Although drag-and-drop website builders and templates are a great solution for some businesses, they often come with drawbacks. Predesigned websites are created from a specific template that you can customise with content, however, you are limited to adding custom features and functionality, lack of SEO and restrictions on device responsiveness. However, custom websites are built entirely from scratch from code, allowing your business to create user-friendly websites with custom functionality.
What Are Custom Websites?
Custom websites are created by a website developer, who works with you to create a unique website that is built tailored to your needs and business goals. You maintain control over the design process to ensure that the finished website helps to grow your business, with website developers offering their expertise and knowledge to create a website that works for you.
Benefits of Custom Web Design
Tailored to Your Branding
Websites are an opportunity to showcase your unique brand personality, products and services. With custom web development, you can partner with a design team to give your website a personalised look and feel, giving a unique user experience. Your website is built using your branding, including logo, colours and brand voice, to ensure consistency across your business. This allows you to build brand recognition and increase brand awareness and loyalty.
Search Engine Optimisation
Custom website design allows for better search engine optimisation, as web developers will build your website with SEO in mind. They will implement best practices that will help your site to rank better on search engines such as Google, making it easier for your website to be discoverable by your target audience, and help with your organic digital marketing strategies.
Custom websites are coded efficiently which will help with website speed. Websites are built with an intuitive navigation structure that makes your website more user friendly, reduces bounce rate, and eliminates security issues that often exist with template websites. SEO best practices put into place include:
- Optimised page titles and meta descriptions
- Optimised page URLs
- Alt tags on all images
- Resized images that will ensure your website loads quickly whilst maintaining quality visuals
- Internal links to enhance user experience and aid user navigation
Scalability
With a custom website, you can scale the development process. As your business grows, you may need additional functionality or content in response to business changes, which your website design agency can provide for you.
Flexibility to grow and evolve your business may look like the following:
- New branding
- Accommodating for larger flow of traffic
- Added/new functionality or features
- Expanding your ability to showcase new or more products/services
- Altering navigational structure for your audience needs
- Adjusting website design to be modern and include latest trends
- SEO practices
Custom web design makes it much easier for you to make these necessary changes to your website, allowing your website to grow and evolve with your business.
Mobile Responsive
With over 50% of website traffic coming from mobile users, it is more important than ever that your website is responsive for different devices. Website developers can create a website that is mobile friendly, without compromising design or functionality.
Better User Experience
Successful websites engage people and provide good user experience, to in turn increase conversions. Knowing the needs of your target audience allows you to cater for them on your website, with website developers constructing your website with your customers in mind. They can create features and functionality that engages your audience and encourages them to take action, to help you meet your business goals. For example, you may want to create gated content that allows you to collect email addresses, and website developers can design your website with this goal in mind.
Unique Features & Functionality
Using a template means that you are constrained by themes and functionality, limiting your ability to customise both the structural and design elements of your website. With custom website development, your website is built according to your specifications, meaning that functionality can be built from scratch to your needs. This includes dynamic e-commerce pages, new functionality, and customisation of third-party integrations. This helps you to maintain control on the way your website functions and allows you to build a system that your customers will find useful.
See our custom applications projects here
Quicker Website Loading Times
As we mentioned earlier, custom websites are better for SEO which can impact website loading times. Load times are critical to the success of your website, with the ideal loading time for any web page being 3 seconds or less. Any more than this, and customers will bounce off your site and go elsewhere. Improved loading times will improve your user experience and result in more conversions and being more discoverable.
Templated websites often contain heavy coding in the background with complex structures that you may not be using – all of which are stored in the backend of your website and slow it down. Custom websites are coded from scratch, with any unused code removed from the website.
Higher Website Security
Website security is vital as it can be the difference between customers choosing you or your competitors, and it is vital that your website remains secure from hackers and viruses. Google also places security as one of its highest importance factors of ranking. Custom web development helps to maintain the security of your website by using coding methods that keep data secure, using an SSL, using proprietary source code, and website developers will also host your site in a secure environment. Hackers often focus on exploiting vulnerabilities in the most popular website themes and hosting platforms, which can give them the ability to target thousands of websites using exactly the same code.
Optimised Customer Journey
Your website should align to your customer journey, and should be structured in a way that minimises the path and time a visitor has to take to convert to a customer. Custom website development allows you to streamline the customer journey and eliminate any extra steps, allowing them to access what they want faster and more efficiently, increasing conversion rates and leading to a successful business.
We are expert website designers and developers, and we will work closely with you to ensure that your website is unique to your business and helps you meet your goals. We create brochure CMS websites, custom applications, e-commerce websites and many more. Contact us today for more information and to get your new website project started.
