Over two decades after its first release, WordPress (WP) remains the most popular content management system (CMS) on the planet. At the time of writing this post, WP version 5.9 has been downloaded over 19 million times, and this number keeps growing.
WP is very “democratic.” It’s used for various types of websites, starting from individual blogs and non-profits and ending with online stores. WP is favored by many globally renowned enterprises including Mercedez-Benz, Microsoft, and Bloomberg. What’s the secret behind this incredible popularity?
WP is an open-source platform, easy to set up and manage and enjoying huge community support. It also has thousands of ready-made plugins to cater to almost any business function, plus a great number of themes to choose from.
A WP website’s features are important, no doubt about that. It’s a visually attractive and functional theme, though, that can have a great impact on the success of a business as well. In this post, we’re going to show you why a custom WordPress theme is preferable to a ready-cooked free or paid variety.
While custom WordPress themes offer tailored solutions, embracing headless WordPress development takes customization to the next level. Discover how headless WordPress services elevate website performance and user experience to new heights.
What Is a Theme? What Types of Themes Exist?
A WP theme is a set of files that define the way a website looks as well as the layout of its content. The files include CSS stylesheets, templates, images, JavaScript files, PHP files, and a number of other files.
In a nutshell, a theme is a vessel that you will later fill with your content.
There are three options when it comes to obtaining themes.
- You can download a free WP theme from the official vendor’s website.
- You can purchase a premium theme on numerous sites.
- You can hire a professional designer and developer who will create a custom theme exactly to your specifications.
While it’s possible to customize a free or paid theme by tweaking its code, building a theme from scratch is a lot more beneficial for your business. Here is why.
The Advantages of Choosing a Custom WordPress Theme for Your Project
#1: A WordPress Custom Theme Will Precisely Align With Your Company’s Goals, Vision, and Content
You can find tons of beautiful-looking themes, especially among the premium ones. You can modify their appearance and layout, only to realize that all your efforts have gone down the drain: the theme doesn’t reflect your business goals or vision. It’s a very delicate matter that only true WordPress development professionals can handle.
Selecting the right colors or fonts is not enough. There’s a long list of questions you need to answer before opening a single HTML or PHP tag, such as these:
- What is the purpose of your website? The first thing a business owner should determine is the primary goal of the website. Is it to provide information about the business, to sell products or services, to generate leads, or to serve as a portfolio? Understanding the website’s purpose will guide its design and content.
- Who is your target audience? Knowing who you’ll be speaking to can greatly influence the design and functionality of your site. A website targeting millennials might have a different look and feel than one targeting senior citizens. You should also consider the geographical location and cultural background of your audience.
- What kind of content will you publish? Will your website primarily feature blog posts, product descriptions, videos, or customer testimonials? The type of content you plan to publish will affect how your website should be structured.
- How do you want your brand to be perceived? Your website is a reflection of your brand. Consider what kind of image you want to project. Do you want to appear professional and serious, or friendly and approachable? The design and language of your website should support this image.
- What features does your website need to achieve its purpose? Depending on your website’s purpose, you might need specific features like a shopping cart for an e-commerce site, a booking system for a service-based business, or a portfolio display for a creative agency.
- What are your competitors doing? What features do their websites have? How are they engaging their audience?
Only after conducting detailed research, sifting through your business data, and understanding your key business needs will a custom WordPress theme developer get down to actual coding. Customizing a ready-made theme to the required depth may take a lot of time with no guarantee of the desired outcome.
#2: A Custom WordPress Theme Will Differentiate You from Others in Your Niche
If you use the same theme as the other guy, even after changing the colors and content, your potential customers will not remember you and won’t be likely to return to your website next time.
You might think that purchasing a premium theme and modifying it to your taste may really set you apart from other companies in your industry. The sad truth is that almost 15% of the market is taken up by just three premium themes. This means that even after making radical changes to the theme you have bought, its layout and features will resemble the themes many other market players use.
