In our line of work we talk to a lot of people that are looking to set up online shops and they will often consider whether to get a template or have us build one from scratch. The reason we recommend a custom built website is due to the problems we have seen in the past with using templates and these are the following:

1. Design - often if you use a template a lot of the design work needs to be done by the customer. What this results in is a website that looks like it is home made. If you use the internet regularly you will know the problems that this can cause. The biggest one being that many people will not buy from a website that does not look professional. It is quite obvious really, if you cannot create a professional website then there is a good chance you will not provide a professional service. Although you will know this is not the case your customers will not and so you could end up missing out on a lot of sales.

2. URLs - one of the really important parts of SEO is having descriptive URLs. We have found that many people who get templates do not have this and end up with URLs that are just a list of numbers and symbols. This will mean something to the system that you are using but will mean absolutely nothing to the search engines. Having this will make it much harder to get top rankings in the search engines.

3. Scalability - a big problem with templates is the quality of the code that is used in them. Often it is built in a way that your site will be filled with a lot of irrelevant code. This has two effects, firstly it will be much harder for the search engines to get through your website and index your content. Secondly it will be much harder to scale up. This means if at a later date you want to grow or add functionality it will end up costing you a lot more than it would have done if you had a custom built website.

If you go for a customer built website make sure you use a company that uses a graphic designer to create the look and feel of your website. This will ensure you get a truly great looking website that will really impress. It is also important to remember that if you buy cheap you buy twice. This is a problem we have seen from many of our clients. Yes a template will cost them a lot less but often they have come back to use very quickly and needed to start again. Usually this is down to the limitations of templates and they have found there site does not do what they want it to.

If you are serious about building an online shop you should be prepared to pay out for a high quality website to ensure you get the best chance with SEO and the best chance to convert sales.