Custom Website Design is when a website is created utilizing customized functionalities and design.
Is it really necessary to pay for a customized WordPress site, when templates can simply be chosen and added to a WordPress install? Typically, WordPress templates look really good from the start.
What business owners don’t take under consideration is that templates are often not perfect for their company and can be slow to load.
WordPress templates pull in Javascript and CSS so that a user can edit it.
Often that code is unnecessary for the design at hand. The pages become code heavy.
This is where customization comes in.
Pretty much anyone can add a template to a WordPress install. WordPress website designers have skill and experience in making that template precisely what the client desires, taking out unnecessary files or designing from the scratch.
The skill of a Dedicated Website Designer is in perfecting a website in design, layout, and SEO.
Here is what every small business must think about when commissioning a website designer for custom website design.
Website logo
The website logo is used at a top of the website. It brands the website. A logo remains in the mind of a customer and are usually the only thing that they remember. Branding is really important for building a business online. A website logo must not be different to the one on business cards. The company logo should be the same across the board, that way people can instantly recognize the brand.
Logo size and shape
The shape and size of a company logo can have a huge impact on the way a web design finally turns out.
For instance, a round logo with the text within may not fit well on a website having a horizontal header. The logo should have to be made very small, making it illegible, particularly on mobile. It is quite common to use a responsive logo, a secondary logo that can be used as an avatar on forums or social media. It must be recognizable, following the corporate look.
Website font
The font used throughout the website is extremely important. The proper font can make a website look traditional or modern, having an impact on the audience quite instantly. When body font looks weak against the website logo the website can look inconsistent and messy.
Website content
I have usually been provided very little text to include in a webpage. This can be because the business owner cannot write or because they choose the website to be visually impacting. Photographers are guilty of the latter.
Content is very important for search engines. No content means your website can’t do its job, which is to be found and to gain business.
Pages must be helpful and informative to your target audience.
It is worth employing a content writer who has knowledge of writing for search engines.
Websites built to be search engine friendly
To work hard a website must be built for search engines, around key terms. From the ground up a good website designer will build with search engines in mind.
Pages have to be created with search engine friendly URLs, titles and content if they require to be found. Images must be saved according to content and alt tags added. SEO can be improved afterward, but a page will lose rank if the URL is changed, and must start the climb again.
Website photographs and images
Thought should go into quality photographs or illustrations. A bad photograph will actually bring the standard of the website down. You cannot increase a photo’s DPI so take them at high resolution, even when using a smartphone. Send the designer the original, without resizing it or compressing it. Low quality, pixelated photos look terrible. Professional photos can create all the difference to a polished business website.
Landscape or portrait photos?
When having photos taken think about the design of the website, and how and where the photos will fit. Should they be portrait or landscape?
Landscape format is when the image is wider than it is tall.
A portrait is when the image is taller than it is wide.
Ask a professional photographer to take both portrait and landscape. That way, your web designer can position different versions within the website.
A hero image is a large banner image that spans the width of the website. Portrait photos likely cannot be used as a banner image, so keep that in mind.