When launching a website, design, and functionality is what remains at the forefront of your mind. And you usually get two options open when it comes to obtaining themes. You can either purchase or download a pre-made theme or hire professionals to create a custom theme.
So, the choice will be between custom-made and off-the-shelf themes.
Often people choose pre-made themes due to their affordability and ready-to-buy feature.
But the question is, should a business be using a pre-made theme?
Is it worth considering a pre-built theme for your website?
No doubt, a pre-built theme includes all the fundamental features that are assumed to be useful to the diverse needs of any site.
As you start, the pre-made themes let you give your site a whole new look within a short period just by hitting the “install” button.
However, this option can be too restricted or, moreover, too slow in providing a result for users starting websites with particular goals or timeframe.
Even if being a start-up, you should go for long-term plans. But if you opt for pre-made themes, it might not be an excellent choice for long-term success.
Remember, even if there is an array of pre-made themes available, it’s crucial to look beyond appearance and consider the underlying aspects.
After all, issues such as inefficient coding, slow speeds, and search engine optimization issues do exist.
Before going any further, let’s address some of the cons of the pre-built theme.
5 problems of using pre-made themes
Here are a few problems that you might encounter if you choose the pre-built theme.
1. Poorly coded
Ready-made themes are often designed with low or without the flexibility of the coded elements that remain tied with other elements. So, when you need to make changes error occurs.
Also, sometimes pre-built themes leave the site bloated with unnecessary codes to cover a wide range of functionality or design elements. As an effect, the themes that are packed with excessive codes end up slowing the website down.
The poor-quality coding can lead to issues such as problems with the functionality or security loop wholes making your site more vulnerable to hacking. Also, it increases stress and time during maintenance, updates, and rebuilds.
2. Lacks originality and uniqueness
Originality plays a pivotal role in the realm of business. A website is what mirror the distinctiveness of your website being one-of-a-kind. But ready-made themes, in most cases, share a similar look and layout and lack the spark of creativity, resulting in a lack of differentiation. That’s why using ready-made themes is considered a poor branding decision.
When 10s out of the 50s of businesses are using the same pre-built theme, it comes with no doubt that your website will not stand out among the rest. With a free-built theme, you will not have the advantage of starting from a blank slate. As you are limited to what the designs allow you to do, chances are high that you will end up looking like your competition.
3. SEO limitations
SEO compatibility varies extensively across themes. Some of the pre-built themes often come with limited built-in SEO support and cannot be customized to suit your precious SEO requirements.
One major problem you might face with pre-made themes is that it lacks semantic HTML codes, which leads to poor SEO optimization.
At the same time, it is the semantic HTML code that ensures that Google bots and other search engines understand your content. Even when looking for pre-made themes, it is not uncommon to encounter themes that overlook standard SEO rules and practices.
4. Technical and security issues
There is always a risk of less security to the website with pre-built themes. Hidden malware can be found on some of the themes that can cause errors on your server. You may encounter technical hurdles like security vulnerabilities, deprecated code, or plugin update issues.
Suppose, as the ready-made themes are from a third party, you cannot be dependent on those themes for constant support and update, while updates are essential for security. This will lead to compatibility issues with several plugins as themes will not be updated at the right time. Also, when themes are not updated regularly, chances are high for small bugs in the code to turn into giant cockroaches.
Most pre-built themes offer no or limited technical support or help. So, when issues crop up as you are building your website, you’ll be all by yourself.
5. Not compatible across all devices
Responsiveness is one of the biggest downfalls of pre-made themes. Responsive refers to the ability of the website to adjust itself on various devices; it can be a smartphone, a laptop, a desktop, or a tablet.
But in many cases, the ready-made themes are not mobile-friendly. And when you are living in a world where people are constantly on their phones, the mobile device accessibility issue can hit hard to your website performance because the bad user experience on mobile devices can affect your SEO negatively.
Even many of the pre-built themes are not compatible across all platforms as well when users rely on a wide variety of internet browsers.
Conclusion: Problems You Will Face with Pre-Made Themes
To sum up here, definitely, the double-edged shortcut of choosing pre-built website themes makes the process of building a business website quicker.
But it’s well worth a little extra in hiring a professional web developer WebAlive to develop a custom-built theme for your website.
However, if you “have to” go down the route of using the pre-built website theme, make sure to exercise caution.
