Whether you’re a long-standing agency or new business looking for your first website, we’ve all seen the trappings before. Website builders advertised on TV and elsewhere claim to have you online “within seconds”; pocket-change themes and plugins can be purchased and working in minutes.
There are so many quick-fix options out there today, so why go for a bespoke website?
Here at Satur9, we’ve seen the arguments for and against across a variety of situations. For example: plugins, frameworks, or themes prevalent in the world of CMS’s such as WordPress are very useful and work in specific situations– usually until you need to make significant or even seemingly smaller changes.
We’ve helped out agencies who have taken this route, after later finding the need to reverse or modify such functionality due to additional requests from their clients. Sometimes this process can be laborious, creating a situation which is the dictionary definition of irony. In almost all cases however, it’s the client who ends up paying the price for this short-termism thinking.
Even frameworks, used by many designers and developers, are surprisingly poor at being flexible. Bespoke alterations are all-too-often needed for a medium which demands flexibility.
Similarly, website builders (such as Wix and GoDaddy) are cheap or free for a reason, yet it is never revealed to potential customers in the shiny advertisements. Pages are often restricted; functions are non-existent; optimisation is negated; and designs are cookie-cutter and same-y. As a quick-fix, they have their advantages of course, but for a long-term solution they can fall hopelessly short, and leave an irreversible impression on users.
Worse, we’ve seen first-hand how a businesses’ choice of platform (or decision to use off-the-shelf solutions) has kept their success on the web stagnant, or simply proved a loss of effort and money in the long run. This isn’t limited to the good intentions of new businesses either – large corporations who have failed (or refused) to understand the value of an integrated, long-term investment in their online presence end up jumping from re-design to re-design, year after year.
Satur9 plan, design, and develop bespoke solutions for our clients, wherever possible. If you’d like to find out more, get in touch with us today.
If you’ve had experience of these approaches, either good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts too.
cms, content management, modx, nottingham web design, seo, wordpress
