The overwhelming majority of people conduct research and access information online. As a result, it’s crucial for your business to have a strong web presence. This is the most important way to grow your brand and connect with potential customers. When building a website, you can choose between ready-made templated solutions such as Wix and Squarespace, or custom website solutions that are tailored to the unique needs of your business.
While templated options are more affordable, they have significant limitations that ultimately inhibit your ability to leverage the full power of your website. By choosing a custom website design and development solution, you’ll reap a variety of important benefits that will help you grow your business over time.
You may find this article helpful: Top Questions to Ask a Web Developer Before Hiring
What Is Custom Web Development?
When building a new website, there are two aspects to the process:
- Web design
- Web development
Web design refers to the style and layout of your website. It incorporates elements such as colors, images, content, forms, and CTA buttons to create a cohesive structure that effectively coveys your brand and message in a manner that is appealing to your audience. The design of your website is often the first thing people notice when they visit, and it has a significant impact on the user experience. For this reason, it’s crucial to get this aspect of the process right.
Web development refers to the building blocks of the process. It encompasses the functional elements that impact the way your website is constructed and performs. These “behind the scenes” elements control items such as your website’s ability to load correctly, process ecommerce transactions, download digital documents, collect leads, and many other important functions. The manner in which your website is developed is critical to its overall success.
As the name implies, custom web development involves using programming code that was created to address the specific needs of your website. This solution allows you to maintain much greater control over the construction of your website than can be accomplished using a website builder template. When you choose custom website development, you’ll generally need the assistance of an experienced programmer who can build the site to your desired specifications. While this increases your upfront cost, the benefits achieved from this process will pay huge dividends over the lifetime of your website.
Why Should I Choose Custom Website Development?
Simply put, custom web development results in a much better website that is optimized to the specific needs of your business. Your improved website performance will help you achieve:
- Better SEO results
- Longer user session times
- Improved user experience
- Increased conversions and profits
When you choose custom website development, you’ll experience the following important benefits.
Unique Features Tailored to Your Specific Business
When you use a website builder template, you’re constrained by the themes and functionality built into the system you’re using. This places significant limitations on your ability to customize both the structural and design elements of your website. As a result, your website will look very similar to hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites using that same theme. In addition, your site’s architecture may not be ideally suited to the specific needs of your business.
With custom web development, your website is built according to your specifications. There are no limitations on its look or the way its structural elements are organized. Not only will your website have a unique look and feel, but your navigation can be set up in a way that aligns with the needs of your users. You’ll also have the ability to create customized third-party integrations, dynamic ecommerce pages and fillable forms that contain the specific information you need. This customization allows you maintain complete control of the way your website functions, delivering the results needed to engage your audience and grow your business.
Faster Loading Times
In order to address the varied needs of all their users, most website builder modules come equipped with built-in functionality that gets applied to all sites built on their platform. While you may need some of this functionality on your website, you’ll most likely be saddled with a lot of items that you don’t need. Unfortunately, this bloated and unnecessarily complex website structure can slow down your site speed and increase load time.
Website load times are critical to the success of your website and can often impact whether you convert a visitor into a customer. Ideal loading time for a web page is 3 seconds or less. When your website experiences a slow load time, it negatively impacts performance in the following ways:
- 25% of visitors abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load
- 46% of users won’t revisit websites with poor performance, including a slow loading time
- 1 second delay in loading time reduces customer satisfaction by 16%
Custom website development eliminates this site speed issue by including only the specific functionality your website requires. You’ll have the ability to choose the important functional components that meet the needs of your business and users, reducing the bloating that exists with website builder modules. This improved loading time for your web pages will significantly improve your user experience and pay huge dividends when trying to convert new customers.
Improved Website Security
Website security is an important function that is impacted by the way your site is developed. It’s crucial that you ensure your website remains secure from a breach by hackers, especially if you gather personal data from customers. In fact, website security has become so important that Google now warns visitors when they’re entering information on a form hosted on a page that doesn’t have SSL security technology installed.
When you use a website builder platform, your site is more vulnerable to security breaches. If any website on the platform is breached, it’s possible for every website hosted on the platform to become compromised. Most website builder modules host thousands of sites on their platform, creating a serious security risk.
Custom web development helps to maintain the security of your website:
- Advanced coding methods are used to keep data secure
- Your website will be built using SSL security technology
- Proprietary source code is used, making it more challenging for a breach to occur
- Your website will be hosed in a more secure environment than is possible using a website builder platform
- Custom workflows for multiple participants, strict access permissions and complex authentication methods improve security measures
These methods significantly reduce your risk of a breach that can not only damage the performance of your website, but erode the confidence of your customers.
Better Scalability and Flexibility
Your business will grow and evolve over time. While the functionality of your new website may address your needs today, it may not be equipped to handle the growth and changes your business experience over the next few years. Therefore, it’s crucial that your new website has the ability to adapt to the evolving needs of your business.
Website builders aren’t scalable or flexible. The functionality you experience now is largely the functionality you’re stuck with for the lifetime of the website. This places significant limitations on the site’s ability to adapt to the changing needs of your business and your audience. Once you outgrow these existing capabilities, you’ll be forced to build a new website that reflects the growth you’ve experienced.
Custom web development allows you to build a scalable website that contains the flexibility necessary to address your needs as they evolve over time. Your web developer can make any adjustments you need as they arise, allowing your website to grow along with your business. You’ll have the ability to accommodate larger web traffic volume, adjust ecommerce functionality, and address many other issues that will improve your user experience. This will significantly expand the lifespan of your site.
Better Optimized Customer Journey
It’s important to create your website in a way that aligns with your customer journey. In other words, your website should be structured in a way that minimizes the path a visitor takes to convert to a customer. Any extraneous steps included along this process can result in visitor drop-offs.
When you use a website builder, you’re limited by the functionality provided by the platform. As a result, you may end up with a convoluted customer journey that reduces conversions. Custom web development allows you to streamline your customer journey and eliminate these extraneous steps. This will help you increase conversion rates and grow your business.
Improved Business Function Automation
Custom web development also allows you to optimize many of your business functions, improving your ability to perform a wide range of actions, including:
- Capture potential leads in a format that seamlessly exports to your CRM
- Integrate other software programs with your website
- Manage customer data acquired through user engagement with your website
These important functions, which are often more difficult with a website builder, can significantly streamline your operations, reduce the time required to organize customer data, and improve the efficiency of your sales team.
Custom Web Development Solutions by Webolutions
Webolutions provides robust custom web development solutions to address the unique needs of your business. Our proprietary Intrinsic Multiplier Approach™ ensures your new website is built in a manner that supports your business model, provides the flexibility to grow over time and delivers an exceptional user experience.
Our web development team has extensive experience building websites to support a wide range of industries and business types. This versatility and expertise will set you up for success from the moment your new site launches. We can address just about any need you may have, including:
- Developing custom applications
- Building robust ecommerce platforms
- Crafting a streamlined and user-friendly website architecture
- Providing an easy platform to add new content over time
You’ll experience several important benefits from our Performance by Design™ system, including:
- Improved SEO results
- Higher levels of visitor engagement
- Improved ability to navigate the website
- Better lead generation and increased sales
- Improved ability to convey your brand
- Better overall user experience
Let’s Talk
Please contact us today to schedule a free consultation. We serve clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.
