“Custom” is a subjective term. “Custom Website,” more so. Before you invest time and money into custom website development and design, make sure you know what you should expect from your web development partner.
At a high level, your custom website design experience should include:
This should be a challenging but rewarding experience.
Here are the most common ways web development companies mess this up:
You are likely investing in a website to generate positive returns. This may be an increase in inbound sales leads, increased engagement with your community, or a stronger position from which to establish thought leadership in your industry or subject matter.
Web companies who lack a business-minded approach think your goal is to make a website. They don’t ask about what returns you expect from it because they don’t have a way to guide you there. Or they infer or insist that the answer is in design or UX (User Experience), or whichever part of the equation they do understand. Be careful here. Persist on ROI-focused questioning. Make sure your partner has proven systems that establish their accountability, tying the creation of your custom website to the achievement of the results you need to generate.
A custom website is customized primarily for your website visitor.
Yes, it is important that you “like” your website. It is infinitely more important that your prospective client “like” your website. That decision gets made, subconsciously, in a few seconds. Only by first clearly defining your target personas, their needs, their decision process, their mindset when they arrive on your website, and what information they need, can your website be designed to convert those visitors into leads or sales.
If our designers like your website, and you like your website, and your CEO likes your website, but your prospective client does not, everybody loses. Your partner should deliver data-driven recommendations matching their User Experience and design with your overall business goals.
This is your web designer fitting you into a box. This makes it easier and faster for them to do their work because it prevents them from having to think creatively.
This also provides a ready-made excuse. When you get a website that looks exactly like any of the 6 you provided, your designer has a rationale that includes, “You provided this as an example.”
Websites you like should foster a discussion. What about it do you like? Will this help you stand apart from your competitors? Will it increase conversions, engagement? Budgets are limited and websites scale—is this the best investment at this time?
“Because a competitor is doing it,” is not in and of itself a design or development factor for your website. Competitor websites should be analyzed so you can understand your market opportunity, create a data-driven strategy, and make decisions based thereupon—for your website and your ongoing marketing program(s).
First: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not for everyone. If you are talking to a company whose profitability is significantly dependent on its ability to sell SEO services, you might never learn this.
Up-front data analysis is required to advise if and how your website can rank high enough on search engine results to deliver relevant, quality inbound traffic. You may have terms in mind which are already saturated by bigger and more established competitors with deeper pockets. Or, the terms for which you can score may not have the search volume to generate positive returns on your investment. You should know this before investing in SEO.
If you read Google’s best practices and assertions over the past few years, you will find they have implied they are trying to de-emphasize keywords in the URL (Universal Record Locator, i.e. your web page’s address) for search rank. If you test this theory, you will find that they will never actually be able to do this.
The world (and your business) is loaded with examples of how things don’t play out in real life like they do on paper. This is one of those.
Foregoing keyword and competitive analysis prior to designing and developing your custom website decreases your upfront cost and timeline. It also limits your website’s marketability and performance every day after you make that decision. Your SEO strategy, and its prominence and priority in your overall marketing program, should be established before your website is launched. To maximize your website’s organic search performance, the moment your new custom website is indexed by search engines, your website’s URL structure is keyword optimized. Those keywords are strategically chosen in a dialogue among your digital marketing partner and you. This dialogue must include your business goals and acumen. Our ability to score for a term does not necessarily equate to moving your needle.
If data indicates positive return is available through SEO, and if your custom website is not built around a custom, keyword-optimized URL plan that considers your competitive landscape, your website is not truly custom.
Why doesn’t everyone do it this way?
Especially with WordPress, many companies provide “custom” websites which are actually templates that are “owned” by the website provider. This means that you may own your content, but you will not be able to pick up your files and move them to a different partner or hosting platform.
Characteristics of this include:
To avoid all these potential pitfalls and make your custom website experience a triumphant one, make sure you are comfortable with your partner’s responses to questions like these:
Not all custom website providers are created equal. For insights on how your custom website can deliver positive ROI, get a free consultation with a web development expert today.
For more than 27 years, we've worked with thousands (not an exaggeration!) of Denver-area and national business leaders to help them achieve their business goals. Are YOU ready to take your website and business to the next level? We're here to inspire you to thrive. Connect with Webolutions, Denver's leading web design and digital marketing agency, for your FREE consultation with a web development expert.
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