A great article outlining some of the pitfalls with buying an off-the-shelf wordpress theme.

With the meteoric rise of WordPress, there are new websites popping up all over the place. However, a lot of these websites are using off the shelf WordPress themes from market place websites like Themeforest. This means there a lot of identical websites out there. And these websites have some big problems.

The best way to get your company’s website up and running, is to partner with a creative agency, not using an off the shelf template.

Here’s the deal:

Off the shelf WordPress themes have several fundamental flaws. Let’s take a look at some of the problems with “building your own website” using an off the shelf WordPress theme.

The problem with off the shelf WordPress themes is massive.

They’re a “one size fits all” solution, and you’re probably not a one size fits all type of business.

We use WordPress to build all of our websites here at Canny. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it!

Cheap themes will work, for a time. They’ll be cheap to setup, for a time. But nothing compares to working with a professional design agency to build your website, and make it work for you!

Off the Shelf Themes

  • Will be cheap to buy and pay someone to setup initially.
  • Will only last you two or three years before needing a full web overhaul.
  • Easy to outgrow.
  • Can have a negative effect on your SEO efforts.
  • Can prevent you building a solid relationship with a design agency.

Custom Builds

  • Will seem expensive initially, but over time will prove its value.
  • Can be built upon and added to, or redesigned, rather than ripped up.
  • Will grow alongside your company.
  • Built right, will have a positive effect on your SEO.
  • Helps you build a solid relationship with a design agency.

Read more here…

Brendan Proctor

22 Years of experience in UI web design & front end development. Designing, developing & promoting websites for all kinds of businesses in the United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, Germany, Switzerland and South Africa. Spends his week days buried in responsive web site design & front end development making the most of CSS & Javascript.

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