Custom Web Design: How “Custom” Is Your Custom Website?
There are plenty of articles out there comparing a custom website vs. a template. Which is cheaper? Which is faster? Which is better for SEO? Which is right for your business? But if you’ve already decided you want custom web design, there’s another question worth asking: how do you know you’re actually getting it? I started thinking about this recently while looking through other web designers’ portfolios. I noticed that in some of them, the websites looked suspiciously similar. Different businesses. Different logos. Different colours and photos. Same basic website. Same curved hero section, same logo placement, etc. I’m not suggesting those clients were ripped off. I don’t know what they paid, what they asked for, or what the designer promised them. A straightforward template-based website may have been exactly what they wanted. But it did make me wonder how a small business owner who doesn’t work in web design is supposed to evaluate the word “custom.” What does custom web design actually mean? The problem is that custom isn’t really binary. A website isn’t necessarily either a completely untouched template or a bespoke design built from a blank canvas. There’s a lot of space in between. At one end, a web designer or developer might start with a website template and swap in the client’s logo, brand colours, fonts, imagery, and content. The underlying page structure and layouts stay mostly the same. That’s a form of customization. The visual branding has been customized for the business. A designer might take that further by applying a complete brand design system to the template. Typography, colour, imagery, buttons, cards, spacing, iconography, and other visual elements may all be changed. By the time they’re finished, the site might look very different from the original template even if some of the underlying page structures are still there. Then there’s structural customization. Pages are reorganized or rebuilt. Content hierarchy changes. Navigation and information architecture are reconsidered. New sections are designed because the existing ones don’t work for the content. User pathways and conversion points are built around what people actually need to do on the website. And sometimes a business needs completely custom pages, functionality, or user experiences because the template simply wasn’t designed to solve that particular problem. All of these approaches can involve custom website design. But they’re not the same type or amount of custom work. So the more useful question might be: what is actually being customized? Templates come with assumptions I use website templates. Most web designers and developers don’t need to reinvent the wheel for every project. A template can give you a solid starting structure, reusable components, responsive layouts, and established design patterns. If I need a hero section with a headline, a paragraph, and a button, I do not need to retreat to a cabin in the woods and spend three days inventing a new way to arrange those things. But templates also come with assumptions. They assume a certain type and amount of content. They assume a certain page structure. They make decisions about hierarchy and how users will move through the website. Often, they were designed with a particular type of business in mind. Sometimes those assumptions fit. A straightforward service business may need a home page, an about page, service pages, and a clear way to get in touch. A well-chosen website template may provide an excellent starting point. Apply the business’s brand, add its content, make the necessary adjustments, and you may have exactly the website that business needs. Sometimes, though, the assumptions fall apart as soon as you get into the actual project. When the template stops fitting the business I’m currently designing a new website for Green Mary, sustainable event waste management company in the San Francisco Bay Area. When I started the project, I had already modernized Green Mary’s visual idententity and developed a design system for the new site. I had hoped I could find a template that would get us 80% of the way there, apply Green Mary’s design system and save some design and development time. Then I started working through the business itself. Green Mary helps event planners reduce waste through planning, on-site waste stations and staff, sorting, repurposing, and impact reporting. Their clients range from corporate conferences and athletic events to weddings, festivals, and wineries. However, do not “buy” separate, stand alone services through Green Mary, so they did not fit a typical waste management service template. The website needed to help different types of event organizers find the information relevant to them. It needed to explain a service people may not immediately understand. It needed to show Green Mary’s process, communicate the company’s impact, and create clear paths toward requesting a quote. Green Mary isn’t a standard waste management company. They are a niche B2B business that needed custom business solutions that a template wasn’t going fully provide. At that point, it became a structural starting point rather than a solution. I designed four custom pages around Green Mary’s specific content, business goals, and user needs. For the remaining pages, I’m using the template where its structure works and applying Green Mary’s design system so the entire website belongs to the same visual world. That’s how I think templates should work. They can save time. They can provide useful building blocks. But when the business needs something the template wasn’t designed to do, the website needs to change—not the business. Not every business needs the same level of customization Just so I’m clear, there’s nothing wrong with a template swap. If your budget is limited and a well-chosen template already fits your business, swapping in your branding, imagery, and content may be a perfectly reasonable way to get a professional website online. I’ve used a template for my own business website. At this point I’ve customized it so heavily that most of the pages are custom, but the template gave me a framework and helped me get the site up and running
Hi, I’m Gillian
I design websites, develop content, do digital marketing and SEO, set up analytics, organize complicated information, and spend an unreasonable amount of time asking whether a heading, button, or sentence is actually doing its job. Give me the complicated information, scattered ideas, half-finished pages, business goals, and the thing you’ve been trying to explain for six months. We’ll find the shape of it. I’m especially drawn to projects with an interesting problem to solve, a strong story to tell, or information to untangle. I am also deeply interested in social, environmental, and community focused work. Why I started this blog This blog is called Your Digital Life, But Better. I named it that because I actually want to demystify this stuff for people. The web and marketing world loves gatekeepers who sound like they are speaking an alien language. You shouldn’t need to understand Lemurian to run a business online. I’ll write about web design, user experience (or the lack thereof) branding, content creation, marketing, SEO, and how they all tie together. Some posts will be practical tips and guides, or address common problems I see. Some will be case studies. Some will break down a project, a problem, or a decision that changed the direction of a project. Others will probably start with something that irritated me on a website at 7 a.m. when I was under-caffeinated and couldn’t figure out how to buy a pair of trail running shoes on a vaguely legit overseas discount website (because trail shoes are expensive). I may also write about coffee, cats, coral reefs, and other random thoughts just to keep things spicy. How I ended up here I had been interested in art and writing for years, and I had always been comfortable around technology. I was an early adopter in the Gen X sense: dial-up internet, an iMac, Hotmail, and eventually teaching myself enough about computers to replace hardware and diagnose problems. I also had a habit of teaching myself whatever caught my interest, from photography and guitar to sewing, cooking, and shady tree mechanics. On the surface, that is…a pretty darn random collection of interests. However, the through line is problem-solving: learning how something worked, diagnosing the problem, and figuring out how to fix it. When I found the Communication Design program at North Island College, it brought together design, writing, strategy, technology, and the same love for problem solving. As a kid, I was an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy. I also loved art, design, creative writing, and building imaginary worlds that felt real. That is still how I think about brand storytelling now. A brand inhabits a world of its own, with a voice, visual language, point of view, and internal logic. In my late twenties, I went back to community college and discovered that I genuinely love writing essays. That led to writing and editing for a local alternative newspaper, becoming music editor at The Vigilance in Port Townsend, Washington, and later freelancing for the Port Townsend Leader.. When I later studied communication design, I learned more about how words, imagery, colors, hierarchy, structure, and design all work together to communicate with the intended audience. After graduating, I kept going: digital marketing, Google Analytics, SEO, content, social media, and e-commerce. Before I go I am a web and marketing professional, researcher, coffee drinker, and persistent question-asker. I’m also a mom to an awesome eighteen-year-old son, a mountain biker, a trail runner, a snowboarder, and I am unaccountably obsessed with being underwater with tropical fish. This blog is where I’ll write about the work, the thinking, the problems, the occasional rant, and whatever else seems interesting enough to explore. Stay tuned!