Bespoke Website Design – WordPress or Custom-Built Websites?? At Digital Sales we get asked that question from prospective clients quite a bit…well, more like…..‘How can we manage our website going forward, we don’t want to be emailing or calling you in the future in order to make slight changes to the website and us getting charged an arm and a leg.’ And yes, they are correct however it’s not quite as simple as that, but first let’s take a look at the disadvantages of a website content management system (CMS) like WordPress.
Well, let’s be upfront, almost all of our websites built by Digital Sales utilise a CMS like WordPress, as a means to upload new content (content marketing), create new pages and push those pages out to social media platforms. However, the primary architecture of the website is NOT built on WordPress or any other CMS (unless the website is a shop platform). So, what is our logic and why should you avoid a CMS like WordPress to build your corporate website on top of? Bespoke Website Design or WordPress?
Security
Sucuri analysed 11,485 websites that were infected in Q1 2016 and found that 78% of these websites were WordPress sites. Now, WordPress have a 60% CMS Market Share, so you could say its expected, but there is a clear correlation between security weaknesses and WordPress websites. In fact, over 60,000 WordPress websites are hacked every DAY!
There are a number of proactive security measures you can employ to protect your WordPress, such as Malware Protection and a Firewall which will only allow assigned IP login access. So, there are measures you can take, however are the plugins on your website being maintained and secured by the plugin developers? Are your updates being applied? And are the Plugins you are using slowing your website down?
This message may appear when your WordPress site has been compromised in a search result, your website gets blacklisted and dumped down the organic search results, see the note, under the domain name: ‘This site may be hacked’.
Yes, any website can get hacked, but the more control you have the better able you are to be proactive and offset an attack, reduced traffic, reduced organic ranking and ultimately…..sales and new business.
Please note: We are not saying a custom-built website will be 100% secure, but that website would have to be specifically targeted. With WordPress, a hacker can target millions of websites at once, they don’t care who they effect.
Coding and Poor Programming – Many Plugin and Themes are built by independent developers, many are not skilled or qualified and may avoid the finer details, leaving your site open to back door vulnerabilities, errors on your site and a slow website.
Support – need support? well, you will have to pay for it, that’s if you can actually get in touch with the theme or plugin developers. Some are companies on different time zones and some are developers with other full-time jobs and some are even hackers……
Updates – you will have to make sure all your updates are initiated, including plugin updates – its recommended for security reasons. Don’t update and its only a matter of time before your WordPress site gets hacked, unless your very lucky! However, if you have modifications made to WordPress themes, updates will overwrite your modifications. Another headache…..
SEO and Speed
Custom Built websites provide you with ultimate control of your SEO activity, full control and as mentioned above the ‘bloated code’ used in WordPress Themes and Plugin can result in serious speed issues. Issues which will effect conversion rates, download speed and ultimately ‘the user experience’, all of which effect SEO performance performance.
Boring and Repetitive Themes and Designs
How does a website differentiate? How does it stand out from other websites? Well, you may have noticed a pattern. The WordPress designed websites are very similar and boring, here are a few websites, all using a similar, large image above the fold style:
Inspired or Unique?????? You must stand out from the crowd, be different and create an edge, ‘we do things different’ attitude, bespoke website design will help create that image. Websites are the first impression you can make towards a prospect, make sure you stand out.
There is other considerations and potential issues especially if you are an international company and are considering multi geo (country) targeting and multilingual sites. WordPress may present serious difficulties around these very important areas, but we will leave that for another day.
The advantages of WordPress websites are clear to many, the ease of use and speed at which you can develop a website, buy a theme design and start trading online, magic!
As mentioned above, we do build Custom built WordPress sites and we use WordPress Blogs, for future content marketing and SEO activity. Our bespoke website designs are designed for sales influence, security and of course the ability to design great websites.
If you have little choice, and you must use WordPress, make sure your hosting is on a Linux OS, ask if your hosting company has a dedicated WordPress Hosting Account, back up your files regularly and try and keep up with updates and don’t overload your site with pointless Plugins. Finally purchase a Malware removal service for the year and if you have the budget a Website Firewall from your hosting provider.
Diarmuid Haughian – Business Development Director – Digital Sales
Dip. International Selling, Cert. Digital Marketing, MSc. BITS, MA Career Guidance
