Custom web design can be a game-changer for businesses and organizations. It allows them to create a unique online presence that differentiates them from their competitors and other generic cookie cutter templates. More over, it also allows for full customization and integration of other systems like your ERP, CRM, and Ecommerce.
One of the biggest advantages a custom website helps with is establishing a clear brand identity, which helps build brand awareness, trust, and growth.
According to recent data, 90% of consumers will pay more for products and services from trusted brands (Salsify). Your website is one of the best ways to build this trust with customers.
In this article, I will outline why investing in custom web design and development can help increase demand and brand awareness for your company. We’ll cover the following topics:
- Benefits of custom web design
- Factors to consider for custom website projects
- How to select the right website design company
- Examples of successful custom websites
Benefits of Custom Web Design
It’s hard to stand out in today's crowded marketplace. One of the best ways to make sure that your website stands out is to invest in custom website design and development.
Starting from the ground up also ensures your site is unique. If your site looks generic - how are you going to stand out from the competition? Here are just a few advantages of investing in a custom digital experience instead of settling for generic templates.
- Improved user experience - A custom website can be tailored to the specific needs of your target audience, providing a more personalized experience that encourages engagement and loyalty. Most off-the-shelf website templates are bloated with extra features that may not be helpful for your users.
- Enhanced brand identity - Your brand is what helps separate you from your competitors. With a customized website design, you can start incorporating your brand identity into the process from the very beginning instead of trying to fit it into the design after the fact.
- Increase conversion rates - With a custom website design you can put more of an emphasis on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Instead of settling on out-of-the-box features, you can customize your Calls to Action (CTA) to improve your conversion rate.
- Increase Organic Traffic - Organic traffic can be a huge boost to revenue and growth. With a custom design, you can build SEO best practices into the frontend and backend at every level to ensure peak performance.
- More Backend Control - Building a custom website allows for full control of the frontend, and backend user experience. Too often marketing teams are handed over the keys to their new website without an easy-to-use backend, creating a dependency on the web design agency.
- ADA Compliance - With a custom website design you can build in ADA best practices to ensure your website provides an inclusive experience for every user.
Factors to Consider for a Custom Website Project
Creating a custom web design requires careful planning and consideration. It is important to understand and consider all the factors involved in the process. In this section, we’ll cover some of the biggest factors to consider for your custom website design project, including:
- How does the design process work?
- How long does a custom web design project take?
- How much does a custom website project cost?
- What best practices does my site need to follow?
The Custom Website Design Process in 5 Steps
How does the design process work?
At Fratzke, we’ve spent years perfecting our custom website design process. We break a project into these five stages. We believe that simplicity is the greatest form of sophistication.
- Discovery and Strategy - This is the data-gathering stage. We conduct a full website audit of your existing site and competitors. We also do market and customer research. We then create customer personas and customer journeys so we can best understand your customer's needs. After meeting with internal stakeholders about your goals, we start to develop a website strategy, sitemap, and feature set.
- UX/UI Design - Now that we understand your current website’s performance, target audience, and business goals we start the User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) Design stage. Here we develop early prototypes called wireframes, help develop the brand identity, and work on high-fidelity website designs.
- Content and SEO Strategy - While working on the designs, we start to develop our content and SEO strategy and begin content creation. This includes detailed keyword research, keyword content mapping, and collaboration with subject matter experts to create winning search-optimized content.
- Website Development - This is the technical stage. Now that your content is created and your custom designs are approved, it’s time to start developing them into real functioning webpages.
- Site Launch - After a full Quality Assurance (QA) process and User Testing, it’s time to launch your new custom website!
Custom Website Project Timeline
How long does a custom web design project take?
A customized website design project timeline can range from six weeks to twelve months depending on the scope, size, features, and project requirements.
