What’s Best For Your Business?
Custom Fit Web Design vs. Website Templates
No matter the industry, market, or niche, we all have that special something that distinguishes us from our competitors.
The challenge we all have is to present our unique selling points online.
Perhaps it’s just the brand recognition and awareness that you need, which can be achieved with a simple WordPress website.
On the other hand, an omni-channel solution like Magento 2 can provide even the most complex custom features to support your sales and communication funnels.
Here are a few things to take in consideration when deciding what’s the best fit for your business.
Every business has its own unique needs.
No matter the industry, market, or niche, we all have that special something that distinguishes us from our competitors.
The challenge we all have is to present our unique selling points online.
Is a templated web design enough to boost awareness for your brand or do you need custom features to drive brand recognition and conversions?
We discuss the important factors to consider when making your decision, showcasing why a custom website design created by a professional website design firm can deliver superior online growth for your brand.
What Are The Benefits Of A Custom Website Design?
While theme and page templates are often a quicker and cheaper option, there are numerous benefits to choosing a custom web design for your website:
1. Supported Brand Identity
With only 50 milliseconds to make a strong first impression, your website is against the clock to portray your brand identity from the moment it loads.
While adaptable website templates go some way to providing a bespoke user interface, only completely customized designs can highlight your unique brand values, messaging and style upon entry and throughout the user journey.
2. Better User Experience
Improving the user experience (UX) shows value only when implemented correctly. If you don't get help from a custom web design company, your interface could easily get messy and hard to use.
On the flip side, getting professionals to handle the process can result in more intuitive navigation, interesting content and beautiful visuals.
3. Custom Functionality
Themeforest may have over 30,000 design templates, but many of them contain repetitive features and similar functionalities.
If your business model has a complicated unique value proposition, then a template design won't work for your customers.
4. Seamless Integration With Other Systems
Businesses with more than one system or tool in their workflow should definitely get custom web design services.
This way, you can carefully add integrations to popular CRM and eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce or Magento messing up the entire site.
5. Long-Term Savings
Did you know that templates for pages and websites have a lot of code in them? According to data gathered by Google, 53% of users will bounce from a page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
By getting your website’s code right in the first place, you will save time and money on later upgrades to meet user expectations. You will also know exactly what code has gone into your website, meaning potential issues are easier to locate and flush out.
What To Consider When Choosing The Best Custom Website Design Company?
Choosing the right agency to deliver your custom web design is an individual process, but there are several factors to keep in consideration:
1. Experience & Expertise
Whether a comprehensive website design or a simple site refresh, choosing to work with a highly experienced, professional website design agency on your custom web design project can make sure you receive a high-quality result.
How to decide: Visit your selected custom web design agency’s portfolio section. By viewing previous designs, you will gain a greater understanding of their standards, as well as the types of businesses and industries they have previously worked with.
2. Reviews And Testimonials From Clients
These can make a big difference between two custom web design companies that are competing with each other.
How to decide: Look for hidden meanings in the reviews and testimonials you read. Does a comment show how well the agency communicates? Is the review from a company that does the same thing as yours? Has a reputable source given them an award?
3. Understanding Your Business & Goals
Your business will have its own set of goals. A custom web design company that specializes in making custom websites should be able to find these details and make a digital experience that works for you, from eCommerce sales to community signups.
How to decide: During your discovery call, ask the agency how they plan to create a solution that works particularly for your business model.
Before we customize our design services to fit your needs, we do in-depth research on your company, your competitors and your industry at Digital Silk.
4. Customization And Flexibility
An experienced company should solve the challenges that come up on a project quickly and easily by introducing relevant features.
How to decide: Talk to an agency about your existing issues and ask them how they plan to handle your custom web design.
Our award-winning designers at Digital Silk are experienced at producing results in fast-changing, adaptable environments. Take our recent refresh of the Buddha Brands website, for example, where we adapted the design to meet a revamped brand style guide and identity.
[Source: Buddha Brands]
5. Full-Service Offerings
Custom web design services that handle everything from start to finish can help you reach new heights online. But adding a full suite of digital solutions can blow the roof.
How to choose: Look at the header or footer menus on an agency's website to see what services they offer.
