Original Designs... Never Templates
All Bradley & Company websites are fully custom websites. They are never built from templates. This ensures that your website will be unique and tailor made to fit your business needs. Template sites just can't match the quality of a well done custom site that has been built from the ground up.
It Starts With the Process
Before we or any other quality web design studio can build a site their needs to be a gathering of information regarding your business. Bradley & Company does this by asking the client to complete the project worksheet form. This gives us the information we need to prepare for our first meeting to discuss the project. The key point is that no work on actually building the site starts until we know about your specific business, your site goals, and the content you wish to place on your site. This is important. Template sites don't offer this. They can't. The template was designed before knowing anything about your company, your goals, or the content you wish to display on the site.
Custom Sites are Unique
Unique branding is important. Template sites are not unique. The same exact template can be sold to your competitor or sold to another business, possibly giving the impression to your customers that you and this other business are related. While template vendors may allow you to buy they final copy of the template, it is not cheap and the other shortcomings of templates still exist.
Custom Sites Fit your Content
Since the site is built around your content... the navigation buttons, content areas, forms, image gallery's, etc. all fit with out expensive custom modification which would likely be required for a template. These modifications can also be difficult to perform without the original design of the site being compromised. Site planning before construction is a clear advantage.
Better and More Consistent Coding
The code behind the web page is very important. Websites are not simply pretty pictures. Every developer creates their XHTML and CSS a little differently and code quality can vary greatly. When using a template that includes the XHTML and CSS code, it takes time to just analyze how the code is structured before making any changes. This wastes time and money. In the best case the code is good and only minor modifications are needed. In the worst case the code is poor requiring an expensive re-write. Because Bradley & Company's quality web standards based code is our own, it is easy for us to modify it at a later date as your site needs evolve.
Search Engine Friendly
A well coded site with attention paid to SEO practices is necessary for a site to rank well in search engine listings. Our sites are designed from the ground up to be SEO friendly. Template sites are coded without the benefit of knowing what the ultimate content of the site will be. Because of this the time will need to be spent altering the site in order to make it rank better.
Goals Differ
Templates are designed to sell themselves. They may be attractively designed but may be completely wrong for your business. Our custom web sites are designed to be attractive and built to perform for the unique needs of your business. The goal of a custom website is to meet the needs and expectations of your customers. Without a doubt, a far more important goal.
Value
While the initial attraction to templates is to cut costs, in the end a custom site is likely a much better value. Custom sites do not require the typical extensive rework and modifications to fit your content. Bradley & Company websites are built only after analyzing your companies website needs and available content resulting in a better site without the costly rework. In the end, while it may cost more initially for a fully custom site, the value received makes the Bradley & Company custom website a better bargain.
