Custom Web Design?

A lot has been asked about the web design process.  What are the steps that we take in designing your website?  How do you take a client's ideas and concepts (starting at ground zero), and build a 100% complete professional, functioning website that people will want to visit and use?  Will a template be used?  What is wrong [or right] with using a template design?  "Oh no - my site looks like a template!" - if that's true, then GOOD! That means it's been well planned for best accessibility, all sections are in easy to find positions, the structure and formatting should be programmed well, with very few refinements needed!

In the world of web design, the technical processes involved, coding disciplines, and appearance demands are getting more and more complex.  The disciplines needed to bring all the parts together span multiple fields and skill-sets.  Client expectations are high as well, with the competition growing all around.  (For both web developers AND the client's associate field.)  This article delves into one, small aspect of the design approach: "Custom" Web Design.  What is it?  Why do some web designers market and explain their site's as "custom"?  With the new generation of websites, and the search engine king's [Google] laying down the law with responsive web standards, almost any past nostalgic ideas of "custom" will be flying out the window.  This article will lay to rest one concept:

Users Don't Care about Custom

We need to do a much better job of communicating to our clients that websites are not built for them, they are built for users. Users don't care whether your website is custom or not. Honestly, they really don't care how beautiful your site is. Users visit your website for content and/or functionality, that's it. To your users your website is neither custom nor a theme. It's just good or bad. The more simple, readable, and usable your website is, the longer they will stay, and more likely come back later.

In 2011, HubSpot released a survey where they found that 76% of users said that the most important factor in the design of a website was that “The website makes it easy for me to find what I want.” Only 10% of users said, “beautiful appearance” was the most important thing to them.

That being said, a custom website could be detrimental to your brand and online success. Go with a tested and proven theme designed by an expert web designer with years of experience. By no means does this mean that themes are perfect. Every website needs AB testing and multi-variant testing. But as far as building something from scratch, why reinvent a really awesome wheel?

Excerpts taken from the below article.  (Read full article here):

https://moz.com/ugc/10-reasons-custom-web-design-is-dying