In the world of WordPress, there are two ways you can go. You can buy a theme off the shelf or you can do a custom design and build. We do the latter for our clients. Here are a few reasons why.

Ownership and control

When you buy a theme, you’re entrusting a central piece of your organization’s digital presence to an entity you do not know. Sometimes it’s a company; sometimes it’s an individual. Sometimes they’re US-based; sometimes they offshore. Think about how that can impact ongoing support and security. What if the theme maker decides to sunset the theme and no longer issue updates? What if they go out of business? What if there’s no way to talk to anyone?

Going the custom route though means you’re usually hiring a partner that you talk to and get to know. You’re establishing trust. You’re signing contracts and building in protections. A custom WordPress build closes gaps and reduces risk, giving you the ownership and control every business deserves.

Speed

Off-the-shelf themes typically require a lot of plugins—especially if you need to develop customized functionality. Lots of plugins creates bloat. Bloat slows down sites. Google values site speed.

With a custom build, you’re using far fewer, if any, plugins. Not only does that contribute to site speed, but it also means you’re doing less plugin updating.

Usability

Off-the-shelf themes rely on ease-of-use messaging. Drag and drop! Even a marketer can use it! This positioning makes sense: less-technical folks are often responsible for a site once it’s built. Content updates, blog posts, landing pages. The problem, though, is that so-easy-even-a-marketer-can-do-it means they can do… a lot. To no fault of their own, they can break stuff. (Side note: That’s no knock on marketers. I’m one, myself.)

Custom builds allow access without opening the floodgates. At the beginning of each project, we establish with the client who’s going to need to do what once the site is live and we design the backend around those requirements. We make it easy for content creators to blog and update copy without exposing them at all to code.

It’s YOUR story

We believe content comes first. That content informs design. Off-the-shelf themes do the opposite. They say here’s where and how you can tell your story and the parameters it more or less has to fall into. We regularly tell clients that we design around your story and that means we need to craft the story first. Then we go build it from scratch, free of arbitrary limitations.

Maintenance

We maintain most of the sites we make. It is far more efficient for us (and cost effective for our clients) to maintain what we designed and developed ourselves as opposed to troubleshooting someone else’s thing. Each project we ship comes with simple yet comprehensive documentation. With most themes, you’re often relying on an FAQs page, perhaps some (likely outdated) documentation and Google.

Are these all the reasons? No. Are the instances where a theme or a builder might make sense? Yes. What matters to us is making the right recommendations for the right reasons.

Working with a skilled web developer in Philadelphia ensures that your website not only meets the technical standards but also captures your brand identity. We have the knowledge and creativity to craft a website that not only looks visually appealing but also functions seamlessly, offering a top-notch user experience. Customization is key in the competitive digital landscape, and our WordPress web designers excel in creating websites that reflect the unique character and values of your business.

Five Steps to a Winning Website Project

Successful website projects are a collaboration between you (the client) and the website design agency that you’re working with. In this guide, we’ve put together 5 important steps that are crucial for a winning website project. If your digital agency works in tandem with you to deliver each of these 5 important steps, you’re going to end up with a result that you can both be proud of. More importantly, it will be something that your customers will love.

Ready to Begin Your AI Journey? Think. It. First.

With so much AI potential out there, it can be challenging to know where or how to begin. Should you start with a massive, customer-facing product? Create your own internal solution to streamline ops? Dabble in an out-of-the-box solution? The answer is a question.

Answering the “What About SEO?” Question with… More Questions

Related to web projects, prospective clients often ask us, “What about SEO?” Usually they are asking this question because they loosely know that a website and SEO have something to do with each other. Sometimes they’re asking it because they think that’s what they’re supposed to ask. Whatever the driver, we almost always answer that question with… More questions.

Want to Know the Number One Reason Content Marketing Efforts Die?

Content marketing works. It can help your business generate brand awareness, scale traffic, establish authority, build trust, inform audiences, raise money, facilitate self-education… its applications are just about (but not quite) endless. But lots of content marketing efforts die. They lose steam; they go dormant. They’re abandoned. There are a number of reasons why this happens. More often than not, though, a lack of organizational commitment is what kills a content marketing strategy.

Most agency newsletters are a little in love with themselves. This ain’t that.

But Can’t I Just Use a WordPress Builder?