In a digital world, having a robust, dynamic, and responsive online presence is a necessity to be successful. It used to be that more attention was paid to website functionality, but today’s sophisticated customers demand even more in exchange for their hard-earned money.
Good web design is important, whether you’re in construction, food services, tech, or any other industry. Now, let’s take a look at how any organization, in any industry, can benefit from custom website design services and the pitfalls of poor design.
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The Downfall of Templated or DIY Web Design
Templated or do-it-yourself (DIY) web design solutions gained popularity due to their affordability and ease of use. These solutions provide pre-designed templates and drag-and-drop interfaces, allowing individuals or businesses to create websites without extensive technical knowledge or professional assistance. However, there are several downsides to relying solely on templated or DIY web design.
- Lack of Customization
Templated web designs often offer limited customization options. While they may allow changes to colors, fonts, and basic layouts, they rarely provide the flexibility needed to create a truly unique and tailored website that reflects a brand’s identity or specific requirements.
- Limited Functionality
Templated solutions are typically designed to cater to a broad range of users, resulting in limitations regarding advanced functionality or specific business needs. Integrating custom features or complex interactive elements with templated designs may be challenging or impossible.
- Generic Appearance
Since templated designs are available to a wide range of users, there is a risk of ending up with a website that looks similar to many others. This lack of originality can make it difficult for a business to stand out from the competition and create a distinct brand image.
- Scalability and Future Growth
As businesses evolve and expand, their websites often require updates and enhancements to accommodate new features, content, or changing user needs. Templated designs may not easily scale or adapt to these changes, resulting in limitations and the need for significant redesign efforts down the line.
- Lack of Professional Support
Templated or DIY web design solutions typically provide limited or no professional support. If issues arise or customization beyond the template’s capabilities is required, users may face challenges in obtaining assistance or expert guidance.
While these solutions may be suitable for simple personal websites or small projects with tight budgets, businesses or individuals aiming for a professional and unique online presence are often better off investing in custom web design services.
Why Custom Website Design Services Provide a Good ROI
Having an engaging, well-designed website is good marketing, as it establishes your company’s credibility, helps you convert visits into inquiries and sales, builds customer loyalty, and makes your site accessible to all internet users, rather than a minority of them.
The Judgment Consumers Make About Websites
We need to be honest here. Site visitors are harsh and unforgiving. They make comprehensive, overarching judgments on businesses based on website design. First impressions have always mattered, but when it comes to consumer opinions, it is everything. These factors are vital in keeping user attention:
- Visual Appeal: Consumers expect visually appealing websites with cohesive branding, high-quality images, pleasing color schemes, and clear typography. A cluttered or outdated design can lead to negative perceptions and a lack of trust.
- User Experience (UX): A website with confusing or frustrating user experience elements, such as broken links, excessive pop-ups, or complex forms, can lead to frustration and abandonment.
- Mobile-Friendliness: If a website is not mobile-responsive or optimized, users are likely to view it as outdated or unprofessional.
- Credibility and Trustworthiness: Consumers quickly evaluate a website’s credibility based on various factors, including professional design, clear contact information, secure payment options, trust seals or certifications, customer reviews or testimonials, and links to reputable external sources.
- Content Quality: Well-written, informative, and up-to-date content helps build trust and authority. Conversely, thin or poorly written content can lead to a negative perception and may deter users from engaging further.
- Speed and Performance: Slow-loading websites can lead to frustration and abandonment, while fast and responsive sites improve user satisfaction and engagement.
As your website is often the first real digital interaction a potential customer has with your business, it is imperative that your website is firing on all cylinders. That includes web design and development.
Therefore, when it comes to your business, there is no easier way to gauge how good the ROI is than with custom web design services. How do custom website designs work? Here are several ways that using a custom website design company provides a profitable investment.
Builds a Trustworthy Brand
Ninety-four percent of consumers have trust issues with poorly-designed websites, and it totally makes sense. After all, who would you trust more: a salesperson who looks like they’ve got it all together or one who looks like they haven’t showered in a week? Dressing/grooming for success isn’t just for us; it also applies to websites.
