When Should You Get A Bespoke Web Design?

If you’re looking for a new website -? you’ve probably seen two main options; bespoke and templated, with the latter being cheaper. You’re probably also wondering which is suitable for you and your business and therefore, as a web designer with over 5 years of experience - I’m writing this article to give you not a definitive answer but a guide on how to make the choice.

Most of us are probably aware of what both of these are but for those who don’t, a templated design is one based on premade templates. There are different levels to a templated design in terms of customisation. You can get a wholly templated design whereby everything is a template and its original state has not changed. Then, you can also get templated designs where the template has been tweaked according to your requirements and everything in between. Either way, they are designed to fast-track the design process. On the other hand, a bespoke design is generally considered to be made from scratch with every element on the website made to fit your requirements. A bespoke design is also generally made before development, where the designer makes the design using software such as Figma or Adobe XD for your approval, before being handed off to either a developer or developed by the designer themselves.

There’s one resounding difference between the two though, price. But as big a factor as the price is - it is by far not the only factor you should be considering. The easiest way to explain my point in this article is with an example, therefore I’ll be using two example scenarios and we’ll decide together which business in my examples should go with a templated design and which one should go with bespoke.

Example one:

Mary owns a nail salon, the business is ticking by in general, but she needs more people coming through the door. On top of this, Mary is spending far too much time taking appointments over the phone and on top of that, to make matters worse, she has countless cancellations whereby she is often left out of pocket as she also doesn't take any deposits.

Mary plans to run Facebook Ads to her website in order to attract more customers and has already hired an ad agency. She’s also hired a web designer and has been given the choice of bespoke vs templated. But which should she choose? We’ll answer this after we’ve heard example number two.

Example two:

Jon is a local plumber who has a great portfolio. He knows a lot of people locally and is often recommended by them to carry out repairs. Most of his clients come from word of mouth but he’s always getting asked to show examples of his work. Therefore, he is now thinking of getting a website that will host his portfolio and previous client reviews. Which should he choose?

The Answer:

You may or may not have guessed which one should get templated vs bespoke but let's delve deeper into it.

?Mary has a few problems in her business, one is simply not getting enough clients but another one is spending too much time on the phone. On top of those two things she always has countless cancellations that leave her out of pocket. What would the solution to these issues look like on a website??

Firstly, she’d need a high-converting website in order to not lose any money from her Facebook advertising campaign. Secondly, to solve the hours on the phone she spends per month, she should implement an online booking system, that way she could simply direct her customers to book online. And what about the cancellations? Well, her online booking system should have a non-refundable deposit associated with it unless suitable notice is given for the cancellation. To get all this done (especially the conversion optimisation part) she shouldn’t invest in anything less than a bespoke design. She is already undoubtedly spending a ton of money each month driving those visitors to her website, why have a generic design holding her back from converting?

John on the other hand isn’t driving or planning to drive any traffic to his website through paid advertising. He simply wants to direct leads coming to him from word of mouth to a place where his portfolio and client reviews are neatly put in one place. A templated design would do this nicely. I’m sure you’ve seen those beautiful templates over on themeforest.com and similar websites, aesthetics aren’t the issue with them. The issue is that of being (unavoidably) generic.

Even as someone who specialises in bespoke design, I still realise it is not the only answer. If you simply want a website that looks good and has good information, you do not need to spend a ton on bespoke. If however, your aim is to convert traffic or solve specific problems within your business, I wouldn’t recommend anything other than going bespoke.

All of these “templates are useless” or “why waste money on a bespoke design” statements are views that while seem absolute and concrete, are really just shallow viewpoints. A website should always fit your goals and objectives therefore the two primary paths should also be equally considered.

To put everything I said simply and into one sentence: go bespoke if you need a website to attract and convert customers, go templated for purely informational websites.