hamiltro website design
Creative Website Design & Digital Marketing

Do you have an artist website template?

Templates Don’t Deliver What Custom Web Design Does

hamiltro website design has always been a custom-design agency—every website unique and every website capable of future expansion.

There are advantages to custom design that make it a better choice than working from a template, including:

• Templates are code-heavy to allow for many minor variations within an otherwise pre-set design. A custom site can be code-light and give you exactly what you need in terms of both fine detailing and major functionality.
• People often discover during the process of building a website that they need features they hadn’t thought of at the outset. It is generally more difficult to build new functionality into a template, and in some of the web-builders available, it is sometimes impossible. Nothing is set in stone in custom design.
• Websites developed within a ready-made template or theme can only be “switched” to more contemporary themes or templates later if you have used the original template 100% as-is, without customization. Custom-designed websites can often be re-designed without having to re-do all the work.

If you are expecting to keep growing and expanding what you do in the future and/or if having a website that creates a distinctive impression (communicating to your visitors who you are), then custom web design is definitely the better way to go.

We Tried Making a Template

We did try making a template. Because we have so many clients who are artists, the rise of templated site-builders prompted an experiment in providing customizable templates for artist websites in 2015. It didn’t turn out to be an idea we wanted to pursue. Our clients tend to be people who want a unique look and our strength is in custom design, not creating one-size-fits-all solutions. There are some decent options among the templates available (Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, etc) for those who aren’t ready to invest in full custom design.

Customizing Templates

That said, we have done some work customizing templates for clients who have started with a templated site-builder and got stuck. If you’re on a low budget, this is an option. We recommend, however, that you find a template that more or less has everything you absolutely need, as these web-builder set-ups become less cost-effective the more you want to bust out of their constraints. However much they promote their offerings as allowing you to do whatever you want, they make better sense when you understand that each template is essentially an off-the-rack purchase. Any customization of a template within these systems that requires developer access is non-transferable if you ever wanted to update your look to a newer template.

Ask Us About Options

If you are on a low budget but don’t want a template site, please contact us to see what we can do for you. There are options.

CONTACT US FOR MORE INFORMATION