Is a Custom Website the Right Move?
Introduction
I was recently on Reddit (where frankly, I spend a unreasonable amount of time) and a founder’s question interrupted my scroll. The OP had built his own site while developing a software product. But now that he was ready to go to market, the people in his life kept bombarding him other websites for “inspiration”, and it only made him more confused.
As he accounts in his posts, all the sites looked clean, unoffensive, almost sterile, and most importantly, forgettable. He wanted to know how you stand out when your website looks exactly like everyone else’s? And do you even need to pay someone to make that happen?
The bomb I dropped was a definitive “you don’t stand out, and that’s kinda the point,” which did amazingly was the thing that got through “stubborn skull” (his words, not mine), and it inspired me to write a more detailed answer than Reddit’s character limit would allow. So this post is the definitive answer to the “do I need a new website?”question.
And because I know you’re a busy bee, for those of you who just want the short answer, it’s right below this. For all the overachievers, you’ll want to keep reading.
Do I need a new website? The short answer
You only need a new website when your current one is holding you back from the customers or opportunities you want. Maybe you want to be featured in Forbes, or attract a new customer type, or raise your prices. Most of those goals depend on market differentiation, sometimes it even takes a new brand, too.
That said, not every business needs a shiny new website. If your customers are in a rush to find someone and you’re the most convenient pick, a clean template with good reviews may be all you need. But if you’re in the process of updating your offer, prices, or brand, then we probably need to talk.
| If this sounds like you | New website? | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| You want bigger opportunities (press, partnerships, a new tier of client), but your site doesn’t look established enough yet | Yes | Rebuild your site so it aligns with the opportunities you’re after |
| You’ve recently raised your prices, but the site is still giving “budget” | Yes | Rebuild so the site makes the case for your new price |
| You look like everyone else in your industry | Yes | Invest in positioning, voice, and design people remember |
| People visit, but they don’t buy, book, or inquire | Yes, starting with structure | Fix your copy, content order, and next step before the visuals |
| Customers choose based on price or convenience, and design is low priority | Probably not | Make sure your design is clean, your wording is clear, and you’re showcasing your reviews and expertise |
| You’re pre-revenue or still testing the offer | Not yet | Get sales first |
| Hardly anyone visits the site | Possibly | It depends where your traffic comes from. You might need an SEO strategy, or marketing that doesn’t touch the site at all |
| Your logo, colors, and voice don’t fit the business anymore | Not on its own | Brand first, then the site (or both together) |
The long version (for you overachievers)
Marketers have had this figured out since 1898, thanks to an ad man named Elias St. Elmo Lewis. He laid out a framework known as AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. It’s still the skeleton under nearly every sales page you’ve ever scrolled, and it lines up with the four jobs every website has (none of which is “look nice”).
Attention
You’ve probably heard “attention is everything” about a million times, and it applies to websites too. But you can’t be everything to everyone. To capture attention, your site has to speak to a specific audience, so the right people land on it (from Google, Pinterest, an ad, a QR code on your packaging) and immediately think “this is for me.”
Interest
Once you have someone’s attention, how do you get them invested in what you’re selling? You give them the information they need and make your value easy to see: what you do, who it’s for, how it works, and what it costs (or how to find out). If a visitor has to hunt for any of that, they’ll leave before they ever get interested.
Desire
Desire starts with feeling understood. Your site needs to name your audience’s pain points, show them you have the answer, and build trust along the way with proof, polish, and consistency. Nobody wants what you sell until they believe you’ll deliver it, and this is the job that decides whether people believe your price.
Action
Finally, you want visitors to take action, whether that’s a purchase, a booking, an inquiry, or a newsletter signup. Whatever that means for your business, the website’s job is to make the next step obvious.
| AIDA stage | The website’s job | What the visitor is wondering | What it looks like when it fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attention | Speaks to a specific audience | “Is this for me?” | A headline that could belong to any business |
| Interest | Informs | “What do you do, and how does it work?” | Pricing or process buried three clicks deep |
| Desire | Builds trust | “Will you deliver, and is it worth the price?” | No proof, a dated look, a site that looks cheaper than the price |
| Action | Converts | “What do I do next?” | No clear button, or five competing ones |
So when someone asks me “do I need a new website?”, they’re usually asking “is mine ugly?” A better question is which of these four jobs your site is currently doing poorly, and whether that’s costing you the customers or opportunities you want.
Why so many websites look the same
There’s a secret you may not know. Most of those website templates you’re rolling your eyes at (you know, the ones that look like they came straight out of 2004’s internet) are doing exactly what they were built to do. They aren’t optimizing for looks, or even brand. They’re optimizing for much more specific metrics: speed, search visibility, and social proof.
