Complete guide to Custom Web Design and Development in 2019
It takes new customers 50 milliseconds (yes that’s 0.05 seconds) to form an opinion about the design of your website. Up to 75% of customers will form an opinion on your business based on your website.
This doesn’t mean that you need to spend thousands of dollars on complex web design but it means that your website needs to be visually appealing.
The article below will give you an overview of what you need to consider when designing and developing your website.
What is custom web design and development?
Custom web design and development is when you create a custom website that conveys your value proposition and creates a strong brand for your business.
It is a critical marketing tool for your business. Creating a custom web design will help you to differentiate your business from your competitors. The section below will highlight five key elements that will help to create a great design and build credibility for your business.
Five elements for a great custom web design
1. Speed
If you observe the behaviour of internet users, it’s clear that if the site doesn’t load quickly they move to another site. If the website takes more than three seconds to load, 53% of users will abandon it.
The graphic below shows how the impact that page load times have on bounce rates.
Having a website that loads quickly is essential in keeping your customers engaged.
2. Clean Design
Having a website that has ‘clean design’ and using a ‘standard format’ will appeal to users. This may seem counter-intuitive because you may think that the objective of custom web design is to create a completely different layout.
However, research from Google showed that websites with low visual complexity and high prototypicality were perceived as highly appealing. This makes sense if you are visiting a website where the layout is different from what you are expecting and you can’t navigate it, you will leave quickly.
The point is to convey your point of difference through your value proposition and you’re content rather than complex formats and animations.
Research from Hubspot emphasizes this point. When asked about the ‘most important factor in the design of a website’, 76% of the consumers responded with a ‘website makes it easy to find what I want’.
Only 9% chose a website that offered a cutting edge interactive experience. In terms of a web site that has a ‘beautiful appearance’ only 10% of consumers ranked this as most important.
There are certain industries where this ‘wow factor’ may help to showcase the innovation skills you bring to the customers.
But for most industries, this is not required. This effort should be redirected to delivering value to your customers with your content.
3. Responsive
Responsive web design allows your website to be rendered differently based on the size of the screen. For example, the website will adjust to using the space available on a desktop, a tablet, and a smartphone.
Globally, more than half of the web traffic is being served to mobile.
Having a responsive website is not optional, it is mandatory for your business.
4. Customer Focus
Every customer that visits your website will have different requirements. If your customer is new to your business, they are at the top of your marketing funnel.
At this stage you want to build awareness of your business by being helpful rather than giving a hard sell. Your objective here may be just to provide helpful content and capture an email address. Trying to sell the customer on your product or service at this stage may not be effective especially for a higher ticket item.
The website should be designed to cater to each group of customers as they progress through your marketing funnel.
5. Search engine optimised
A well-designed website will not deliver value if it doesn’t get traffic. Even if the marketing strategy does not include organic search, it should still be designed with this in mind.
Your marketing strategy may shift from other channels such as social media marketing to organic search traffic.
The other benefit of optimising your site for search engines is that it gives insight into what your customers are searching for. This can shape your marketing and your corporate strategy.
Build from scratch vs Content Management System
Many development companies that espouse the benefits of having a website built from scratch. We endorse implementing a custom design. However, that doesn’t mean that a website should be developed from scratch.
The content management systems and associated themes that are available deliver amazing designs that are highly configurable. Professional themes use website page builders that allow you to highly customise the web design.
The graph above shows the amount of traction that WordPress has gained. In 2011, WordPress had 13.1% of market share and now it has 33.1%.
It is the clear leader of content management systems with the second technology being Joomla only having 3% of market share. The added bonus is that it is open-source and therefore free.
Custom web design vs templates
For most small businesses, we recommend using themes as a starting point. Sites such as Theme Forrest provide a good selection of designs as a starting point. Most of these themes are highly customisable and should meet the requirements for small businesses.
The important thing to remember is that a website built from scratch will be more expensive. There must be a return on investment to make this viable for your business.
Your customers will not know if your website is a custom built or based on pre-built themes. They are just concerned about whether the site meets their requirements.
When to build from scratch
It’s important to note that there will always be situations where a build from scratch is appropriate. Or a completely different technology other than a content management system is used to develop the site.
This could be the case when a custom web app is developed that has a high level of functionality. The right technology to use in these situations will depend upon the business requirements and it’s best to speak to us to get some advice.
Conclusion
This article highlighted the importance of a well-designed website for your business. It provided an overview of the 5 key elements that contribute to good web design.
It also gave an overview of the technologies to use that will meet the requirements for most small businesses.
If you would like some help with getting your a good web design for your business, please book a FREE strategy session using the booking section below.