5 perks of using custom website design for BigCommerce.
With its comprehensive built-in feature set, adaptability, and sales and marketing performance, BigCommerce is an excellent solution for online businesses of all sizes, from the small local startup all the way up to the enterprise-level establishment and everything in-between. It’s also a highly-configurable eCommerce platform, designed for users to take full advantage of its customization capabilities. Of course, templates and themes for BigCommerce are readily available (including BigCommerce’s own free and premium theme store) and can help retailers get their stores online fast but in order to best utilize BigCommerce’s offerings, only that can be achieved through custom design and development.
Top 5 Benefits of a Custom BigCommerce Website
BigCommerce is an open SaaS system. It combines the immediate software and security updates of a SaaS subscription with the ability for users to freely modify the source code just as they would with open source software. Because customization is one of BigCommerce’s specialties, it is an ideal platform for businesses that require full control over their online operations.
There are 10 main reasons for any business to opt for a custom website over a stock template or theme:
- Ideal for eCommerce use of all fields, industries, and sizes of business
- The best choice for establishing a unique identity, marketing and promotion; your website’s design will be constructed around your corporate motif or design schema
- Unlimited options for design, presentation, UX, and website-specific features
- Unlimited potential for business scalability and website modification; you can grow your website along with your business
- Accepted by major eCommerce platforms and web service providers
- SEO-friendly; the designer is creating your website with SEO in mind
- Mobile-friendly (mobile devices are responsible for half of all web traffic)
- No empty calories; your website’s code will be designed and optimized to incorporate only the features you want to use–without the unnecessary bloat of standardized features that would be found in a premade template
- Availability of customer support – your hired developer/development team will be ready to assist you in the event that technical troubleshooting is required
- Security – your hired design team will ensure PCI compliance and security against hacking and cyberattack
For BigCommerce users, there are even more benefits to be had with custom web development that actually incorporate the useful features of the core BigCommerce platform itself. Let’s look at 5 advantages a custom BigCommerce site has over theme-based websites.
#1: Greater SEO Visibility
BigCommerce already totes some of the most powerful and effective built-in SEO and self-marketing tools but by going custom, you can fine-tune your SEO strategies to maximize your Google rankings. Additionally, custom-coded websites are built from scratch which, unlike premade templates, removes the unnecessary junk code that can slow down page loading speeds and ultimately hinder SEO rank advancement. Users can also work to maintain or improve SEO ranks by adjusting keywords, adding content, and editing pages that underperform with the search engines.
#2: Improved Control and Flexibility
A custom content management system (CMS) gives store owners increased control and flexibility over their website’s operations. If one requires even more features than what’s already prepackaged with BigCommerce in its stock form, an experienced professional BigCommerce development team can incorporate any idea you have for added functions and features into a custom CMS. The CMS allows for easy on-the-fly adjustments of website content, which saves time and money by performing simple updates in-house without the need of additional specialized software. A custom CMS also adds protection against hackers and cybercriminals as the custom code would make it harder, if not impossible, for them to attack as they would a mass-produced template site made with common code.
#3: Custom-Tailored to Fit Your Business Needs
Prebuilt templates and website themes can get an online business operational with minimal downtime and cost, but there are caveats to going prebuilt. Almost anyone can use a template, regardless of their business model and without an established brand identity, companies as well as their competitors can get lost in the millions of other similar websites using semi-identical templates. In contrast, custom-built websites are designed specifically for your business. With a customized website, it will be possible to include features that are only relevant to your business, while removing useless or redundant features that you will never use. The coding on your custom website will be created specifically for your website, so that there will be as little overlap as possible with another website. This method of creating websites is more efficient, faster, and more effective than recycling an off-the-rack website template or theme.