Custom website design shows that businesses care about their image and brand, which translates into trust. Seventy-five percent of people feel web design influences their thoughts on a business’s credibility. The better a site’s design is and the easier it is to use, the more likely customers are to trust that company; the worse the design is, the faster consumers will look for alternatives.
Another reason good web design influences credibility has everything to do with literal security and trustworthiness. Consumers sense the care and attention that go into a site’s web design, and intrinsically sense how that likely means the developers put measures in place to protect any information consumers share with you — such as their credit card numbers and home addresses.
Doesn’t it make sense to use custom website design services to instill as much trust as possible in potential customers? If the entire web development process is skimped on or poorly executed, the business is going to suffer. Point blank.
Easy Navigation Leads To More Sales
No one wants to spend more time on a site than they have to; in fact, 76% of consumers feel that ease of use in a website is the most important thing when shopping online. Why? It helps them find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible! If your site is too confusing to navigate, you’re going to lose business no matter how good your products are.
From the very moment customers hit your home page, it should be obvious to them where/how they can find desired items. The search bar on your site should be easily visible and accessible; the same goes for their cart, which should be a cinch to find again as customers look for more things to buy.
Sure, you could save money by designing a website yourself, but will your ROI be worth it? Probably not… and what about the frustration that goes into handling web design and development on your own? Your ROI can be better with the help of professional custom website design providers that know how to optimize customers’ ease of use, inspiring them to journey through the online sales funnel on their own!
Optimization Increases Traffic
Many things about the web have changed over the past decade, but one thing that has stayed the same as the internet has evolved into its current form is the importance of search engine optimization, or SEO.
If your site doesn’t rank above your competitors when potential customers search for certain keywords on search engines, the customers you want will end up visiting someone else’s site first. To say that’s bad for business is an understatement!
You can avoid that outcome by having your website optimized by custom web designers to draw in as much traffic as possible. The designers and developers involved in custom website design services know how to identify and utilize the most relevant keywords that can help your site reach the top of search engines and drive website traffic to your business.
Brand Cohesion Creates Customer Loyalty
Your strategy for success needs to include stoking and maintaining customer loyalty, and you can do this through brand cohesion. Brand cohesion is when your message and image are consistent and recognizable across the board — in print, on TV, in-store, whenever, and however. It’s also about congruence between what you sell and how you sell it.
Online, brand cohesion is also about providing as seamless and recognizable a customer experience online as they could have offline. Every time customers visit your site, from the logo to the color scheme to the products, there should be no confusion about where they are and what they can buy from you.
Is your website consistent with your brand image? Are you offering 21st-century products on a site that looks like it could have been designed in the late ’90s? Such inconsistent messaging creates a disconnect between your ideal brand image and reality — and your sales will take a hit.
Brand cohesion is about managing customer expectations, and creating a safe space for them to spend both their time and their money. The custom website design process can help you achieve cohesive branding online that matches customers’ offline perceptions of you, and in so doing, increase sales.
A Well-Designed Site Brings Higher Conversion Rates
Poorly-designed websites can draw in traffic with a winning SEO strategy, but those visits won’t necessarily translate into sales…especially if visitors find that a site is difficult to navigate or that there are too many distractions. Another issue is when a site simply gives visitors too many choices. That last one is especially bad, as it distracts from the most important choice of all: The one where a customer places an item in a cart, and then actually purchases it!
The ideal scenario is one in which visitors are funneled along the path you want them to take from the moment they reach your landing page. Of course, a website that’s easy to navigate will help out a lot with that, but the “skin” of your site matters just as much. The colors, images, and use of space around these elements all contribute to a customer’s decision to stay, explore, and possibly buy, or leave for the more user-friendly pastures of your competitors.
Figuring out the magic formula of web design may not be something you have time for, which is where custom web design agencies come in. You can sit back and let the experts figure out the right UI/UX balance that drives customers from the landing page to purchase while you focus on the day-to-day of running your business.
