If you want your business to appeal to a broad audience, show up high on the search result rankings, and advertise your products optimally, the website you use is a crucial factor. When your website is underwhelming and underperforming, it’s unlikely that your business will thrive. However, when you work with a website design firm to build a custom website, you can expect success.
What Are the Benefits of Custom Websites Over Templates?
The main benefit of a custom website is the level of control your organization will have over the design and functionality of the site. Although templates can make it easier to build a website from the ground up if you are trying to build a website yourself, most templates are too rigid to meet all your needs or preferences. More control over your website generally equals a better final product. Other benefits of a customized website include:
Showcase Your Brand
The brand of your business is more than your products and services – it’s your company culture and personality, too. Using a website to emphasize your brand’s culture can be a huge boost for your business, particularly if you want to underscore sustainable business practices such as recycled packaging that can appeal to the eco-friendly crowd.
The personality of your business is also important. Customers are far more likely to remember a business that has a unique or niche personality, such as products with puns or services that follow a theme. Blending the culture and personality of your brand into the foundational design of your website is an ideal way to stand out from the competition. A memorable website with an integrated brand message can position your business for success.
Optimize User Experience
When you use a template to design your website, you miss out on the opportunity to customize the user experience and overall navigational design of your website. Let’s face it, most templates have a clunky navigational design that can make it more difficult for website visitors to find relevant pages. In fact, as part of your website strategy, the firm building your website will ask specific questions about your preferred navigational pages to create the best possible user experience.
User experience design is crucial for more than site navigation. Many customers or clients will make judgments based on the ease of use of your website. If it’s difficult for clients to find relevant pages about your products and services, if it’s hard to find contact forms, or if it’s challenging to learn about your business because pages aren’t designed for optimal navigation, your business could make an outdated impression.
Increase SEO
These days, the success of a website can largely be judged by the SEO score the website generates. Make no mistake, Search Engine Optimization is a vital part of improving your website and should be one of the main focal points of a custom website design. Specifically, the content on your web pages should be designed to elevate your SEO, since websites that rank higher are more likely to be seen by clients who are looking for services on the internet.
Increasing your SEO score with a customized website design involves customizing most of the copy on your web pages. Some of the best opportunities to increase SEO rankings is with metadata, image alt tags, page URL, and keywords that are optimized in the text for each of your web pages. Internal links, backlink pages, and mobile architecture are also factors that can increase the SEO score for your website.
Match Business Scale
Building a customized website is also beneficial in the way of meeting the scale of your business. As your business grows and evolves, you will likely need to regularly change or update your website to make room for new products, services, and locations. Larger businesses will need to continually scale the website functionality and design to match the demands of the business and client base.
By contrast, businesses that are stuck using template websites will not have the ability to scale the website to the needs of the business. Most template websites are static, which means they are difficult to successfully update and optimize as your business grows. If you intend to grow your small business, it’s best to start with a website firm that can create scalable website architecture that will meet your future needs.
Provide Better Accessibility
Accessibility in website design usually refers to ADA accessibility. Most websites are mandated to meet ADA compliance regulations to make it easier for disabled individuals to access your website. A customized design allows you to meet these regulations by embedding tools for vision and hearing impairments. Most template websites will not have these options, which could be a major disadvantage for your business.
Access Flexible Hosting
The last benefit of a customized website design is the ability to meet the hosting needs of your website as your business grows and changes. Hosting is one of the pivotal points for the functionality of your website, since a server that can’t handle web traffic or has frequent downtime will not be able to accommodate your business needs.
However, when you work with a website design firm, you can likely benefit from flexible hosting options that will give you more control. More control over the hosting server for your website allows you to change service providers, scale to different hosting environments, and keep up with hosting chores like data backups.
How Long Does It Take to Build a Website?
Building a customized website from scratch sounds like a time-consuming process, but the truth is that this process usually takes about 30 days when you hire a website design firm. Firms that specialize in customizing the content and design for a website will use data-driven and performance-proven designs to quickly build your website.
The process of building a website from scratch will start with a strategy call so the website design firm can learn about your needs, design preferences, and feature requests. From there, more information about your products and services will be gathered to customize each page on your website. You will be able to have final approval on the design before the website is officially launched.
What About the Mobile Version of Your Website?
When you hire a website design firm to build a customized website for your business, a mobile version of your website will likely be built alongside the desktop version. Having a mobile version of your website makes it easier for clients to visit your site from multiple devices. Increasing access to your website without sacrificing the user experience may contribute to the success of your business.
Can a Website Design Team Use Your Former Website for Reference?
For some business owners, the initial website used for the business might have been built from a template. In some cases, it may be easier to expedite the process for your customized website if design specialists can reference your old website. Although template websites are underwhelming, if your business has been using a template website, there may be valuable information about your culture, brand, services, and products that can be integrated into your new website design.
Customizing the website for your business is one of the easiest ways you can position your business for success in the contemporary market. Not only does a customized website give you the freedom to blend the brand of your business into every design and functionality element, but a customized website also optimizes your SEO rankings. Contact Next Level Media Crew to schedule a strategy call for your new custom website.
