Why custom website design is important to your brand

Is it time for a new website?

If you're on a budget, you may be tempted to use a builder site like GoDaddy or WordPress to get up and running without much overhead. But this is a mistake.

A custom-built website is essential to building and maintaining your brand image.

Here's why you should invest in a web design agency over a builder site any day of the week.

It will help you define and solidify your brand

A company's website is it's virtual face to the world, so of course it should be unique and definitive. But as user-experience expert Martin Velchevski points out, the process of conceiving and building a website often helps companies to clearly define their brand.

"Not only are templates not optimized...for a specific brand and its products and services, they hurt the brand by denying it the process of actually ideating, conceptualizing, mocking, prototyping and designing, developing and producing a website," Velchevski said. "In my opinion this journey of discovery is where a lot of the brand personality comes alive."

Custom websites are better than builder sites for helping your
brand grow and develop. Photo Credit: Joshua Mayer

It gives you space to grow and develop

Dynamism and openness to opportunity are important to brands that want to survive and thrive in a changing world. And builder sites don't give you the opportunity to adapt your website to the times. As Penina Finger puts it, "The danger [of templates] is rigidity." A custom website, on the other hand, allows you the flexibility to change gears and even modify your brand image.

It's a better investment

Builder sites try to make it seem as though their products are the better deal. But the truth is that if they don't charge monthly fee, many builder sites make you paste their own branding across your page. This can inadvertently damage your brand by making it seem like the quality of your site is questionable. While custom sites are a much bigger upfront investment, they'll reap more reward when it comes to professionalism, marketing, and growth.

Custom sites give you an edge in terms of strategy by giving you access to a team that
understands your marketing needs. Photo Credit: Ken Teegardin.

It gives you extra input on strategy

Experienced web designers and creative start ups will be dynamic and forward-thinking about how best to serve your clients through your website. So if you contract with the right design agency, you'll have a whole other team providing input on your marketing strategy while what you're paying them for is the website itself.

It makes you easier to find

Builder sites tend to use Flash for formatting, which not only causes issues for certain platforms and browsers, but also poses problems in term of search-ability. While Google recently developed a method for indexing Flash, many search engines have not, and Flash-based sites tend to rank lower in search.

In addition, a custom-designed website can help you overcome these 5 reasons why your website is not attracting your best customers.

It helps you know how you're doing

Builder sites are also at a disadvantage from a data standpoint. Their analytics technology tends to be behind the times, which makes it hard to evaluate your own growth in terms of traffic, and more difficult to pinpoint where you can improve with your search engine optimization (SEO) tactics. Google Analytics provides much better analysis, and it offers the latest tracking tools and technology for your custom website.

It's easier than ever to create your own website. With builder sites and online templates you can have a passable online presence up and running in a matter of hours. But just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Investing in a quality design agency is the only way to go when it comes to establishing your brand's web presence.

For more ideas on building a website that is agile and suits your organization's needs, download our Growth-Driven Design Playbook.

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