Establishing an online website and creating an online presence is an integral part of a business in the present competitive arena of entrepreneurship. Creating an optimized website within the budget to attract a wide range of traffic is a must for any small business to flourish. Most customers look to surf the internet for information on services and goods that comes to them instantly through a well-defined website that holds their attention.

Custom website design or website template:

For a small business to stand out from the crowd and to gain a permanent place in the customer’s mind, it needs to have an appealing web presence. There are two main choices to attain this, either through a template web design or through a custom web design, in either case, good search and hard work are essential to gain better search engine results. Having a good looking website is part of the internet marketing paradigm and having to build a website through templates also needs quality time investments and money. Before deciding through which method, a business website needs to be designed, research on the cost of both the methods, time incurred in developing the website through both these methods, and the time incurred to build the product online, within the same time frame.

Custom website design:

A custom website is unique to a business, it gets developed from scratch. Its information architecture, graphics, navigational structure, administrative back end, functions all get designed based on the specifications lineated by the website owners. A custom web design is ideal for a small business with established branding guidelines that reflect the nature of the business exactly. Custom websites offer every single aspect required to elevate the status of the website beyond boundaries. It includes all integrities of a professional business site such as search engine optimization, data analytics, integration with social media, and so on. All of these are possible with a custom website design.

Advantages:

The website holds a unique design incorporating all the basic needs of the business.
The Content management system gets built into the site to make it easy for its owners to manage the site’s content by themselves.
Custom website designs are search engine friendly.
The website is highly adaptable to the needs of the business.
The website is made cross-browser compatible.
Offers the best user experience possible as it is being built based on the owner’s specifications.
Continuous support is offered post website development.

Website templates:

Even though custom websites translate business specifications exactly, they are not needed in all cases, start-ups could be fine with pre-defined website templates as well. These templates offer a modest internet presence for a business and are ideal for those with short deadlines for launching, little content, and websites having a small budget and little project scope. They are economical and are quick to get launched as they are based on a pre-existing layout and include only a few basic functions such as social media links, contact forms, pre-defined content, etc. It also allows for some level of customization with graphics, colors, fonts, etc.

Advantages:

Website templates have a short development time
They are cheap and ideal for low budget businesses.
They could be easily created without much HTML/ CSS coding knowledge.
The designer is on their own in making template design decisions
It is the most convenient and easy way to develop a website for a business.

Credentials of a promising eCommerce website development

1.Clean code:
Your website developer should be able to develop clean codes for the websites, the term clean code refers to codes that are easy to read and easy to develop. Having clean codes ensures the website works better, fast, and efficiently. Clean code also helps in making definite changes to the website when needed. Some website developers hide the backend code which is an important part of a page’s code from the website owner. This code is written in Ruby or PHP and needs to be clean and open for changes in the future. One best tool to indicate the purity of the developer’s code is the W3C’s HTML validator as this tool renders the list of errors and warnings in the site’s HTML.
2.Performance and functionality of the site:
Potential eCommerce website developers should develop sites that load quickly. This is an important parameter for an eCommerce website as visitors to a website would not wait for it to load. If the web page does not pop up, there are all chances for the shopper to simply leave. Sites that take more than 4 seconds to load might lose 25% of its visitors and thus sites need to load quickly. Website developers should develop competent eCommerce sites and perform speed tests on them and enable them to gain a perfect speed score. Websites need to be cross-browser compatible as well, they should open in mobiles and desktops. The question you develop about the page load time and functionality of the site in specific areas such as filling out forms, entering shopping cart, making payments, and so on. Even minor breaks in functionality could kill sales in an eCommerce site. Web developers should build intuitive and easy use websites with all key functionalities that a shopper would expect such as site navigation, product filtering, and sorting, adding products to the cart and checkout process.
3.Creating a website that eases purchase:
There is tough competition surrounding the eCommerce business. Any website is only an option in the minds of the buyer and it needs to outsmart the competitors to be picked up by the customer. The ECommerce website developer should concentrate on the price listing of the websites to portray the best products with good value of money on top. Websites should be compatible and proactive to mind the shipping costs, coupons, and other applicable coupons. Websites should categorize products based on a particular niche to sell a huge number of products based on specific categories. Realizable web hosting ensures 100% uptime of websites to ensure the constant availability of products to customers. Most of all, eCommerce website developers should ensure a safe online shopping experience as users are concerned about their privacy and security.
4.Web Accessibility
Web accessibility is a legal requirement for eCommerce websites. Website developers should be capable of creating websites that meet the general guidelines on web accessibility as this is a measure of how site visitors interact with the website. The web designer should be an expert who could translate the objectives and goals of the business into a pleasing online shopping experience. He should be able to inquire about the different goals, values, and differentiators and be informed of all credentials before creating an eCommerce website.

Verdict:

Custom websites carry with them the element of flexibility whereas template website designs are ideal for businesses that require a quick and affordable web presence. Though the latter does not have extensive capabilities compared with made as per specification solutions, they are ideal for projects with a limited scope. For those businesses that value the importance of a strong online identity, it is important to invest in a website that is being custom-built, rather than finding a template that fits the brand. But as a business grows, its website needs to grow as well, irrespective of building a website or implementing a pre-defined template it needs to keep migrating towards robust and custom-defined solutions as its business evolves.