In this digital world that we live in, it’s unthinkable to believe that a business can survive more so thrive without an online presence. And while social media platforms are popularly used by businesses to market and promote their companies, products, and services, ultimately these networks won’t be enough to build your brand and create opportunities to generate sales. A more efficient and effective approach to developing an online presence for your business is by investing in a website.
When people want to find information, they go on the Internet and search for websites that have the answers they need. Unlike social media, websites offer consumers more than just information. They can find products and services that could address their problems and concerns.
Websites allow users to reach out and communicate directly with qualified resource people. They can access various types of content – text, videos, images, and graphics – that will help them gain a better understanding of their situations and find the best possible solutions.
Thus, having a website will do wonders for your business brand. If people are consistently happy with their experience using your website, they’ll be loyal to your brand and gladly promote it to their communities.
But not all websites are created the same.
There are 2 ways to build a website – custom design or the use of website templates. Although many businesses use templates to build their website, in this article we’ll explain why having a custom-designed website is better for your business.
What Are The Differences Between Custom Web Design And Website Templates?
As an adjective, the word “custom” means to make or design a product according to the specifications of the customer. You’ve heard “custom” attached to products such as motorcycles, guitars, and jewelry.
Add websites to the list.
1. Customized Website
A custom web design or customized website is one that’s designed and developed according to the specifications of the owner. You want a website that highlights the strengths of your business and convinces the site user that he’s come to the right place.
This type of website is built from scratch by a professional web designer. You need coding skills to customize a website with specific features that are unique to your business and complementary to your goals.
Think of the web designer as the architect of your house.
The architect and his team of interior designers and engineers will sit down with you and ask questions that will give them a clear perspective of how you want your home to look and feel.
The professional web designer with his team of graphic designers, and front and backend developers will sit down with you and ask questions that will give them a clear perspective of how you want your website to look and function.
With custom design, you’ll be more involved in the process because the web designer wants to ensure the site best captures your vision and performs according to expectations.
From the planning process to testing, the web designer will keep you in the loop. You’ll be part of the decision-making. The web designer will incorporate your ideas but also advise you on which suggestions are workable from the standpoint of web design.
2. Website Templates
In comparison, website templates are designs that are available for use. These templates have been pre-designed by professional web designers and can be downloaded to create your own website.
Website templates gained popularity because you don’t have to be a professional web designer to know how to use them to set up your website. Likewise, many of these website templates can be downloaded without spending a cent.
However, there is a trade-off to using website templates. Your creativity is impacted by limited options in design features such as color, images, navigation, and other elements that could further enhance user experience.
7 Benefits Of Having Custom Web Design For Your Business
Website template designs don’t require you to have coding skills but custom design does. If you’re going the custom web design route, you need to hire the services of a professional web designer.
For this reason, for entrepreneurs with a tight budget, the availability of free templates plays a big factor in the decision-making process. You can’t blame them for opting for the free templates because there isn’t much cash to go around.
But the extra expense of hiring the services of an experienced web designer isn’t an expense because you expect the website to generate a return. Therefore, you should view the custom website as an investment.
Here are the 7 benefits of having a custom website that will make the investment yield attractive dividends.
1. Unique To Your Business
Let’s assume you own a bed and breakfast.
The typical bed and breakfast website has pictures of their rooms taken at various angles, a copy of the menu, a list of things to do, a calendar on open dates, and a few positive testimonials from customers.
You can level up your bed and breakfast website by giving it these unique features:
- A walk-in tour or 360-degree view of your standard room, Junior Suite, and Executive Suite. You can include the dining areas, and recreational facilities or use high-resolution images.
- A downloadable PDF of your menu.
- A booking engine that indicates the cost per room and allows the user to type in reservation dates.
- Direct links to nearby attractions including discounts on products and services.
- Include a chat plugin for 24/7 customer support.
- Add contact/fill-out forms for customers who have questions or want to confirm their reservation dates.
- A webpage that highlights video testimonials from guests and lists the awards won by your bed and breakfast.
- A blog page that shares articles about the history of the town; lists of the best attractions, restaurants, and shopping areas; how-to articles that help guests make transportation arrangements, and reservations, and stay within their budget.
- An explainer video on the home page that features you sharing the history of your inn with guests and viewers.
These aren’t just bells and whistles. These features will help site users learn more about your inn as well as plan their visit to the town. Most likely, these features will encourage potential customers to choose your bed and breakfast over others.
A person looking for a place to stay in town will be impressed at how much time and effort you put into developing your website.
He might think, “For a business to invest in such a wonderful website, their inn must be worth it!”
2. Better Functionality
The features mentioned above like having 360-degree views of the room, adding videos, and the booking engine will require a lot of memory and might slow down the website speed.
But the great thing about custom design is that your web designer can address this issue before your website goes live.
An experienced web designer already knows how videos, high-resolution images, and search engines can affect site speed. During the planning stage, he’ll tell you what he plans to do to make sure site speed will not be compromised.
For example, he might recommend another web host service provider that could handle the extra bandwidth without inflating your budget much. For the videos, he could suggest creating a YouTube channel, in case you don’t have one, and just embedding the videos on the web pages.
A professional web designer understands the value of user experience and will work to ensure that the features of your website – contact/fill-out forms, signup buttons, social media icons, and chat support service – will function properly.
