It’s common knowledge that a website is pretty necessary for your business in 2022, whether you’re a local shop or an online service provider – it’s just a given. The real question is does your business need a custom website? 

With every website platform, you’re provided with or can shop for easy-to-use templates that are essentially pre-built and just require a little tweaking to suit your brand and offers. But, is a template the best way to market your business? Yes, it’s financially more appealing – but, depending on what stage your business is in, it might be a better idea to invest in a custom-built website that’s targeted to your audience, customized for your offers, and is designed to suit YOU.

Not sure if you’re ready to make the investment (or even need to)? Here are three questions to ask yourself before investing in a custom website design:

#1. Are You Making Money in Your Business?

I don’t know about you, but one of the reasons I started my business was to make money doing what I felt passionate about. But, I wasn’t able to really invest in my business until I was able to make a profit from my services. The same applies to a custom website design, you want to make sure you’re generating a profit in your business before investing.

Why “making money” and not “having an audience?” Because if you’re making money, you’re most likely already present online – meaning you already have some form of an audience to send to your website.

#2. Do You Understand Your Target Audience?

We’re going beyond knowing or identifying your target audience – we want to know your target audience. Before investing in a custom website that’s built to convert your audience into clients or customers, you need to understand things such as their:

• Demographics, what is their gender, age range, interests, etc.
• Needs, what are they looking for? What problems do they need solved?
• How they learn, is your website the first place they look or is social media?

These are all things you need to know before working with a designer. It also helps to understand the why behind your business along with your personal brand message or brand’s core values.

#3. Is Your Current Website Converting?

Whether you’re starting with a DIY website or customized template, it’s highly possible (and probable) that your current website isn’t converting at the rate you want – or could be. The pros of DIYing or buying a template is affordability, the cons are that they’re not designed to convert YOUR audience. 

There’s a psychology behind the design – the placement, the SEO, even your brand colors. DIY leads to creating a website that is typically skewed to your preference with little consideration for your audience while templates are too general to hone in on their needs and your offers.

At Âme Creatives, we offer both service-specific website templates and custom built websites so that you can pick the one that fits YOUR business – contact us to get started.