Optimizing for yourself is the key to creating a truly custom website. Just because you aren't using a template does not mean your website has been customized. You want a website designed specifically for your company. You want your site to display at first glance what your company is about. The hierarchy of your links, the graphics, the color scheme, the functions, and, of course, the written content, all have to communicate the essence of your business.

These days, templates allow anyone to design a professional-looking site, and for far less cost than it takes to hire a professional site designer--almost, in fact, for free. You are here because you know the inherent hindrances of the template: that the sites they produce have no real connection to the business that created them.

You want a custom website, which means that you want a site that is tailored specifically for your business. What are the requirements of customization? Simply that you work more closely with your web designers, providing them with information and direction on what you want from your site. What are the benefits? Your site will be designed with your specific business in mind.

Not everyone needs a custom website. If you just want your site to look good, there is no reason not to trust a group of professionals to design it with minimum input, relying on their own skills and experience. Websites don't need to be customized to work, or even to stand out. Websites that haven't been customized are not inherently bad websites, or even inherently boring websites. A lack of customization does not preclude you from having an original website, a unique website, an attractive website. Many people want to hire web designers so that they can assign a task to a group of skilled individuals, and go about the other critical functions of their business content that their designers will do a good job.

And that technique works fine, but it is not the hallmark of a custom website. If you want a custom website, you don't want to look as web designers as people who take the job of building a website off your hands. You want to look at them as people who have the skills required to bring your vision of a website--under your direction--into reality. They provide the tools to perform the actual creation, and also invaluable experience that they can share with you to fine-tune and optimize your site for the World Wide Web.

A custom website pays off, for those who are willing to join in the process of creation. For a little more effort in deciding how you want the website to look, what you want it to say, and how you want it to work, you will receive a result that does exactly what you want a website to do for your business. The goal of custom web design is optimization--not just for the search engines, not just for the World Wide Web, but for your specific desires and your business's specific needs. A custom website means you are not getting a website that is designed to innovatively represent your field of business. It means you are getting a website designed to innovatively represent your business specifically. And if that is the sort of website you want, then by all means, start thinking about what you want it to look like, what functions you want included, what the text should say. Go ahead, create a custom website; it is the hands-down best way to make your website truly unique.

About the Author

Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.