watercolor of man for psychology site by Columbus website design firm S+S

Being a Columbus website design firm, we offer two types of websites: custom websites, and template-based websites. Our template-based websites are created using SquareSpace, one of the top 2 or 3 online web-building tools.

While most of our websites are custom, we've recently completed a website for a newly-formed psychology group, called Metta Psychology, that we're quite proud of. Metta was started by a group of women we think are pretty awesome. And they helped push the design of their website to make it what it is.

The reason we're proud of Metta Psychology's website is, we've taken a cool SquareSpace template, and modified it enough to do things the base template wasn't originally coded to do. That's because all online web-building tools have serious limitations from design options, to SEO options.

Two ways we enhanced the template

The reason most people use online web-building tools is that they don't know how to code a website. That's what makes these templates so attractive to so many people. But knowing how to code, we were able to modify the code of the template to do two things:

  • Expanded the design limitations: As you might imagine, using a template limits your design options. Most templates only let you use white backgrounds. On Metta Psychology's website, we placed a graduated watercolor background on all the inside pages, which we, and the folks from Metta, felt elevated the design.
  • Added SEO on the individual pages: Surprisingly, SquareSpace templates don't let you have unique Page Titles and Meta Descriptions on each page, which are a staple of good SEO. To see how critical Page Titles and Meta Descriptions are, watch the first 40 seconds of this video. But now, every page on the Metta Psychology website has its own unique keywords for the Page Titles and Meta Descriptions.

Ask your web designer if they can do those things (above) to the template they'll be using for your website. If not, you'll have to ask yourself:

Are both the templates, AND the designer, limited in what they can do?

There are other limitations of online web-building tools' templates and their respective code. However, most people don't even know the questions to ask to see if a web designer can work around those limitations. Having experience building custom websites, we know how to customize a template. So before you decide to go the template route with a web designer who uses only  online web-building templates like Wix or SquareSpace, ask the web designer these questions:

  • Can you tweak the code in a template to customize it a little?
  • Do you know what Page Titles and Meta Descriptions are? (Refer to video link above.)
  • Do you search for keywords using Google's Keyword Tool?
  • Do you know how to optimize images using keywords in the image names? (See screen shot below.)
  • Do you know what Alt Text fields are for? (Ask if they know they should put keywords in the Alt Text fields as in the example below)

Columbus website design firm's exampe of naming web images

Brief list of things online web-building tools' templates can't do

  • Optimize for load speed,
  • Limits dropdown navigation to 1 level, so you couldn't have the navigation below in the orange area, which is OK for small websites, but not for medium ones.

dropdown navigation example Columbus website design

  • Use background textures for rich-looking websites (see SSK Plastic Surgery as an example, but see screen shot below.)

plastic surgeon webste design example using textures in background

  • Extremely limited font selection (you can only use 3 or 4 different fonts throughout the entire website with templates).
  • Limited button design (see difference between the "Learn More" link in the top example vs. the button design in the O'Toole Plastic Surgery example below it.

homepage photo of Metta Psychology practitioners

homepage example of plastic surgeon website design

Bottom line is, using a template, you'll eventually want to do something it can't.

However, when it comes to no-limits design, using Drupal or WordPress to build your website, anything is possible. Using either of those content management systems, we can build pretty much whatever we want, and almost anything you might envision. We believe textured backgrounds, and customized pages, will make any website look better. And making your website look better, makes your company look better.

And when it comes to SEO capabilities, custom websites have no limitations either. That's because the code in Drupal or WordPress content management systems have so much more depth to them. Read why both Drupal or WordPress are the better options for SEO.

Should you have any questions about template-based sites vs. custom built websites (in WordPress and Drupal), please contact us and lets talk.