Setting up a store’s front layout is a crucial task. You know that the visual appearance attracts more customers. A well-built and designed store can achieve success. Stunning Magento themes can make your store look professional and impressive. An excellent site can bring more traffic and improve business sales.
Apart from all these facts, the most challenging thing is to choose the best theme. As per the top Magento eCommerce development companies, there are two highly engaged themes, i.e., pre-made themes or custom Magento 2 themes.
Choosing between a custom-made theme vs. a ready-made theme for your Magento storefront. It depends on your needs. If you think about deciding which theme to choose or not, check the advantages and drawbacks of each one. So, now let’s learn about both these great options for your Magento store.
Table of Contents
Custom-made Magento 2 Themes
Many popular brands use custom-made themes to get more business through web users. You can hire a team of Magento developers to create a suitable theme for your site. It gives a unique look to the market. You can tell the developer your business goals and what look you want.
These paid Magento themes can be expensive to build a theme from scratch. But, it has several advantages with the high cost of themes.
Advantages
-
Highly Functional: Custom Magento themes offer high-level functionality and features. You can pick up the accurate design, layout, background, and endless things. It will add an impressive visual appearance to your Magento website.
-
Fully Customizable: You can add more features to look more beautiful. As your brand grows, you can make the storefront stunning with custom-made themes. You can add plugins, payment gateways, and APIs to make your theme beautiful. It provides a fast loading time.
-
SEO friendly: Custom Magento 2 themes are SEO-friendly. It can take your store to the top rankings on the search results. It helps you to attract more visitors to the site. That can further improve your store conversion rates.
-
Exclusive and Branded Design: Custom-made themes can create a storefront brand look, display your products, and improve the user interface. It helps you to increase user engagement with a better shopping experience. No store will have the same theme as yours.
Drawbacks
-
Expensive to Develop: Custom-made themes can be costly for you to develop. Because you need to hire a technical team for the development process. It may cost you more than $4000 to get a remarkable theme.
-
High Maintenance: Custom-made themes are high maintenance. You will need in-house website developers to resolve minor issues and fix bugs. Otherwise, it will cost you high as you have to spend an extra amount on maintenance.
-
Longer to Develop: The custom Magento themes require a lot of time to develop. It can take several months to develop the theme. Everything depends on how complex your theme is and what changes you ask your development team to make.
Ready-made Themes
To make a wise decision, let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
-
Less Development Time: It doesn’t take any development time. This advantage enables skipping two time-consuming project stages for the store development. You don’t need to do the design & front-end coding. You need to install and configure the theme.
-
Less Cost: This is the biggest advantage of taking a pre-built theme. It is a cost-effective option for eCommerce owners. As all these ready-made Magento 2 themes have been sold for thousands of stores. That is the reason that their prices are around $100-$200. Even though they are cheap, they are still high in quality.
-
User-friendly: Magento themes are responsive and user-friendly. Ready-made Magento themes offer a better user experience and have a fast loading speed. These are designed themes to cater to the needs of the users.
-
Easy to use: Pre-made themes are easy to set up with no knowledge of coding. You can install it in the Magento store with no expert help. It is simple to install and provides an accessible interface for the users.
-
Help and Support: If you purchase a high-quality theme, you will get extensive support from the developer. You can contact and ask queries about the theme or any technical issues. But, the level of support depends on the theme developers from which you buy.
Drawbacks
-
Regular Updates: Updating a theme can prevent problems and fix bugs. Whatever ready-made theme you are using, it is mandatory to do recommended updates. If you forget to update, it can cause an issue with the installation process of your website. Make sure you have a copy of the backup before updating.
-
Limited Customization: Magento pre-made them don’t give you space to customize as per your business needs. However, it allows you to make minor improvements, such as layout, color, and typeface. But, it doesn’t allow users for bigger changes.
-
No Documentation: Custom-developed themes provide you with proper documentation. Users can easily install the theme properly using the documentation and learn to add plugins in the right way. This feature is missing in pre-made themes. No documentation is available to explain to you the installation process.
-
Inconsistent Quality: It is true with a high-quality theme, you may end with something you love. But sometimes, these pre-built Magento themes have slow loading times and incompatible features. You can try a few pre-made themes to find the best one for your Magento store.
Which One is Best for your Store?
Your e-commerce store works to enhance your business and attract a higher number of customers. If you don’t have a high budget, you can go for the readymade option. A pre-built Magento theme is an excellent option to complete the website development process quickly.
Custom themes are the best solution when you have a big budget. A professional team can help in creating a stunning front and personalized your brand website. Even if you have chosen either option, remember it is not permanent. Later, you can change the design to meet your business expectations.
