I want to talk about templates. Not because I'm opposed to them in principle — there are contexts where a well-chosen template makes complete sense — but because I've spent 25 years watching small businesses make the same mistake, and it costs them more in the long run than they saved up front.

The scenario goes something like this: A new business owner in Worthing, or a Brighton retailer looking to expand online, uses one of the big website builder platforms and produces something themselves — or hires a cheap agency to do it quickly. The result looks reasonable on a laptop screen. It has a logo, some text, a contact form. Job done.

And then nothing happens. Enquiries don't come. The site doesn't rank in Google for anything meaningful. Visitors land and leave within a few seconds. The owner concludes that 'websites don't really work for my type of business.' That conclusion is wrong. The website just wasn't built to work.

What a template actually is — and isn't

A website template is a pre-designed layout built to appeal to as many businesses as possible. That's the point of it commercially. It can't be built for your specific audience, your specific conversion goals, or the specific way your customers make decisions about buying what you sell.

It also can't account for your brand in any deep sense. You can change colours and swap in your logo, but the underlying structure — how information is organised, what appears above the fold, how the navigation flows, what the visual hierarchy guides the eye towards — is fixed. It's designed for the average business, not for yours.

Good web design is not just about making something look nice. It's about understanding how your specific customers think, what they need to see and in what order to build enough trust to get in touch, and then building a digital environment that guides them through that journey without friction. That requires knowing your business, your customers and your market and the experience to turn that into an appealing design. A template can't do that.

The local dimension

There's something specific I want to say about working with a local web designer in Worthing or Brighton, rather than a distant agency or an online platform.

I know this area. I know that businesses in Worthing have a different client base and competitive landscape from businesses in Brighton's North Laine. I know what the local market looks like, what local customers respond to, and what your regional competitors are doing online. I can meet you for a coffee, see your premises, meet your team, and understand your business in a way that simply isn't possible remotely.

That contextual understanding shows in the design, in the copy, and in the SEO strategy. Ranking for 'web designer Worthing' requires actually understanding the Worthing market — not just inserting the town name into a generic template. I've been building websites for over 25 years, the last 7 of it for Sussex businesses. That's 25 years of understanding what works.

The real cost calculation

A bespoke website costs more upfront than a template. I won't pretend otherwise. But the calculation looks different when you account for the full picture.

A template site on a monthly-subscription platform costs money every month, indefinitely. You own nothing — if you stop paying, the site disappears. You're locked into whatever the platform allows you to do, which may not include the features your business eventually needs.

A bespoke site built on an open-source CMS like Joomla or WordPress gives you full ownership from day one. No ongoing licence fees. You can take it to any hosting provider. You can extend it as your business grows. And you can update the content yourself — after handover, you have full control.

More importantly: a site that actually converts visitors into enquiries generates revenue. A site that doesn't, regardless of how cheap it was to build, generates nothing. The right comparison isn't 'bespoke site vs cheap template.' It's 'site that works vs site that doesn't.'

Templates and accessibility: a hidden cost most people don't see

There's one area where the gap between a template and a bespoke build has consequences that go beyond aesthetics or conversion rates: accessibility.

Most websites built on template platforms — whether Wix, Squarespace, or a WordPress theme — struggle to meet WCAG 2.1 AA in practice. Whether or not the platform itself offers a compliant foundation, the moment you add content, customise the design, or install third-party plugins, accessibility failures creep in that you often have no way to fix within the constraints of a closed system.

This matters practically, not just ethically. Under the Equality Act 2010, all UK businesses are required to make reasonable adjustments to ensure their services are accessible to disabled people — and a website is a service. For public sector bodies, schools and charities, the obligation is even more explicit under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018.

What working with me looks like

I work directly with you — not through account managers, not outsourced to a junior developer. Every project starts with a conversation about your business, your customers and your goals. I develop a design concept specific to you, show you work in progress at every stage, and don't launch until you're satisfied.

After launch, I'm still here. Maintenance, security updates, performance monitoring, ongoing support. When something breaks or you need to change direction, you're talking to the person who built it — not raising a ticket with a helpdesk.

For a small business in Brighton, Worthing, Sussex or wherever you are that needs a digital partner who understands their context and genuinely cares about their results, I think that matters more than a lower upfront price and a generic result.