How do you grow your business? No matter your product or service, it boils down to increased revenue and increased profitability.

While there are many ways to achieve those goals, custom web development is one frequently overlooked by businesses.

Too often, businesses look at their website as little more than an electronic brochure. Or they think using a free or cheap template is the most cost-effective way to create your web presence.

In this article, we explore how a customized website can make you stand out from the competition and attract customers.

Two Aspects of Custom Web Development

Custom web development has two distinct yet inseparable components: design and programming.

Many people think of design as the look and feel of a website. It is that. But it’s also more.

Good web design keeps the user experience (UX) at its core. It takes more than brand alignment and high-quality images to make a site’s design compelling and useful.

Custom-designed sites are like tailored clothes. They fit and suit you exactly. To onlookers, they seem like a natural extension of who you are.

Programming, or coding, is the part of web development that users experience yet never see. Web templates come with standard coding such as font styles and basic metadata to help search engines find each page.

Custom coding goes beyond the basics. It makes your website behave in ways that match your customers’ needs. It also allows for better security, data collection, and engagement.

The Right Customer Experience

The importance of the customer experience your business offers can’t be understated.

People who find a website dull, distracting, frustrating, or irrelevant, are unlikely to come back. And they’re less likely to spend their money with you.

How do you create the right customer experience for your business? It starts with finding the right custom web development provider.

Some web development teams tell you what can be done within your budget and leave it at that. It’s one step more sophisticated than a plug-and-play template. But it’s still a cookie-cutter approach.

Instead, look for a provider that demonstrates their understanding of the customer experience. It may sound basic but click around their website. If it’s not an engaging, helpful experience, what reason do you have for thinking they could do better for you?

Cymax Media Denver web developer offers a good example of walking the talk. The site is easy to navigate and the information is clear and uncluttered. It reflects what you want in a custom web developer: approachability, quality, and precision.

Efficiency

Custom web design is valuable to the back-end of your business as well. Adding features and functions can save you time and improve accuracy.

For example, you might integrate your online store and inventory management system. That would yield many benefits, including:

• No need for manual product updates in both systems
• Customers get real-time availability
• You get real-time data for restocking

Marketing is the most well-known efficiency. Basic customization makes it easy to gather email addresses for newsletters. Advanced customization can personalize a visitor’s experience.

For example, you can display products or services a customer might like based on their behavior. This is an effective way to expose customers to more products. If done well, you increase the opportunity for higher sales without adding to your costs.

Multi-Platform Campaigns

Customized websites allow for better integrate and control your digital presence across platforms. This can lead to better results, sooner.

At a minimum, custom web development makes sure you have full search engine optimization (SEO). That is, every page of your site is optimized to rank high on Google results pages. Of course, the higher you rank, the greater your visibility and online reputation as an authority.

Custom web development also ensures that your digital footprint is unified. Content on your site can be easily and appropriately shared on social media and vice versa. All without extra effort on your part.

The effect is a broader, more organic online presence. That, in turn, helps build outstanding brand awareness and loyalty, which translate into sales.

Differentiation

There is at least one thing about every viable business that makes it different from its competitors. It could be price or quality. It could be sales philosophy or the leader’s backstory.

No matter what set them apart, successful businesses capitalize on their strongest differentiators. What makes your business different becomes your unique value proposition (UVP).

Custom web development can help you reinforce your UVP. And, if you’re entirely an online retailer or service provider, your website could be core to your UVP.

Data Collection

Custom web development can help you gather a considerable amount of data about your business. Especially data that paints the picture of your customers’ behavior.

With an out-of-the-box website, you can see how many people visit each page. But when you get into customized development, you can easily get reports that tell a bigger picture.

For example, how many page start at your home page? And among that group, how many make it to your sales page or product catalog? Customized programming allows you to fully use the data every user generates as they arrive, move through, and leave your site.

Savvy online businesses use customer behavior data to make a wide range of decisions that affect business drivers.

Let’s say the data tells you that only 10% of visitors get to the sales page when they start at the home page. But 50% go there when they start from a blog post. That kind of data tells you a lot about what your customers want and where to direct your energy.

Closing Thought on Custom Web Development

Like any business function, you can outsource the work or build an in-house web development team.

Many businesses choose to outsource custom web development yet keep ongoing maintenance in-house. This approach makes the best use of every stakeholder’s expertise and helps control costs and ongoing quality.

PSD Learning helps business owners get the information and insights they need to be successful. Enhance your knowledge about web design and more today!