Let’s say you run a plumbing company in a mid-sized suburb. Your customers are not browsing. They have water where water should not be, and they’re typing “plumber near me” with one wet hand. Your job is to be the first name they see, the easiest number to tap, and the one who picks up. A clean template with your service area, your phone number, and a few five-star reviews above the fold does that beautifully. A $10,000 site with a fancy animation of water flowing through a pipe won’t give you better results. It might even give you worse results, because your customer is still waiting for it to load on their laggy smartphone.
But if you’re the first result for “plumber near me,” you don’t have to try very hard. Even if every competitor has the exact same layout, the exact same services, and the exact same pricing, you’ll win more often than not, because you’re the first option people click.
So templates look the same because so many businesses compete on being easy to find, convenient, and affordable. If that’s your game, a “boring” website is the right tool, and that’s okay. For a lot of you reading this, that isn’t your game, and that’s when the website question becomes much more important.
It’s all about the audience
Your website is often someone’s first impression of your business. Before they read a word, the design is already telling them what to expect, how to perceive your brand, and whether you’re the right fit for them.
The budget customer example
Let’s adjust the plumber example. Say you’re serving a middle-class suburban area, and a friend talked you into getting a nicer website. You found a great designer, it cost $10,000, and the site is gorgeous. Now you have buttery smooth animations, editorial photography, custom type, the works. It’s easy to use, and it feels unmistakably premium.
Do you think you’ll still appeal to that middle-class market?
This can be a tough question. What’s the median income in your area? What do the houses typically look like? There are a lot of factors, and only you can answer them for your business, but they matter when you’re deciding how much to spend on a website. Are you paying for better functionality (like analytics tracking and more visibility in search engines) that gets you in front of the audience you want? Or are you paying for premium touches that make you look too expensive for the people you serve? It’s not a question of quality or price, but of positioning.
Ugly on purpose
This is why Craigslist and West Elm can both sell you a dresser, and neither one is wrong. Craigslist’s no-frills listing tells you you’re here for a deal, which is exactly what a deal-hunter wants to hear. West Elm, with its styled room photography and generous white space, tells you you’re buying something you’ll love for ten years. Same product, opposite environments, and each one puts its own buyer at ease. Put West Elm’s experience on Craigslist prices and you’d assume something was off. Put Craigslist’s vibe on West Elm prices and you’d feel scammed.
Berkshire Hathaway takes this even further. Warren Buffett’s holding company is one of the most valuable businesses on the planet, and its website looks like it was built in the ’90s and never touched again: plain text links on a white page, barely an image in sight, and a note that they’re unable to respond to your comments directly. It’s famous for being ugly, and it’s ugly on purpose. Berkshire’s audience is shareholders, and shareholders want to see a company that doesn’t spend a dollar on anything that doesn’t make money. A gorgeous redesign would work against it.
Average vs. premium customer psychology
Now let’s take that logic all the way up to a premium brand like Aesop. They sell hand cream for about the price of a nice dinner out, and people happily pay it. Part of that is the product. A bigger part is that every Aesop touchpoint communicates their premium positioning. Each store is designed to echo the architecture around it, the bottles look like they came from a really nice apothecary, and the website is calm, clean, and slow on purpose. You always know exactly what you’re buying into, and that consistent quality is a big chunk of what you’re paying for.
Then there’s Vaseline. It’s a basic household name, and its customers are pretty average shoppers on a budget. Nobody expects anything groundbreaking from Vaseline. Just a solid product that does its job, without the fancy marketing. Vaseline isn’t fighting for brand recognition either, since most people have had a jar in the medicine cabinet for as long as they can remember. That means its website can stay simple and practical: here’s the product, here’s what it does, here’s where to buy it.
That’s the difference between average and premium customer psychology. An average customer wants to know the product works and the price is fair, and anything extra can start to feel like something they’re paying for. A premium customer wants the whole experience to feel worth it, and the design is part of what they’re buying.
Aesop’s clean, design-focused website would feel absurd selling emergency plumbing to the overworked mom down the street. Meanwhile, the plumber’s website would never convince a corporate city girl, exhausted after a long day at work, to spend $50 on hand soap.
In a world of hand creams, are you an Aesop or a Vaseline?
Whether you need a new website isn’t only about design. Every website needs to be informative, easy to navigate, and functional. But whether you need to go above and beyond to set yourself apart, attract a certain type of customer, or price a certain way depends on who your audience is. So figure that out first. These questions will help you work through it.
Who’s buying, and how do they find you?
Are your customers motivated by price and urgency (a leak, a toothache, a deadline), or are they browsing and comparing over days or weeks? Urgent buyers want speed and proof. Browsers want to fall a little in love first. The local roofing company with a thousand glowing reviews is probably a Vaseline. The premium wedding photographer who scouts every venue ahead of time and delivers an heirloom album with the gallery is likely an Aesop.
What are you asking them to pay, compared to what’s normal?
If your price sits in the middle of your market, your website mostly needs to stay out of the way. If you’re above the middle, or want to be, the site has to help make the case for that gap before anyone talks to you.
