If you’re like most people you’re always looking for ways to cut expenses out of your budget.  And right now, spending money on a custom WordPress design may seem like an extra expense that you just can’t seem to justify, especially not when there are free WordPress templates out there that you can simply tweak a little to fit your needs…right?

Perhaps. But we think that it’s not really all that simple. In the long run, you’ll spend many hours developing a do-it-yourself site that just doesn’t professionally market your brand. And after all the migraines you’ll incur, you may end up wishing you’d just hired someone in the first place. Yes, custom WordPress design and development may be an investment. But we believe that it will return to you in full many times over. Here’s how.

First of all, in order to find a free WordPress template you must spend hours Googling just for the hope of finding one site that offers high quality template designs. You’ll probably notice, like we have, that most free WordPress templates out there look like something made in the 1990’s – tables, loud chunky graphics, all that jazz. Maybe that’s ok for your personal blog with only your grandma as the audience, but if you’re a company, you’d better run from anything that old in this technically savvy world where even toddlers have iPhones.

Once you do finally find a couple quality WordPress template providers, you then have to spend hours looking through hundreds of pages picking out some you like. At first this might seem fun having so much to choose from. But the more digging you do, the more you’ll notice that not all of the templates have the functionality you’re looking for. Some have navigation on the top, some on the left, some on the right. Some are designed in a CMS-style format bringing various feeds like Twitter, RSS and such onto the homepage, looking more like a website and less like a blog, while still others look like a traditional blog. Which are you wanting? Does that one with the cool design also have the functionality you’re looking for? More often than not you’ll find the functionality you want, but not the design, and something will have to give. You will rarely get exactly what you want from a free WordPress template.

But let’s say just for the sake of argument that you find a free template that you feel will only need a couple little things like colors and graphics changed out. The functionality you want is all there. You begin designing your graphics, running into a few difficulties here and there not being a professional designer yourself, but eventually after a few hours teaching yourself a few tricks of the trade, you get it done. You begin plugging these graphics into the WordPress site that you’ve just installed and then the unthinkable happens – something breaks. Now what? How do you get it fixed with no tech support? That’s a good question. We don’t have an answer.

Finally, let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re one of the lucky few who get through all of the above without a hitch. The question is now – does your homemade design stand up to the competition? Or does it give the consumer the idea that your company is “cheap,” causing them to take their money and purchases elsewhere? Most scam companies have cheap sites so they can “close up shop at any moment” as it were. Since you’re doing business online and not everyone can see you face-to-face, all the consumer has to go by in determining whether your company is trustworthy of their business or not is your website. Therefore, you must establish a strong, trustworthy brand presence right from the beginning.

At Nicasio Design & Development, we pride ourselves in saving people from migraines by offering hope, creativity, fresh thinking and WordPress tech support to anyone who will listen. We have years of experience designing WordPress sites that are handcrafted to fit the individual, all at a surprisingly affordable cost. What could be better?