As a full-service branding and web design studio, Digital Silk has a wide range of skills, such as:
- Designing and building websites
- Branding and marketing
- eCommerce
- Creating apps and software
- Expert help and advice
6. Timeline And Project Communication
Good communication between agencies and clients is important for meeting deadlines and managing expectations. The top digital agencies will be completely open about everything they do during the process.
How to choose: It can take months to finish a full-scale custom web design, but the actual timetable will depend on the job. You can talk about deadlines in detail and start to plan your journey by asking your selected professional website design business for a price.
7. Post-Launch Support And Maintenance
When working on a custom web design project, especially one with complicated features and integrations, it's crucial to think about the long term. Keeping everything in-house is one approach to keep expenses down and avoid problems.
How to choose: Before you pick a custom web design firm, ask them about their support and maintenance services.
At Digital Silk, we provide monthly retainers to not only give around the clock support to our clients, but also boost their performance through areas like SEO and lead generation.
5 Signs That You Should Invest In Custom Web Design
Not sure whether to go custom or to purchase a theme?
Here are five telltale signs to look out for:
1. Your Page Speed Is Lagging
As mentioned, a Google study found that 53% of mobile users will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. In fact, the probability of a bounce increases 32% as page load speeds rise from one to three seconds.
Lagging load time is a sign of poor site optimization — something professional web developers can remedy for a fast and functional site ecosystem with custom website services.
2. You're Not Getting To Your Target Audience
Are you only reaching customers who aren't a good fit for what you're selling?
Or maybe your website doesn't get enough visitors and your page views seem all over the place?
If this is the case, then your SEO and digital strategy are to blame. Getting a custom web design can help you bridge that gap.
We know that most people find brands through search engines like Google. There are algorithms that decide which websites show up for certain keywords and how high they rank.
To get to the people you want to contact, you'll need to use appropriate target keywords and create effective content, to name just a few.
3. You Aren't Reaching Your Conversion Goals
The main purpose of your website is to turn target visitors into customers, right?
To do that, you need to know your target audience very well, including how they act online and what they need from your site.
You may customize your conversion funnels and user journeys using a custom web design to make the on-site experience smooth and interesting.
For instance, they know that putting a booking form in the hero section of your hotel website can help you get more bookings and they know that adding a searchable product catalog with a spec sheet can do the same for manufacturing websites.
These are important things to know if you want to boost your conversion rates.
4. Your Website Looks Like Everyone Else's
If you use a template, your design will be the same as those of thousands of other firms.
A custom website is made to match your specific needs, show off your brand and meet the needs of your target audience.
Because of this, a personalized website gives each user a one-of-a-kind experience.
5. Your Site Is Only Good On Desktop
Have you ever tried to access a website on your phone and seen a huge wall of text and buttons that were so little that your thumb covered most of them?
You probably didn't stay on the site for very long. In fact, 88% of consumers say that terrible UX is a big factor why they quit a website.
There are more than 5.11 billion people who use smartphones as of 2026. That's almost twice as many as in 2020 and the number keeps going up.
We recommend thoroughly testing your website during creation to make sure it looks good on all platforms, whether you pick the classic desktop-first strategy or the newer mobile-first approach.
Best Practices For Custom Web Design
Regardless of your industry, you need to follow guidelines for custom web design. Our team uses the latest insights to make sure our projects perform at their best.
Our competent website developers know a lot about different design styles and technology, so we can make personalized solutions that fit each client's needs.
We also give each project a dedicated, senior-level digital strategist, so we have clear communication at all times. It also helps us meet the deadlines and budget.
This lets us give each client our full attention and finish projects that go above and beyond what they expect.
Here are some of the best things we do that make custom web design deliver the intended results:
1. Planning Ahead
We start every custom web design project by doing a lot of research on your industry, target audience, competitors and goals.
We then use the information we acquire to build a customized digital strategy for your business, complete with a clear plan of action to help you reach your online growth goals.
2. Making It Work On All Devices
More than half of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices.
We look into how your users behave to find out which way to build a bespoke website works best for your target audience, whether it's on a desktop or a mobile device.
Our professionals create bespoke digital experiences for each company that are seamless and increase engagement and conversions.
3. Improving Your Website's Search Engine Ranking
Did you know that 53.3% of all the people that visit your website come from organic search? SEO can help you get more people to see your website, reach more people and get more organic traffic.
Our SEO professionals do a lot of keyword research and then use those keywords in your headers, title tags, meta descriptions and image tags, among other places, to improve your web pages so that they show up on search engine results pages.