With that said, the most important part is that the project is being managed clearly and transparently. We recommend using the following project management best practices to ensure everyone on the team is on the same page:
- Develop a project timeline with clear milestones and deliverables
- Make sure that tasks and milestones are clearly assigned
- Use a project management tool like Asana to make sure the timeline is managed
- Set clear deadlines and make sure to communicate when deadlines are in danger of being missed
- Schedule a regular meeting with stakeholders to review project progress and potential roadblocks
Estimating Your Project Budget
How much does a custom website design cost?
The cost of your website will depend on the size and complexity of your project. I once heard a marketing executive say: “Your website could cost anywhere from $500 to $5,000,000 - you get what you pay for!” This is a pretty big range, but it’s not totally untrue. One way to gauge possible cost is to think about the overall size of your brand. This can be a simple rule of thumb to help ballpark price:
- Small Businesses - $10,000 - $50,000
- Mid-Size Business - $50,000 - $200,000
- Large Enterprise Business - $200,000+
Of course, a custom website is not for every business type. Small businesses may not see the Return on Investment (ROI) on a custom web design, while Mid-size and Enterprise-level businesses can’t afford not to have a custom website.
Custom Web Design Best Practices
What best practices does my site need to follow?
When it comes to designing and developing a custom website for your brand, there are several best practices that should be included in the project. Let’s take a look at some of the most important ones below.
Responsive Web Design
Responsive web design is a web development approach that ensures your web content displays to best fit the screen size and orientation of your user's device - from desktop to mobile, and everything in between. This is important because 58% of global website traffic comes from mobile devices!
Sites that are not mobile-friendly can lead to a poor user experience and lost traffic. By implementing responsive design, websites can provide a seamless experience across all devices and improve accessibility for all users.
Custom Web Design and SEO
When designing your custom website, you need to ensure that the frontend design and backend code are optimized for search engines. Here are some SEO best practices to include in your project.
- Ability to customize each pages Title Tag and Meta-Description
- Clear header structure on the frontend and in the code
- No duplicate content
- Fast page load speeds
- Easy crawlability
Related Resource: Checkout more SEO Benchmarks and Best Practices
Easy to Use Site Navigation
Clear header and footer navigation menus with relevant links help users find what they are looking for faster. Users should be able to find what they are looking for in three clicks or less. This creates a positive user experience and can lead to increased engagement and conversions on the site.
Use Your Brand to Make Site Visually Appealing
Your brand is what separates you from your competitors. It’s important to incorporate your brand identity into your custom web design. When customers visit your site it should reflect your brand and everything that it stands for.
- Branding
- Color Palette
- Typography
- Icons
- Imagery
- Brand Voice
Working with Custom Website Design Company
When embarking on a custom web design project, it's essential to choose a website design company or web design agency with the necessary experience and expertise.
Communication and collaboration are also crucial for achieving the desired outcome. Clear communication of goals, expectations, and feedback can help to ensure that the final product meets the needs of your brand. Here are ten questions you should be asking your potential web design partners.
10 Questions to Ask Your Potential Website Design Company
- What is your website design and development process?
- How long do your custom website projects take?
- What project management software do you use?
- How much do custom website projects typically cost?
- What services do you not provide?
- How do you measure success for your website projects?
- Do you have custom website design case studies?
- Will the backend be easy for our marketing team to use?
- What CMS platform do you to build your custom websites on?
- Do you use an in-house design and development team, or do you outsource or offshore your development work?
Website Design and Development Services
Related Resources:
- Website Design Trends and Strategies for Winning in 2023
- Understanding Web Accessibility - 4 Design Best Practices
- Digital Marketing Audit: The Secret Tool Behind Every Great Strategy
- Digital Marketing Benchmarks & KPIs - How To Compare Your Performance
- Website Design and Development Services
9 Examples of Successful Custom Websites
Custom web design can be a powerful tool for achieving business goals and standing out in a crowded online marketplace. Let’s take a look at nine examples of brands that have achieved transformative success through custom web design.
