Responsive Web Design: Custom versus Template

Responsive web design is the way of the future, and a way to ensure that your clients and customers stick with you.

But what is your plan to get your organization’s site to a responsive design?

You may be planning to program your own responsive design.  Plenty of web services offer plugins and templates to convert content to a responsive web design.  With these services you have to do no more than answer some questions and click some buttons.

In fact, as of today a search of WordPress plugins for “responsive web design” yields 191 results.  On top of those, there are many templates that offer a built in responsive web design option.

While the amount of options is impressive, deciding which plugins and templates are right is also overwhelming.  Plus, after sorting out which direction to take you still might not get where you want to go.  That’s why we recommend investing in a custom responsive web design if you are a business.

Here are 5 reasons why investing in custom responsive web design may be right for you:

1.  You can be unique.
Remember that you don’t have sole custody of a template or plugin, and most templates are industry specific.  If you decide to use a template that makes sense for you, the odds are pretty high it makes sense to a few of your competitors, too.  By custom building your responsive web design you can stand out and be different.

2. You can have consistent branding.
Templates and plugins will do the work of coding but they won’t do the work of branding.  By custom building you can stay true to your company’s style, message, colors, fonts, and images.  Don’t look different online than you do at your store, in your signage, and on your business cards.

3. You won’t be under- or over-coded.
The amount of time it takes to load your responsive site on a user’s mobile device matters.  The shorter the load time the more successful you will be at converting visitors to clients.  Many templates risk over-coding your content, which can lead to a longer load time.  If you are under-coded, however, your site could have performance issues as well as be limited in its ability to grow.  Get it right by getting a custom design.

4. You will have support.
With an open source like WordPress, templates and plugins are submitted for use by developers all over the world.  When you have a problem then, who do you call?  With a custom responsive web design if anything ever goes wrong, if you need anything changed, you can talk directly to a person intimately knowledgeable about your site.

5. You don’t have to force a custom design.
If you have ever worked with templates or plugins you know that customization is limited and can be very frustrating to implement.  Sometimes just changing a background color can take hours of troubleshooting.  With a custom design you don’t have to force anything.  You can get exactly what you want.

With responsive web design being the key to the future for businesses and organizations, it is time you decided how you will get your site there.  Consider a custom responsive web design.

BP Studios would love to help you build your responsive web design.  Contact us at info@bpstudios.com to get started.

About the Author
Allison Carter is a Senior Content Strategist with BP Studios.  She loves writing blogs, tweeting, Facebooking (which she still thinks should be a verb), and helping companies get their message out.