The Value of Custom Website Development

Full Disclosure: custom website development is my job.  But sometimes I struggle to explain what I do at Cremalab. Recently I’ve come to the conclusion that I should answer that question this way: I help people sleep better at night. Here’s how:

A Real-World Story

My wife and I are thinking about ripping up the carpet in our kitchen and dining room and replacing it with hardwood floors. We have a 5-month old son who is starting to eat peas and carrots and the thought of scrubbing bright orange blotches out of the carpet is a less-than-exciting prospect for us.

I’m naturally a do-it-yourself kind of guy, so I’ve been researching how to install hardwood floors. I’ve watched YouTube videos, read the blogs at This Old House and have scoured the internet and book store for ideas and how-to guides. Over the last month I’ve probably spent about 30 hours of research, and we are nowhere near ready to make a decision on what to do. But here’s one thing I‘ve realized: I will not sleep well during the construction project. I don’t like the mess, the chaos, the inconvenience of construction, and I hate not knowing what I’m doing. And, more importantly, neither does my wife.

Why This Matters

I am part of a really creative team at Cremalab that creates awesome experiences for people who use websites, and for the people who manage those websites. My role is to identify what our clients need to present themselves to their audiences, then build the right solution that allows them to control those messages. It’s actually quite a bit more complex than that, but that’s it in a nutshell.

Last week, I realized that what we do for people is really, really valuable because we minimize the mess, the chaos, and the “I don’t know what I’m doing” factor.

We are currently working for a client that involves several groups of people: money people, marketing people, CEO-type people, and image people. Sometimes this can be daunting to have so many opinions to deal with, but in this case, when we presented our first ideas to them, they were all incredibly grateful that we are making their jobs easier. We were able to simplify the administration experience, streamline the end-user experience, and create a great branding experience to tie it all together. It dawned on me during this meeting that this is what separates a custom-designed (and developed) website from a pre-built theme or website. We removed all the extra options, consolidated the management of pages, and made it easy to handle complex parts of the new site.

The Bottom Line

This is the value of hiring a design agency: we tailor your interface with your site to make it easy to target your audience.

This allows you to focus on your messages to your audience, rather than getting frustrated at how to manage the content.  Custom websites are usually more expensive, but good ones also make you more productive and have a high return-on-investment. And you might even sleep better at night.