In a bid to rank ahead of competitors and stand out in your sector, most business owners consider getting an agency for custom website development.
Websites are an anchor to your marketing efforts, and a custom website design has to potential to improve your marketing results significantly. as oppose to using a template or a pre-built website.
By
Omer Bernstein
Custom website design is mostly suitable for businesses that have been operating for a few years and are still using a website template.
It’s also more suitable for a business that has more budget to work with…
Getting a custom website may have a positive impact on the business’s online performance. Because it typically upgrades both the visual and usability aspect of a website. Consequently, improving both lead generation and online sales in many scenarios.
This article covers everything you need to know about custom website development, with emphasis on its benefits and cost expectations.
Custom website development refers to creating a customized website based on your brand, product, or company. As with most tools promoting online presence, a great website should assist potential customers to find what they want. It also helps them easily decide why they should choose your business over others.
Custom website development means your website will be developed completely from scratch. Usually, a team of two professionals is needed for this job comprising of a web developer and a web designer. Both of them work collaboratively to build your website, and if they are proactive they will give you UX design tips and marketing language advice.
UX design broadly refers to user experience, in our case, it relates to a visitor’s experience using your website. If you chose a professional team they will help you with this aspect, and give you advice to make better decisions.
Such advice may include reducing friction in the website and making sure the copywriting you use is relevant to your target audience.
Basically, every established business needs a custom website. This is because it provides the unique brand feel to attract traffic and help increase potential clients. Furthermore, It helps set your brand apart from the sea of stock website templates out there.
Custom website development also allows space for original corporate branding, which is important to growing your business as reputable and reliable. We usually recommend custom websites for businesses that are already established with ambition to grow.
Web template websites are more suitable for testing business ideas and small one-man show businesses. For example, most tradies in Australia typically use a template, as they don’t need much information on their website. Mostly used just for displaying contact details and sending quotes.
It is difficult to put a price tag on creating a custom website. However, the cost for a basic custom website can range anywhere between $4,000 to $10,000 dollars and much more if it has complex functionalities.
Here are a few factors that can influence the price range –
There are many ways these days to build a custom website. But essentially, all of them can be categorized into 3 main groups – Website builders, Content Management System (CMS) and custom HTML and CSS. Let’s cover them in more detail.
1. Website builders – Website builders are by far the fastest, enabling you to quickly build a website. The solutions under this category usually feature a drag-and-drop function, with many web design templates and elements you can use. No prior knowledge of coding is required. To our opinion, Wix is a good example of an easy website builder.
2. Content Management System (CMS) – CMS are a little bit more complex but the flexibility you get is unmatchable in comparison to website builders. They are typically used when you require more tools to manage the site (such as Ecommerce/online courses or blogs) and custom functionalities such as creating onsite tools.
CMS are categories into 3 groups
Here are some examples of popular sites built using open-source CMS – MTV News, BBC America, TripAdvisor Blog and Realtor.com
Here are some examples of popular sites built using proprietary CMS – Gymshark, Skype, RedBull, Whole Foods Market & Lastpass
Here are some examples of popular sites built using SaaS CMS – Canva, Figma, Slack & MailChimp.
3. Custom HTML and CSS. – Is probably the most time consuming of them all, but highly rewarding if you are looking to develop your coding skills. It requires basic knowledge of HTML and CSS coding languages and a lot of spare time.
For this task you will need a code editor tool (to write your code) and a file transfer protocol to upload you code to the web server.
You will also want to develop your site on your computer first to see if it works correctly before you upload to the web server. This option is not as popular because there are many tools today that save you the time required to build a website from scratch.
We briefly covered a few benefits of building a custom website previously. But let’s go into more detail and talk about all the important benefits you need to consider:
1. Communicates the brand’s unique value through design
Custom website design simply comes down to converting your artistic ideas into a functioning reality. The flexibility you get with a custom design allows you to create a unique and coherent design in your website. Especially if you already have a brand guideline that you can use.
2. Better ranking on search engines
Custom website design helps to build your site in a way that is optimized for search engine optimization (SEO). Mainly because of having flexibility in terms of content creation and development using good practices. As oppose to a template website which may be more limiting and time consuming.
When a website is built with SEO in mind, it’s easier to get your website ranking higher on search engines. Data analysis has shown that 28.5% of people click the first few organic google search result. Therefore, investing in a custom website can help your business generate organic traffic, consequently increasing sales.
3. Better user experience
Another benefit of custom website development is the flexibility to design a better user experience (UX design). Which helps to build trust with your website visitors.
Customizing a website design helps the brand communicate better, consequently satisfying the customer needs. Both in terms of design and functionality.
Specifically developing a customer journey on your website that connects the user’s intent with the content, service or product you offer.
4. Fast-loading features
Website load time is an important factor for a business. It plays an important role in landing or losing a customer. Especially when today a customer is more likely to leave your website if it doesn’t load within 5 seconds!
Custom website development gives more control in terms of optimising speed as oppose to a website template. This is because a custom website is more structured making it easier to edit and optimise.
5. It creates a more professional appearance
Custom websites conveys a level of professionalism that makes a business appear more legitimate and trustworthy to potential customers that visit the site.
6. Security
Custom websites are typically more secure. A website built using a website-builder platform may have situations in which a security threat can compromise the entire platform. This exposes your website to unnecessary risks such as leak of information. Custom websites on the other hand, can be optimized for security and are less dependent on third party infrastructure.
7. Allows for easy updates
A Custom Management System (CMS) is another important feature of a custom-made design. With a custom management system, quick updates can easily be made on the website, i.e. uploading pictures and publishing articles. Which helps to keep information on your website up to date and accurate.
A business’s website is the face of the business. For most customers, a first-time visit to a website can highly impact their impression of your business. Which is why your website is the main factor that will determine your business success online.
Lets talk about your business, book in a FREE 30-min Consultation today!
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