#4: API Integration
Apps, integrations, and add-ons can expand the functionality of a stock eCommerce platform beyond what’s typically available in the base feature set. Even with BigCommerce’s expansive list of functions, some businesses may require additional integrations to third-party services. The typical solution to this issue is going to the platform’s app store or scouring the Internet for platform-specific third-party apps. While there’s certainly no shortage of apps and add-ons for eCommerce websites, problems arise when too many of them–especially, those from different sources or developers–get stacked on top of each other and are expected to cooperatively perform with one another. Actually, what tends to happen with app stacking is that not only do page load speeds suffer (along with SEO ranks), you could be opening your website up to compatibility and stability issues that run the risk of breaking your website. However, with custom APIs, integrations can be seamlessly added to your website that will work without disturbing the standard operations. BigCommerce’s own high-performance APIs allow developers to create custom solutions for integrations or for ground-up building.
#5: Higher Credibility, Improved Reputation
A unique, professional-looking custom website stands out from the endless sea of anonymous websites, especially those that are using templates. Taking advantage of BigCommerce’s open SaaS model to create a bespoke, one-of-a-kind retail website that establishes your brand, your identity, and sets your company apart from your competition. All businesses need credibility with the public if they wish to survive, including long-established ones. This is most crucial for brand new companies who have yet to gain the public trust. After all, your web store could have the best prices and best selection of merchandise in your chosen field but absolutely none of it matters if no one knows who you are, if they can’t find you, or if they can’t trust you. Creating a custom website that caters to the public with an accessible, user-friendly and intuitive layout and a memorable visual identity can create or fortify feelings of trust and professionalism with the shopping public.
Pros and Cons of Website Templates
If you’re still mulling over the decision as to whether using a template for your business’ website is better than a full custom website, consider this list of pros and cons in regards to web templates and website themes:
PROS:
- Readily-available, very easy to find free templates and themes online (there are also options to purchase premium design templates)
- Lower investment cost, quicker to launch
- Accepted by major eCommerce platforms and web service providers
- Certain types of implementation can be done VIA a drag-and-drop editor or through WYSIWYG (depending on specific service)
CONS:
- Not ideal for companies with complex inventories and/or highly-detailed product category trees
- Lack of unique identity; the likelihood of someone else using the exact same web template/theme for their website as yours is extraordinarily high–especially, if using a free template/theme downloaded from a popular source
- Can be buggy; the probability for software conflicts and incompatibility increases with app, plugin, or integration that is added and stacked onto a premade template
- Extra code/inefficient coding can slow down website loading times and performance, as is the case with standard features of the premade template that will never be used
- By design, templates and themes are not SEO friendly
- No direct user support
- Easy target for hackers, code that is shared through various premade templates make it easier for hackers and cyber attacks to successfully hit your website and others using the same or similar template
- If additional features are requested, the downtime and investment cost could equal or exceed what a custom website would’ve required from the get-go
Your Business. Your Website.
A custom website would be helpful to any business, no matter the size. Since a custom website removes the limitations of premade templates created by anonymous designers, it is open to unlimited design and functionality for the business as well as scalability and growth for the business. In order to make your eCommerce venture truly professional, you should have a custom website built; this way, you can envision what you want your website to look like, what it functions like, how it presents your business and branding, and how it will best serve your customers and attract new ones. From a purely technical standpoint, a custom website is far more stable and secure than a template because the coding can be optimized to fit your company’s requirements.
At Diztinct, we are eCommerce professionals with nearly 2 decades of experience in custom website design and development. We’ve designed and built websites and marketplaces for companies of all sizes; ranging from small independents to large corporations. Our work has been recognized and awarded by some of the top names in the eCommerce industry and we’ve had the privilege to work with globally-renowned companies and brands such as QVC, Clorox, Dickies, Crocs, and Dooney & Bourke among others. Diztinct also has the honor of being certified design partners with BigCommerce. This means that when you hire Diztinct to build your BigCommerce website, you will be working closely with officially-recognized Shopify design experts who know the ins and outs of the platform and will get you the most of what BigCommerce has to offer for your online business.
Are you ready to give your website and your business the Diztinct advantage over the competition? If so, let’s talk. Get in touch with us today and get ready to make your website work for you.