Templates are made for a one-size-fits-all model, and they are intended to satisfy as many customers as possible. However, that’s not a benefit to you and your business, it’s a quick buck for the template builder. If they build a template which they sell to 1,000 customers, that means they get paid 1,000 times for a WordPress template they developed once. A website custom-designed specifically for your target market, with your branding, colors, and calls-to-action, is far more effective in reaching your targeted customers and generating leads.

Your competitors might be using the same WordPress Templates

Building your online presence must be a unique process, and it should be something which sets you apart from your competitors. There are several online markets that sell templates, and these templates are bought by thousands of users all around the globe. There’s a fair chance that your next-door neighbor is using the same popular template purchased from one of these online markets, or even worse – your competitor may have purchased the exact same template you’re using for your business website! Having a website custom hand-crafted, will ensure that you stand out from the crowd and it will give you a strong online identity.

WordPress Templates are generally buggy, poorly coded, and full of bloat

Do you know where these templates are coming from? Are they following strict coding standards? You’re probably thinking to yourself “Why does it matter because I’m not a programmer.” Poorly coded templates reflect on you and on your business – when Internet visitors read poorly written content on your site and wait for slow loading images, the first thing they’ll do is click away. The next thing they’ll do is visit the website of one of your competitors, where they may find a more functional site and faster-loading content. Needless to say, the final thing they’ll do is cross you off their list for any future visits – which means that, in one visit, you’ve managed to not only lose a potential sale, but you may have lost any future possibility of a sale, and you will have sullied your reputation in the process.

In order to provide functionality, themes are packed with plug-ins and code to try to suit the needs of the masses. This one size fits all mentality comes with several unforeseen costs and vulnerabilities:

• Slow load times – coding for everyone means that you have excess code. All that code takes longer to load. Slow loading pages = bounced visitors.
• A Hacker Holiday – because your site’s theme is sold to the public at a very reduced cost, it is also sold to hackers. These hackers simply reverse engineer the theme to exploit vulnerabilities and before you know it, your site is turned into a Canadian pharmacy that sells Viagra.
• High Maintenance – because the theme is 3rd party code, and all the plug-ins that add functionality are also 3rd party code, many theme site owners get caught in the update game. It starts when WordPress updates to a new version which then causes the theme manufacturer to react and issue an update on their WordPress Template. At the same time, plug-in manufacturers are playing catch-up too. The themes and plug-ins aren’t taking into consideration how they interrelate to each other and before long, CRASH! Down goes your site and you are paying a developer to get you back up and going.
• Would somebody please consider your customer’s data! – You have a due diligence to protect your visitors’ information when they submit personal data on your website. A theme site jeopardizes their information as much as it does yours. How would it effect your company if a hacker exploited your company list of customers and sent naughty images in your name? Right?!

A team of professionals you can count on.

Unfortunately, there are many web development companies out there who simply slap your logo on a template, and send you on your way. Going this route will leave you sorely disappointed and frustrated, and in the end, you may have to go through the whole process of building a website all over again. The plain fact is that websites built from templates simply cannot be an adequate reflection of all the specific things about you and your business that they should be – they can’t be because they’re built to be all things to all people. That kind of generalized construction cannot possibly provide the kind of value to your business that you need and you deserve. After all – it’s your website. Why shouldn’t you have it all your way, with only your business being the center of attention and not another 1,000 similar businesses which happen to fall into the same template category?

At Tenth Muse Design, we not only customize the front end of your website, but we custom build the backend as well. Customizing the backend of your website means that you can easily manage your site when you need to make changes. This is functionality that we intentionally design in, for your exclusive use, so that you don’t need to call in an expert (although we won’t mind if you do call us), each time you have a simple change that you would like to make.

What if we told you we can custom build your website around your business needs while having the ability for one click updates? It sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. We are very customer-centric at Tenth Muse, and we understand that our success depends on your success, so everyone on our team goes that extra mile to make sure your business has everything needed on your website to get you where you’re trying to go.