Why use a developer for a custom website when you can just make your own? Image by undraw.co
Quick! Cheap! Fast! Pretty! Performant! Easy! Unfortunately, none of these descriptors overlap in the exact same Venn diagram. Small business websites have gone from just a few options to an incredible array of choices, some with incredible marketing, leaving the business owner years of limit-finding and regret ahead before they settle into the exact right website for their business. When it comes to well-marketed website builders and small business solutions, benefits are loudly touted while drawbacks, limits, and gotchas are not talked about or outright hidden. Still, not every small business has room for a custom website in the budget, or needs an expert website developer to do their needed online work. Sometimes, up and running in 3 hours is enough! Let's take a look at some scenarios where going custom is the appropriate move.
When you need to dominate SEO
If your business is the only cleaning business for 100 miles - let's face it, pretty much any website is enough. Awesome! However, in a saturated market where you need to stand out, SquareSpace and other page builder platforms are not going to be enough even in the short term.
Why? Even when SEO fields are prominent in the page builder (we have definitely witnessed the opposite of this) the source code used to generate your website pages is going to be convoluted and a bit heavy. This is because they prioritize your experience developing your website over the outward-facing, computer-sensitive stuff. Even when it's pretty, it may be slow, have heavy images, or be a little awkward on mobile. Sometimes, SEO isn't present at all, or it's not exactly right. Today's search engine optimization tends to frown upon this stuff, and there won't be anything possible to do about it.
A custom website can deliver the same design (or better) while going for perfection under the hood, giving you the best shot at dominating your target SERPs. You can keep costs down by going for a very slim feature set and adding features incrementally as business improves.
When you have intellectual property involved
If your business or organization is happy to distribute all of its material openly and freely - come what may, this concern is completely checked off. However, if you are dealing some information out to only some people, or carrying personally identifiable information (PII) that you need to protect for the safety of all involved, a custom website is a safer choice.
Why? Hosted platforms involve agreement to a Terms of Service that can be restrictive or fluid with permissions. By agreeing to this, in order to use the service at all, you may transferring ownership of all website content to this entity. Alternately, you may be agreeing to allow it to feed your information into an Artificial Intelligence entity. But I checked my TOS and it doesn't say this. Ok, have you ever had to agree to a TOS again? This is because they can change the rules at any time. Even the best-intentioned companies get sold to VC's who can about-face these alignments. You might find yourself, as a best-case scenario, urgently un-building your website with absolutely no warning. So, we don't recommend this.
A custom website keeps all of your data, in containers that you own - and combined with a choice of a secure, stable content management system can save time, headaches, and money in the years ahead.
When the business IS the website
Is your business a brick-and-mortar? Do you provide in-home services? Is your work mainly done off the website? OK - forget this point. Specifically, if you are planning a business that uses a website to create specific products and distribute them, or provide an organized interface that unifies multiple services in workflows, then you want to create a custom website for the purpose.
Why? When the website is the business, its performance, ease of maintenance, and ease of use are the most important features and will ultimately contribute intangibles to your brand. It's unlikely that you'll find it already built anywhere. You also want total ownership.
A custom website will provide the shortest path to viability to this business and allow for improvements according to the priorities of the business.
Your brand doesn't suffer "good enough"
Got a logo? Need text? Ok, we can skip this one. When you have a developed brand and/or business that doesn't fit into website conventions, using a conventional website software creates a foundation in an entity that fundamentally doesn't fit.
Why? Many classic website platforms are based on blog format or quick ecommerce turn-around. These are ok, but they are unlikely to carry a ready-made convention for you.
Creating a custom website with code-based visual design that nails your brand is going to provide a foundation for a website that's easy to use, supports your brand, and carries your mission forward, online.
You need two of these, four of those, and one of..
Rather than bending and breaking a hosted platform, go straight for the custom website. Order up all your features and have them built.
Bonus: You have a long list of complaints
Give everything out there the ol' College Try if you don't have any idea why you wouldn't succeed on any given platform. But if you have hit too many limits on hosted platforms, or been hacked too many times on WordPress or had website failures impact your business too many times (according to you,) trusting your web presence to the experts is your next move, especially if the website is mission-critical.
Why? Well-distributed, popular, well-marketed platforms serve an average of all their clients pretty well, but none of these clients have a perfect experience, nor do the platforms change to accommodate edge cases. If you've simply had it, bring your list to us or to another custom website developer and see if they can help you avoid hitting these limites or experiencing these events in the future. We can!