Templated websites or bespoke websites? What’s the difference?
Creating a dental website is easy, isn’t it? Hop on Wix, find a template you like, chuck some info in, add a few pictures, bish bash bosh, you’re done. Probably only took you an afternoon. Or maybe you’ve really pushed the boat out and had a family friend, maybe a teenager, whip you something up instead. After all, kids these days are all pretty tech savvy right? All done, now you have a website that truly reflects the practice and everyone who can see it will sign up as a patient. So why isn’t your cookie-cutter website bringing in the dough (if you’ll pardon the pun)?
The thing to remember here is the amount of effort put into creating something has a direct correlation to the result. Like any creative and technical endeavour, building a dental website that will convert patients, rank well on Google, and be totally compliant is actually pretty difficult to do well. A specialist implantologist and a man with a pair of pliers and some glue might both offer dental work, but there’s definitely going to be a difference in the quality of the outcome.
There are lots of issues with templated websites which aren’t apparent on the surface. Firstly, they’re often slow due to the fact that the entire template is loaded, even the stuff not being used, every time someone enters the website. This is a negative ranking factor on Google, to say nothing of a user losing patience. Secondly, changes are restrictive and sometimes impossible. You cannot go outside the framework of the template, so what might look like a simple design tweak would in fact break the whole site. Thirdly, they often rely on plugins, which if not updated cause the website to break, and these frequently stop being supported after a few years. In fact, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that’s not even looking at the vast quality difference between a properly designed and constructed purpose-built website, and a templated website.
When comparing prices, make sure you aren’t comparing apples with oranges. There’s a reason why a company can charge half as much as another company and it’s because they are only doing half the work. The best thing to do is ask yourself how much more business you’d need in order to make up the difference. If it comes down to one or two more implant or Invisalign cases, over a 6-7 year period (the average lifespan of a dental website), then the answer is somewhat of a no brainer.
The website is your front door, your opportunity to put your best foot forward. It’s simply not worth compromising on. There have been many occasions when I’ve brought a client on who only recently went through a design process with a company that worked with templated websites. They’d paid out a significant fee to end up with something that just wasn’t good enough. Try not to be that person, and get it right first time.
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