- Service Partners
- Cheme Engineering
- TruTeam
- Disney
- Patagonia
- Glasshouse Products
- Starbucks
- The Home Depot
- Apptega
Service Partners
The Service Partners website was designed with a responsive mobile-first approach across devices to capture valuable customer traffic and drive engagement on any screen size. It also incorporates a bold brand and a multi-location-based user experience to help guide it’s customers to the most relevant products and nearest branch locations.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Bold brand identity that respects white spaces
- Multi-location features including branch pages, locator, and directory
- Easy-to-use site navigation and search functionality
- Using top keywords for product categories and subpages
- Interactive multi-step lead form that collects relevant data
Cheme Engineering
Cheme Engineeing’s custom WordPress website design and fresh brand update helps position the Canadian-based engineering firm as an industry leader. Their site is simple, yet effective, helping them clearly outline their brand's value to prospective clients.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Modern, mobile-first website design
- Provides context for client segments with rich copy below the fold
- Duel CTA conversion options for both clients and employee recruitment
TruTeam
The TruTeam website does a great job of balancing the many different customer segments and building contractor services they provide. Their bold brand and multi-location focus works perfectly with a custom website design.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Modern, mobile-first website design
- Buttons with CTAs to drive activity
- Drives target customer persona to deeper audience-specific content
- Multi-location features including branch pages, locator, and directory
- Engaging request-a-quote functionality
Disney
Disney’s custom website design takes a mobile-first approach and then scales up to larger screens like desktop and laptops. From top to bottom, the site is designed to keep users engaged and highlight the most important brand initiatives.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Customized above-the-fold hero module that changes based on the latest campaign
- Modules that highlight trending content and products
- Layout uses containers to display diverse content making it easy to display multiple types of content from different business segments
Patagonia
Patagonia’s custom e-commerce website design hits on multiple brands initiatives while keeping their purpose front and center. Notice how media, products, and shopping elements blend together perfectly to help support the user experience.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Custom e-commerce platform has helped to increase user engagement and conversion rates
- Clean navigation allows users to focus on what matters most
- Blend of online and offline experience with e-commerce and store locator
- Puts the brand purpose first and products second
Glasshouse Products
Glasshouse’s new custom website shows the power of taking a design-forward approach.It’s clean and effective, perfectly balancing product assets with user experience. Simple and easy-to-find sample pages and project portfolios allow users to find what they are looking for and schedule an in-person appointment.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Effective CTA’s are strategically placed throughout the site
- SEO optimization products pages
- Easy-to-use navigation allows users to find what they're looking for in just two clicks
- Modern, mobile-first website design
Starbucks
Starbucks is ubiquitous with coffee drinkers, and their custom website design helps keep them that way. It seamlessly integrates with its award-winning loyalty app to provide a five-star experience for its customers.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Highlights the brand's most important campaigns like new drinks and promotions
- Provides easy onramps for their menu, rewards, and gift cards
- Easy to use multi-location features like find a store locator
- Comprehensive footer to help users find other resources like careers
The Home Depot
The Home Depot’s custom website design helps doers get more done with there easy to follow website navigation, e-commerce experience, and multi-location features. With a business as complex as theirs, The Home Depot site helps reduce complexity into simplicity.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Clean, modern design based on their bold branding
- Easy-to-use search features that help users find what they're looking for
- Multi-location features like store locator and real-time inventory
Apptega
Apptega’s custom website approach perfectly threads the needle of usability and functionality. When selling world-class cybersecurity software your site needs to address all four stages of the customer journey: awareness, discovery, decision, and loyalty. Apptega’s site does this by providing content like webinars and blogs at every stage, while also providing easy-to-use CTA options like forms and chat.
Best elements from this custom design:
- Clear value propositions strategically placed throughout the site
- Robust resource center that highlights content types
- CMS and CRM integration to allow for faster demos and conversions
- SEO optimized content to help drive organic traffic
