Why Cheap Website Templates Cost You More

A £10 template sounds like a bargain, and a weekend building it yourself feels free. On paper the maths is obvious.

The problem is that the cost does not show up on the invoice. It shows up eighteen months later when the site has produced nothing and you are paying again to have it done properly. Here is where templates actually cost you.

Your site looks like everyone else's

Mass produced templates are sold thousands of times over. Your competitor two towns away is quite possibly using the same one.

That matters more than it sounds. When someone is choosing between you and the next result down, a site that looks like a template tells them something about how seriously you take the business. It is not fair, but it is how people read it, and they decide in the first second or two.

Building around your own brand costs more because it takes longer. What you get back is a site that looks like you rather than like a demo.

They are usually slow, and slow costs you enquiries

Templates are built to suit everybody, which means they carry code and features you will never use. On a decent office connection you barely notice. On a phone with two bars, the page crawls.

Most local searches happen on a phone. A visitor who waits four seconds for your number to appear frequently does not wait. Google measures this directly through Core Web Vitals, so a slow site ranks lower as well as converting worse. You lose twice.

They fight you on local SEO

Search engines read the structure underneath the page, not the design on top of it.

To rank for something like "electrician Gillingham" you need clean heading hierarchy, page titles you control, and schema markup that states plainly what the business is and where it operates. Templates tend to be rigid about all three. You can often get partway there, but you are working against the thing rather than with it.

This is the part that quietly decides whether the site earns anything, and it is invisible when you are choosing between designs.

What actually works instead

A site built around what your business needs rather than what the template allows. In practice that means it loads quickly on a phone, the structure is set up so Google can read it, and every page points the visitor at the one thing you want them to do.

None of that requires a huge budget. Our pricing starts at £900, fixed and agreed in writing before anything begins, and we build on Wix Studio which gives proper control over speed and structure. SEO from £550 if you want the search side handled properly at the same time.

I started WebOws Design in Medway in 2018 and we have 143 five star reviews across Google and Wix. The portfolio is the fastest way to judge whether the work is any good.

Frequently asked questions

Are templates always the wrong choice?

No. For a side project, a personal portfolio or testing an idea, a template is sensible and I would not talk anyone out of it. The problem is using one for a business that needs to be found and chosen.

Can a template be made fast?

Sometimes, up to a point. You can compress images and strip unused features. What you cannot easily change is the underlying structure, which is usually where the weight sits.

How do I know if my current site is holding me back?

Load it on your phone on mobile data and time it. Then search your trade plus your town and see whether you appear. Those two checks tell you most of what you need to know.

What does a custom site cost?

From £900 for a five to ten page business site. More detail in our guide to what a small business website costs.

If your current site is not bringing in enquiries, get in touch or call 01634 984929 and we will tell you honestly whether it needs replacing or just fixing.