Get Mobile Customers
As of November 2022, almost 60% of all web traffic came from mobile users — a huge jump from the mere 31% of visits back in 2015. This is unsurprising since smartphones are all ubiquitous these days. What might be surprising, though, is how many business websites are still not optimized or designed for mobile users, despite the exponential increase in mobile user visits!
If a potential customer visits your website on their phone but encounters a desktop version that isn’t the least bit intuitive for mobile users, you’re going to lose their business right away.
Simply put, when mobile visitors can’t intuitively use that site on their phone’s browser, they’ll go elsewhere. But, when you make use of web design and development services, the developers can create versions of your site optimized for both desktop and mobile searchers — appealing to all visitors, however they arrive.
Both the present and future are mobile. By working with a custom website development company, you can be sure your site will be responsive to all visitors under the sun — mobile, desktop, tablet, you name it.
What is the Upfront Cost of Custom Web Design Services?
The upfront cost can vary significantly depending on several factors, including the complexity of the website, the features and functionality required, the level of customization desired, and the expertise and reputation of the web design agency or professional.
Typically, custom web services involve creating a site explicitly tailored to meet a business or individual’s unique needs and goals. Custom web design firms often starts with thoroughly understanding the client’s requirements, target audience, branding, and overall objectives. The web design team then creates a design concept that aligns with these factors and provides a visually appealing and user-friendly interface.
The upfront cost of custom web design services usually includes the following various components.
Design and Development
This involves the creation of the website’s layout, graphics, navigation, and overall user interface. It also includes coding and programming to bring the design to life.
Content Creation
This includes the development of written content, images, videos, and other multimedia elements to be incorporated into the website.
Integration of Features and Functionality
Web design often requires the integration of specific features and functionality tailored to the client’s needs. Examples may include e-commerce capabilities, user registration, login systems, content management systems (CMS), and interactive elements.
Responsive Design
With the growing use of mobile devices, it has become crucial for websites to be responsive and mobile-friendly. This may involve additional design and development work to ensure the website functions well on different screen sizes.
Testing and Quality Assurance
Once the website is built, it needs to go through rigorous testing and quality assurance processes to identify and fix any bugs or usability issues.
Considering these factors, the upfront cost of custom web design services can range from a few thousand dollars for a basic website to tens of thousands of dollars or more for complex, feature-rich websites. It is essential to have detailed discussions with web design professionals or agencies to get a clear understanding of the scope of work and the associated costs.
How To Calculate the ROI of a New Custom Web Design
At a basic level, it’s easy to figure out the ROI of a new website. Simply subtract the cost of the website from the profit/increase in revenue generated by that site, and then divide that by the cost of your investment.
For example, if you invest $10,000 in custom web design services, and spend an additional $5,000 a year over four years and this ends up leading to $75,000 in sales? You’re getting a pretty solid ROI!
Of course, other metrics such as increases in inquiries, lead generation, and brand awareness might not have direct or easily trackable dollar signs attached to them right away. Even so, you can consider such positive increases as a good ROI, too, as these may lead to future sales. Web design services are an upfront cost that continue to pay dividends long after the web developers and UX/UI designers have wrapped up the project.
It’s pretty obvious how having a well-built, well-designed website is an asset for any business or organization. Not every business expense can have an ROI like web design investments can, but working with a custom web design company can give you the best shot at a good website and an investment that nets a positive return.
Find a Reputable Custom Website Design Company with Credo
The search for custom website design services doesn’t have to be stressful or time-consuming. You can easily find credible, reliable custom web design service providers with Credo.
Before you’ve even met any web developers, Credo has already vetted them for professionalism, culture, and results. This enables you and your web development partner to get to work right away on optimizing your website for the 21st century and maximizing your ROI. Web design services continue to grow in demand and need. Today, a competitive edge in the chaotic world of digital marketing is achieved via custom website design. Credo can help you hire the right custom web development partner with confidence, and get it done 68% faster than if you were conducting a search on your own! Schedule a free consultation with Credo today to explore all the possibilities!
