Today there are plenty of quick and cheap web design options. Shopify, Magento, Wordpress, Drupal, Jumla, and other platforms have plenty of templates to choose from. But since your website is your single most powerful marketing tool at your disposal, does it make sense to go cheap here? Of course not. A website designed by custom web designers experienced in mobile and web accessibility will ensure your website is accessible to all visitors and is successful in the important role of enticing, engaging, and converting visitors into customers.

Custom Website Design Best Practices

Discovery

Every business is a unique brand with its own design style, voice, products, competition, and target audiences. Designing a unique website that truly projects your brand in the best possible light, begins with first understanding what is unique about your brand and where it fits within the competitive landscape. 

SEO

Organic search traffic is gold, and it takes much work to reach page one. An SEO roadmap should be developed early so that each aspect of design, production, and content is optimized for the keywords you are targeting. 

Custom Web Design

Custom web design begins with a clean slate. The website designer uses everything learned in Discovery to come up with a design that not only aligns with your brand, but elevates it. And here the designer must account for large desktop monitors down to smart phones, and produce comps for each “breakpoint” to accommodate all screen sizes. The designer must also consider web accessibility and WCAG requirements for ADA compliance.

Website Production

Custom websites can be built on many different platforms, with different frameworks and languages. What’s key is to consider the longer term operating costs of the website, as well as the availability of developers that specialize in such platforms. Some are exotic and others are common. One thing that I find assuring to our clients, is that we’re on the most common LAMP stack - Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. When shopping for a custom web design company, it’s worth considering this.

Content

Whether your web designer is creating the content, or you are, it’s best for the web designer to load and configure the content to not only look good but also be optimized for search, while also meeting accessibility requirements.

QA & Accessibility Testing

During testing, we not only test functionality, we also test for accessibility. In both cases, it’s important not to over rely on automated tools. For both, use cases should be established, and human testing conducted.

Why is web accessibility so important now? 

It always has been of course. People with disabilities use various “assistive technologies” to access digital content. Unless websites (or mobile apps) are specifically designed and built to be accessible, they just aren’t. It takes specific skills, methods, and testing to ensure accessibility. And if that isn’t done, the website will not be inclusive and will also be in violation of the ADA. Website owners are now very commonly sued for ADA violations.

Learn more about web accessibility and our Accessibility.Works team.

We specialize in custom web design and web accessibility. We have been designing websites for over 24 years and work with a broad range of brands, which keeps us sharp. Give us a call and let us create a fantastic website that entices, engages, and converts more visitors into customers.