What To Do Once You Hire A Custom Web Design Company?
While your selected agency should take full ownership of your cutom web design, your contributions as a business owner as still important.
Here are several steps that are universal to everyone:
1. Set Up Communication Channels
You need to let the professionals know what you expect and they should keep you in the loop at each stage.
You can do this by creating and maintaining clear lines of communication from the beginning to the end.
We use a lot of different ways to talk to each other at Digital Silk, such as email, project management tools and video calls.
Telling the agency about your goals and vision can help them make a custom web design that fits your brand.
The best way to share these is through a custom brand book design. Designers will use these rules to make a user interface and experience that is on-brand and gets results.
2. Share Your Brand Vision & Goals
To create a custom design that stays true to your brand identity, you’ll need to share your brand vision and goals.
Best shared through a bespoke brand book design, designers will use these guidelines to create and on-brand, results driven user interface and experience.
3. Provide The Required Media Assets
Giving your key visual assets makes it easier to align the custom web design with your overall brand identity.
For example, look at our design for Dunnion Law, which uses attorney headshots to humanize the company.
4. Work Together On Design Ideas
Your feedback and collaboration will help experts plan and deliver your custom web design.
For instance, if you tell us which elements are most important to your business, our team can make a wireframe layout that focuses on those areas.
5. Review And Share Your Thoughts
Before the launch, our design team will show you mock-ups what your custom web design could look like.
The wireframe is usually the first, stripped-back version you get. Then we add the colors, animations and images.
As the customer, your feedback ensures that the custom web design properly fits what the users want and need, while also promoting values of your organization.
Digital Silk's Custom Web Design Examples
From seamless navigation to engaging effects and animations, our award-winning designers deliver winning custom websites. See a selection of our best work.
1. J&H Tackle
The client: J&H Tackle is a family-run business that sells name-brand fishing equipment at low prices.
The design: The design includes an enhanced visual hierarchy, simplified navigation and a customer-centric approach, ensuring an intuitive shopping experience where finding and purchasing fishing gear is easy.
Dynamic content and video marketing showcase the brand’s expertise and affordability while promoting deeper engagement with customers.
[Source: J&H Tackle]
2. Sandler
The customer: Sandler is a top company that trains and develops salespeople and leaders all around the world.
The design: Our team made Sandler's corporate branding plan a reality with a beautiful, on-brand custom web design.
A mix of UI-optimized features, such as smooth transitions and colors and fonts that came from brand research, gives the site a professional look.
3. G Pen
The client: G Pen is an advanced cannabis vaporizer engineering firm that wants to change the way people use cannabis by making it more portable, functional and user-friendly.
The design: Our eCommerce design professionals built a custom web design on Shopify that would drive sales. They also made sure that the messaging was consistent throughout the eCommerce experience.
At the same time, our SEO professionals did an amazing job of making things more visible online.
4. American University in Bulgaria
The client: The American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) has three campuses where students can get a higher education and take part in extracurricular activities.
The design: Our custom web design for AUBG was all about making it easy for potential applicants to find their way around.
We helped the university get more applications by adding CTA buttons that made people want to apply and menus that were easy to use.
5. Buddha Brands
The client: Buddha Brands sells a range of healthy snacks and drinks that are created in a way that is good for the environment.
The design: We gave Buddha Brands' e-store a joyful, colorful new look that fits their lively brand identity.
Exciting animations, popping hover features, and captivating colors all add to the invigorating online experience.
Create Your Custom Web Design With Digital Silk
At Digital Silk, we provide bespoke services based on consumer, industry and competitive research.
This way, we make goal-oriented decisions and a custom web design that drives conversions for your brand.
As a full-service professional web design company, our key services span:
- Custom web design and development
- Local web design and development in New York, Miami, California and more
- eCommerce development and design for Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and more
- Digital branding
- Digital marketing and consulting
For every project, we deliver:
- Project ownership
- Transparency
- Measurable results
Our design team offers free consultation & custom proposals for custom website design projects. This gives both us and our clients the opportunity to explain our processes, understand your website requirements and further discuss the project at hand.
Simply fill out the Request a Quote form, tell us about your goals and our experts will provide you with actionable insights and cost estimates.
Or, call us at (800) 206-9413 to start the conversation.