3. Enhanced Security
Although online traffic continues to be on the uptrend, Internet users remain wary about the risks of having their personal information stolen by cyber-criminals.
No one knows what types of malware are lurking on servers. Viruses could take control of seemingly harmless ads on a web page. Once your website is compromised, the losses that you’ll incur are more than just financial.
The business brand you’ve worked hard to build over the years will be tarnished, perhaps for good. 60% of businesses that have been victimized by hackers close down within 6 months after the incident.
When you use an existing website design template, you are more vulnerable to hacking attempts because cyber-criminals have already found vulnerabilities in the program.
It’s easier for cyber-criminals to infiltrate the defenses of website templates because they know what to expect.
With customized web design, the source code will be proprietary to your website. Unlike free website templates, the source code will not be available to the public.
Cybercriminals will have to spend more time and resources trying to break down the defenses of a customized website.
4. Scalable to Changes in Business Performance
Custom design allows you to plan the development of your website with growth in mind. As your business grows, your website should have the ability to scale and accommodate the increase in traffic and demands from customers.
For example, you have an e-commerce website that sells perfumes, colognes, and other scents. After achieving years of sustainable success and profitable growth, you might decide to have a monthly subscription service that ships samples of the latest scents to members.
If you’re running an online business consultancy service, you might want to add a web page that archives some of your past modules. New site visitors can sign up for limited-time-only access to these modules in exchange for their email addresses.
In comparison, website design templates have limitations on scalability. Once the limits of a template have been reached, you might have to switch to a custom website design.
5. Simple, Easy, and Memorable Customer Journey
When people land on your website, your goal is to convert their interests into sales. To do this, your website must be equipped with facilities that make the person’s journey from interested visitors to paying customers as simple, easy, and memorable as possible.
One of the key factors in converting interest into sales is to make processes efficient and without the need for additional steps that lend more inconvenience than assurances.
For example, your business sells cosmetics and other beauty products online. If a customer wants to learn more about your products, the link to the products page or the “Products” web page from the drop-down menu must be easily found.
The descriptions of your various products must have complete information. Everything that a customer needs to learn about your product must be included in the description.
The product descriptions should include the following information:
- Benefits
- How-to-apply instructions
- Active ingredient
- How to remove
- Risks and warnings
And yes – the price!
Include the link to the e-portal where the site visitor can place his order. The layout of the e-portal must be well-organized and the buying process from purchase to checkout must be simple. Likewise, give your shoppers multiple payment options.
An order confirmation form will be emailed to the buyer where he can click on a link to further validate his order.
Once the buyer’s order is on its way, send an email or a text message advising him that the courier is en route.
A web designer might suggest embedding a chat plugin in the e-portal page. The chatbot will be like the retail salesperson in a department store who approaches customers looking around the merchandise area and asking if they need assistance.
These features can be built into your customized website by a professional web designer. Website templates have programming limitations that prevent them from creating a similar shopping experience for visitors.
6. Potential for High ROI
Entrepreneurs with limited finances will understandably prefer using free templates to build their websites rather than hiring the services of a web design company.
As mentioned earlier and discussed throughout this section, a custom-designed website offers you advantages that website templates don’t have. These advantages make your website stand out from the rest of the competition. They will encourage your target market to patronize your business over others.
Why would you want your website to look and feel like everyone else’s? It’s possible that multiple competitors are using the same website template as you. However, with a customized website, you’re creating a whole new different experience for your visitors.
And the cost of having a custom website might not be as high as you think. Many web design companies are run by reasonable professionals who know what it’s like to start a business and the important role a website plays in contributing to its success in the future.
When a web design agency submits a quotation for its services, it doesn’t mean the number is final and non-negotiable. Review the preliminary plans with the web designer. Work toward arriving at a middle ground whereby costs are reduced without compromising the performance of the website.
A streamlined website that delivers the expected results will generate high ROI for your business.
7. Get a Boost in the Search Rankings
Cumulatively, all of these 6 benefits will give your website a boost in the search rankings.
Google cares about its users. The world’s biggest search engine’s algorithm frequently undergoes changes to help it find the best websites on the Internet.
Ranking factors such as mobile responsiveness, site security, fast download speed, great content, optimization, and navigability were selected by Google to motivate websites to ensure excellent user experience.
And why is moving up the search rankings a big deal?
According to a study by Backlinko, the top 5 websites that appear on the first page of the SERP, account for 70% of all clicks with the first position getting 28.5% of all click-throughs.
Investing in custom design automatically checks many of the search ranking boxes because your website is designed with your customers or end users in mind.
Moving up the search rankings creates more opportunities for your website to generate more traffic. The more website visitors the higher the probability of converting interest into sales.
Conclusion
It takes time to grow a business and sustaining its success over time is more challenging. That’s why when you decide to start a business, you must commit to it in the long haul.
Custom web design will take you through the long haul. It’s built to be adaptable and flexible so you can accommodate changes in customer demographics, online behaviors, and industry trends.
As your business grows, a customized website will maintain all of the factors that ensure site users remain happy and satisfied – mobile responsiveness, site speed, security, functionality, and relevant content.
If we got you interested in having a custom design website for your business, let’s get started! Book a meeting with us now. Give us a call or drop an email and we’ll start planning on designing a website that’s just for you!
And if you enjoyed this article, feel free to share it with friends who are also thinking of designing a website.