A custom WordPress theme or a custom WoooCommerce theme (if you have an online store), by contrast, will be distinct from those of your competitors, since it has its own unique design that you have created. That contributes to better brand recognition, customer engagement, and, consequently, better sales.
#3: A WordPress Custom Theme Will Give You More Security
Security is of utmost importance to any business. Unfortunately, the Internet is swarming with cyber criminals of all calibers trying to exploit vulnerabilities in websites. One downside of WP’s popularity is that it’s favored by hackers for their attacks. The shocking statistics: 90% of all sites that hackers targeted just a few years ago were powered by WP.
How do cybercriminals usually get inside a WP website? By downloading a free theme or purchasing a premium one and breaking down its code in order to discover soft spots. Once they find those, all that’s left is to search the Internet for websites that use the target theme and sneak in through the security holes.
No hacker will be able to lay hands on your custom theme’s code. While it doesn’t guarantee complete immunity from cyber attacks, you can be sure that your custom WordPress website is more secure than if you’d installed a free theme or purchased a premium one.
#4: A Custom WordPress Theme Is Always SEO-Friendly
Want to rank among the first websites on Google’s search results pages? Who doesn’t? Then, make your website SEO-friendly. While most ready-cooked WP themes, particularly premium ones, are shipped with search engine optimization features, you’ll still have to put a significant amount of effort into customizing them in order to bring them up to the mark from an SEO perspective.
Along with keywords, a website’s structure is what contributes to better search engine visibility. When you’re having your custom WordPress theme built from the ground up, you have the chance to develop its structure from start to finish so that crawlers can easily index your content.
#5: A WordPress Custom Theme Guarantees Excellent Performance
Many premium themes come overloaded with all kinds of fancy features that your business may not really need. The code of those plugins is a sinker that causes your site to load longer. For a business website, loading speed is a crucial factor. If it’s at least more than two seconds, visitors will go elsewhere. Along with the reduced sales, this is a big blow to SEO rankings, as the bounce rate starts growing by leaps and bounds.
A custom theme contains your business-exclusive features and no others. That makes it lighter and allows your custom WordPress website to run faster, contributing to better user experience. In addition, you can be confident that your custom WordPress theme’s code has been extensively tested to eliminate any bugs when you outsource WordPress development. That’s not always the case with premium themes, let alone free ones.
#6: A Custom Theme’s Developer Provides First-Hand Support
You can stumble upon a host of issues with a pre-made theme, whether free or paid. The theme might be incompatible with one or more plugins, rendering your website completely inoperable. You’ll need professional support.
However, thousands or millions of websites may be using the theme. It means that their owners might be facing the same problem and also need technical assistance. As such, you may wait for ages for the issue to be resolved. A nightmarish scenario for any business.
With a custom theme, on the other hand, you can count on high-quality, instant support if something goes wrong. With white label WordPress development, the theme’s developer is always at your service, ready to make any changes or fix a bug in your custom WordPress site the moment you complain about it.
#7: A Custom WordPress Theme Can Be Easily Updated
Updates are important for any software. WP themes are no exception. They ensure a theme has all the latest features as well as security patches that better protect a WP site against cyber threats.
As time goes by, though, a premium theme provider may start ignoring updates, putting your website at risk. A custom WordPress theme is a different matter altogether. All you have to do when you need to update the theme is to notify its developer. Thus, the best user experience for your customers, and for you — a stable and secure custom WordPress website.
Final Thoughts
We hear one objection, and we admit it: a custom theme is more expensive than a pre-made one. However, when business success is at stake, every cent you pay for a custom theme is well worth it. Your custom WordPress website will look and feel like no other and always have the latest features for your visitors to enjoy. It will also be more secure and load faster, while your potential customers can easily find it in the boundless webspace.
Searching for a company that provides a top-quality custom WordPress theme development service? Or WooCommerce theme development? Get in touch with GetDevDone. Our WP division has a long history of successfully completed projects of all levels of complexity. You can send us your design or just share your ideas with us and get back an SEO-friendly, modern, secure, and well-performing custom WordPress theme.
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