10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Use a Template for Your Ecommerce Site Share: Dotlogics Date Published 28 April 2017 Categories Blog Reading Time 3-Minute Read You have everything you need to start your online business. You’re making great products with an established supply chain and you’re ready to start getting customers. There’s just one thing missing: your website. Now, you could download an ecommerce website template because it’s fast and cheap, but there are many more reasons why you shouldn’t and instead hire a web design agency specializing in ecommerce website design. Lack of Control Templates give you limited customization options, making it difficult to find a template that perfectly fits your unique needs. Custom website design gives you full control over the look and functionality of your website. Poor Code Quality Many templates are mass produced overseas, resulting in suboptimal code quality that is difficult to work with or that requires excessive maintenance. Top web design companies develop code that’s functional and easily maintained. Backend Compatibility Issues You’ll be hardpressed to find a template design that seamlessly works with your backend. You’re going to need a custom backend to accept payments and track user behavior, and working with a website template will make interfacing with your backend more difficult than it would be if you used a fully customized solution built by a web development company. Lack of Brand Identity How will your ecommerce site stand apart from the competition if it looks like hundreds of other sites all using the same design template? Templates can be used by hundreds of different web projects, and it’s easy to get lost in the crowd when your ecommerce site looks like everyone else’s. Poor Functionality This relates to poor code quality. Some templates are built with excessive or bad code that make the actual functionality of the site suffer. There’s no quicker way to lose customers than a site that doesn’t actually work. Lack of Responsive Design Though this is becoming less of an issue as mobile computing becomes more widespread, many templates aren’t designed for smaller screens. This is bad news, especially when you consider that most of your users will experience your website through their mobile devices. A website developed by a responsive website designing company is your best chance of attracting and retaining users. Poor Documentation Another side effect of poor quality, mass-produced code. Many available themes come with little to no documentation, making navigating the code a nightmare even for an experienced web design and development company, let alone nontechnical business owners. Still Needs Customization Even if you find a template that you like, it will still need to be somehow customized in order to fit your brand. Some templates are easier to work with than others, but it makes more sense to be able to customize everything if you’re going to have to customize anything. Better to have quality and complete web development services upfront rather than piecemeal updates over time. Poor SEO Website templates are designed to be one-size-fits-all solutions for multiple web projects, which can be detrimental to your pagerank. Being able to fully optimize your website’s search results is critical to the success of your ecommerce site, and using a template will limit your ability to do so. Distracts Your Focus You’re not a web designer. You’re a business person, and you should be focused on making your business great instead of messing around with difficult website templates. Your time is worth the quality and peace of mind that a custom web development company can provide.