What these two pieces of advice have in common is they both demonstrate your credibility to your audience. If your business is smart enough to know it needs a web site and a mobile app, then it is likely your business is savvy enough to deliver quality work. It might be worth it to look in to a custom website.
Perception
If your entire site is built with a custom design, what questions might your customer ask? Is this business financially successful? They must be since that web site was either really expensive or the employees/management are really technically competent. If they’re smart enough to build a web site from scratch, maybe they’ll be just as smart about my project or product?
On the other hand, if your site looks like the other eleven billion CMS-driven blogs, the only question your customers are going to ask is “are the people who run this business going to be just as lazy about my project?”
Return on Investment
Ultimately, building a custom web site isn’t as time-consuming or as expensive as you might think. Even building one that can be easily updated like a content management service isn’t that expensive. What your business can obtain in return may offset that expense several times over.
The perception that your business is on the leading edge of technology is almost certain to bring you new business. This is true for a wide variety of industries including media, law, fashion and of course, technology. Your potential customers will want to see if you can be as creative with their work as you’ve been with your own, and some of them will recommend you just so they can show others what you’ve published on the web!
As long as your web site stays updated and accurately represents your business, the likelihood of recovering that investment over months or years of business is very high. If you utilize the web site properly, it is practically guaranteed.
Security
Widespread security vulnerabilities depend on homogenized technical architecture. If everyone is using the same content management system, once an intruder learns to break into one, he’s well on his way to breaking in to all of them.
However, if your site is different, you’re safer. Even if your site’s login page is connected to a different URL, you’ve bypassed the threat from any system designed to break in to standard login page. The larger the number of differences between your site and more common sites, the more difficult it becomes for intruders. In fact, the difficulty can increase exponentially depending on how your site is structured.
Setting up a custom web site can seem daunting and expensive, but the benefits are often worth it and at least worth investigating.
