What is a bespoke WordPress website?
Bespoke WordPress websites are designed entirely from scratch, tailored to your specific needs and goals. Unlike the existing designs from pre-made templates or customised themes, a bespoke site is a completely unique creation designed just for you.
While WordPress templates are ready to use themes that can be quickly installed and launched, a bespoke WordPress site means almost limitless customisation possibilities. It’s designed to fit your brand, meet your functionality requirements, and is optimised for user experience.
Advantages of Bespoke WordPress Websites
A bespoke WordPress website offers a wide range of benefits that can enhance the performance and perception of your brand online:
- Strong First Impressions – Your website is often the first touchpoint of your brand to potential new clients or customers. Therefore, a well-designed and professional site will help build trust and communicate clearly who you are and what products or services you offer.
- Control and Flexibility – With a bespoke website you can have complete control over the design, functionality, and features. This allows for a unique user experience that is optimised for your audience’s needs.
- Scalable for Growth – Bespoke WordPress websites are built with future growth in mind. As your business evolves, your website can be enhanced to accommodate new features and expanded content, and new integrations can be introduced. A custom design can handle both small tweaks and major updates without compromising performance.
- Reduced Reliance on Plugins – A plugin is a piece of code that expands the functionality of a WordPress website. The average WordPress site built using a template relies on third party plugins for various functionality requirements. While plugins can be helpful in achieving functionality requirements, too many on one site can severely slow down the speed at which the website runs – negatively impacting on your user’s experience. A custom-built WordPress website reduces the need for so many plugins, minimising the risk of overload, and ensuring that the site runs as smoothly as possible.
- SEO Friendly Structure – Web developers can build your website with an SEO friendly structure that focuses on key on-page and technical elements from the start, such as optimised meta descriptions and title tags.
- Easy to Manage – Your site is built to be manageable by an internal team. This means that you’ll have full control over content and product updates without the reliance on developers for every change.
- Enhanced Security – A custom designed site can offer more security than a template or theme as these can often have vulnerabilities due to the pre-built code and the addition of numerous plugins that require frequent updates and ongoing managing.
Potential Drawbacks of a Custom WordPress Website Development
While custom WordPress development offers numerous advantages, it’s important to consider the few potential drawbacks before making any decision:
- Higher Initial Costs – A higher initial financial investment will be required for a custom built website compared to that of a templated site. However, ongoing running costs can be more cost effective.
- Longer Development Times – Building a site without the use of pre-designed themes or templates will naturally take more time than an off the shelf template website, as the vast majority of the website build will be done from scratch. This includes the planning, designing, and development processes.
How Can a Custom WordPress Website Directly Benefit SEO?
A well-designed bespoke WordPress website can have a significant positive impact on your SEO efforts by addressing key factors that search engines prioritise:
- Faster Load Times – A bespoke WordPress website is built with efficient code. This means that they generally have faster loading times compared to a pre-built theme or template, which is an important factor for how Google ranks a website. A site with a faster loading time is more likely to be placed higher in search results than a site with a slow loading time.
- Enhanced User Experience – A custom website is designed to be visually appealing and easy to navigate. This can leave a positive impression on users, keeping them engaged on the site for longer, which ultimately leads to a reduced bounce rate (the number of users leaving the website within a few seconds of arriving) and can lead to more conversions.
- Tailored Branding and Content – A unique website that stands out in a crowded marketplace can improve user engagement through memorability. This indirectly benefits SEO as an appealing website will increase the time spent on the site and reduce the bounce rate.
- Schema Markup Integration – Schema Markup provides detailed information to search engines which helps them understand the topic of your pages and therefore improves how your pages are displayed in search results. A custom WordPress website can be designed to easily implement the schema markup.
How We Can Help
At Hydra Creative, our team of expert developers and designers specialise in creating bespoke WordPress websites tailored to your individual needs, all while prioritising SEO best practices. From initial design to launch, we ensure your website not only looks great but also performs at its best with comprehensive SEO services to help your site gain visibility.
To get more information on how we can help you and your business, get in touch for a free initial consultation.
