At Alter Endeavors Digital Creative, we believe in the power of the digital ecosystem. A healthy digital ecosystem consists of marketing initiatives that work together to tell your brand’s story and drive results. One of those key elements is your website, where online users are driven to learn more about your brand, including what makes it uniquely better than its competitors. The ongoing question we aim to answer is whether a custom-design website is worth the investment over a templated website.

Custom-Designed Website

All of the websites we develop and launch are custom-designed, meaning — there is no other on the internet like it! The process we have perfected over the past 10 years includes an extensive discovery questionnaire to ensure we have the full context of your brand story, goals and objectives, and positioning within the marketplace. 

With this information, our designers are able to craft what we call a custom “stylescape” that visually represents your brand, including the imagery, colors, fonts, and iconography that will be used throughout the final product.

If you’re looking to build a website for an existing brand with established branding, then a custom-designed website is incredibly important as out-of-the-box templates will force you to make concessions on the look and feel of your website. 

Aesthetics aside, a custom-designed website enables us to address your goals from a functionality standpoint. Perhaps you’re looking to grow your email list ahead of a book launch, or prioritize contact form submissions as a service provider. Out-of-the-box templates have a tendency to, well… put your brand inside of a box and make it difficult to pivot or scale over time, where custom solutions mean we can talk through what your goal is today versus what you anticipate it being a year from now, and structure it accordingly. 

Speaking for the long term, we offer ongoing site management to ensure that your website is able to grow alongside you and complement your marketing strategy. This includes design changes, additional pages, or functionalities as you need. 

Templated Website

While our focus is on building custom-designed websites, we do believe there is a time and place for a templated website. In fact, we often work with service companies who started with a templated website and came to us once they outgrew it and had the funds to invest in a platform that would better serve their specific needs for the long-term.

If you’re in the beginning stages of building your brand and need to establish an online presence quickly and funds are tight, a templated website may be the best path forward. With that being said, there is still a way to go this route with intention, which makes transitioning to a custom-designed website down the line a simpler task. Opt for a WordPress build with a premade DIVI theme. This way, you can start to familiarize yourself with the backend of WordPress and the inner workings of DIVI — a theme that is built with drag and drop modules.

Transitioning from a ~$75 templated website to a custom-designed website that will enable your company to scale can feel overwhelming, but rest assured that our team has walked entrepreneurs and thought leaders through our proven process countless times. Our promise to you: a final product that will be responsive with the latest technology for the next 3 years and will stand out in the marketplace. Interested in a custom-designed website? Get a conversation started with our team today.