Over 70 percent of small businesses have a website. This shows a vast majority of business owners understand the value of building a strong online presence for their brands.
You’ve done a good job if you already have a business website, but is it high-quality? Does it have a unique design or it has a generic look? If you’re like the 32 percent of businesses who use DIY website builders, you’re doing your business a big disservice.
A professional site with a custom web design is key to small business success. In this article, we’re fleshing out the benefits of having a custom website.
1. Gives Your Business a Professional Appearance
The first impression your business makes matters. It can either influence a prospective customer into visiting your store and making a purchase or send them to a competitor.
Just as a brick-and-mortar storefront is designed to give walk-in visitors a great first impression, so is a business website. When online visitors land on your website, they’re subconsciously judging its look and feel.
What are they going to think if your website has a generic template, unpleasant typography, low-quality imagery, and poor navigation? Your business will come off as cheap and some customers will doubt whether it actually belongs to you, especially if they’re familiar with your offline brand.
A custom design will elevate the look of your website and give your business a professional appearance. At first sight, most site visitors will be hooked, eager to explore around and see what your business offers.
2. Makes Your Business Website Stand Out
The web is a crowded place. There are currently over 1.3 billion active websites, and the average internet user visits over 130 unique web pages every day.
Even in your own industry or niche, almost all your competitors have a website. You’re all gunning for the customer’s attention. In many instances, the website that gets the biggest share of customer traffic is the one that stands out.
This begs the question; how do you make your business website stand out? Simple. Start by ensuring it’s distinct or looks vastly different from the rest.
To do that, you need the services of a custom website designer like Comet Digital. They’ll analyze the design of your competitor’s website and design you a website that not only looks different but also amazing.
A standout website makes it easier for customers to quickly identify your website in a crowded online marketplace. It can also reduce the bounce rate, and increase the amount of time visitors spend on your website.
3. A Custom Website Design Is Good for SEO
You want your business website to rank highly on search engine results. That’s how you’ll draw in valuable organic traffic without spending a lot of money on advertising.
There are many factors that affect a website’s search engine rank, and website design is one of the key ones. You’re probably wondering how a website looks should have anything to do with SEO.
Well, design affects SEO in a couple of ways.
One, a poorly-designed website will increase the bounce rate, since many visitors will land and leave without visiting any other page. A high bounce rate signals that your site has a poor user experience, something that search engine bots will pick up and duly punish your site.
Two, search engine bots consider time on-site. A pleasant, custom design is inviting and makes visitors want to look at other pages on the website. This increases the amount of time they spend on the website, which tells bots that your site is offering users a good experience.
Three, professional website design makes it easier for search engine crawlers to read your site and index its pages. This is arguably the most important aspect. If crawlers aren’t able to study your site’s structure and index it, it won’t rank no matter the efforts you put in.
So, if you think SEO is important to the performance of your business, don’t overlook the need for a custom design.
4. Allows Easier Scalability
As your small business grows, its digital infrastructure needs will also increase. For example, as you introduce new products and services, you’ll need to create a new page for each item on your website.
Is your website designed to allow for easy scalability?
If you’re using a generic template that you downloaded for free, chances are it’s going to be difficult to add new pages. Some free templates limit the number of pages the website owner can create.
On the other hand, a custom-designed website will meet the growing digital needs of your business with ease. Whether you want to create new pages or install plugins and other web applications, the site’s scalable architecture will allow it. There won’t be any drop in performance, either.
5. Maintain Brand Consistency
Businesses need to maintain a consistent brand image both online and offline. This improves brand awareness and recognition and builds customer trust.
Unlike generic website templates, custom designs enable your site builders to replicate several visual elements of your brand, including the logo, color palette, and typography, onto the website.
Custom Web Design Is the Way to Go
As a small business, it’s understandable that you might not have the money to pour into a high-end, high-performance website. Certainly, the availability of thousands of free or cheap website templates makes the decision even more straightforward.
However, as this article has demonstrated, it’s super important to invest in a custom web design. This doesn’t necessarily cost an arm and a leg. A simple, custom, small business website will unlock many online opportunities.
Explore the business section of our blog for more digital marketing advice.