It also has to feel like a natural extension of your brand. Customers might get one experience with you in person and another on social media, then land on a website that feels totally off. That’s where trust breaks down. When your message changes everywhere they meet you, people start to wonder whether your quality will be consistent too, and the more you charge, the more that consistency matters.
How crowded is your space?
If you’re one of nearly 20 identical options, you need to do something that sets you apart. Customers comparing options usually have a pile of browser tabs open that all look the same, and if yours blends in, it’s the first one they close. Setting yourself apart might mean switching up your messaging to appeal to a more specific type of customer, or offering a more premium experience that costs more but brings in a more premium client.
Figure out what your particular customers need to see, then look at the other options they’re comparing you to and try to do the opposite of whatever those are doing. That might mean a new website.
| Vaseline | Aesop | |
|---|---|---|
| What motivates your customers | Price and urgency (a leak, a toothache, a deadline) | Browsing and comparing over days or weeks |
| Your price vs. your market | Around the middle | Above the middle, or headed there |
| How you win a crowded space | Cheapest, closest, easiest to book | The one people remember |
| Which jobs the site leans on | Informing and converting | Building brand loyalty and trust |
| Where the money goes | A solid template, clear words, lots of reviews | Strategy, custom design, and copywriting |
| Service example | The local roofing company with a thousand glowing reviews, where homeowners call whoever can come out this week | The premium wedding photographer couples book a year out because they fell in love with the portfolio |
| E-commerce example | The online supply shop where offices reorder the same paper towels based on price and fast shipping | The small-batch candle brand people buy as gifts because every detail, from the site to the box, feels special |
Is it shallow to want a website that just looks nice?
I was on a call last month with a new website client who asked me this. She’s building a luxury haircare brand with gorgeous packaging, the kind you’d leave out on the counter on purpose. Most business owners I talk to are focused on leads, conversion rate, and where their traffic comes from. But she wasn’t too concerned with any of that. She just wanted a site that looked the way her product feels. Was she crazy to ask?
She wasn’t. When a lot of products have similar ingredients, one of the biggest ways to stand out is a distinct brand that feels relatable to your customer. That brand experience is what lets you charge higher prices, attract a certain type of customer, and get people (influencers included) talking about your products. Your brand drives that, and your website is an extension of it. So yes, your website matters to how people experience your brand, especially when they go looking for you.
Drybar figured this out with a service. Every salon does blowouts. But Drybar wrapped theirs in a fun yellow, named the styles after cocktails, and turned it into a ritual people plan their week around. It wasn’t the blowout that changed, but the experience around it.
So no, wanting a beautiful site isn’t shallow. It’s only a mistake when the beautiful site isn’t serving your customer. Your local plumber doesn’t need to invest in a fancy website. The luxury haircare founder can’t afford not to.
Couldn’t I just build it myself with AI?
This is another common worry I see in places like Reddit, where founders talk through how they’re building their brands. Why pay someone for a layout you could recreate with a template and an AI assistant over a weekend?
If you’re a Vaseline, you can probably get away with it. Your customers aren’t going to nitpick the design or care how pretty your typefaces are. They care about efficiency and value, and only you can decide whether AI can get you there.
If you’re an Aesop (or headed there), a layout structure is probably the only thing you’d want to borrow from AI. You typically need a strategist and designer who understands your positioning, can lay out the content to fit your customer’s natural journey, and is in tune with your audience’s pain points, desires, and the way they talk. That’s how you get a design that feels like a natural extension of your brand and carries your positioning all the way through the shopping or inquiry experience.
AI can help in the early stages, when you’re figuring out what you want to say and how you want to say it. But customers pick up on lower quality in the fine details, and AI misses the human element, like the stories that drive a brand. AI isn’t a very good storyteller, frankly. And if you don’t have a strategy or design background, you don’t know what you don’t know. Psychologists even have a name for it: the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people with limited experience in something tend to overestimate how well they know it.
Three reasons a new website might be worth it
Before you spend anything, ask what your customer needs from your site. Are they price-sensitive? Premium? Skeptical? You know your customer better than anyone, and your first instinct is probably right. (A good designer or strategist can help you pressure-test it.) Once you can answer that, there are three good reasons to invest in a new website.
1. You’re aiming higher than your site looks
Maybe you’ve raised your prices, you’re going after a new type of customer, or you want the opportunities that come with looking established (e.g., press features, speaking gigs, brand partnerships).
The audience you’re trying to impress is running the same calculation: is this business at the level it says it is? A site that looks like your cheaper competitors’ answers “no” before you’ve had a chance to present your case. Your website (along with your brand) has the ability to fix that and make it clear you belong in the rooms you’re trying to get into.
2. You blend in or are up against a giant
Sometimes it’s not about being the best, having the most resources, or having enough money to throw at the problem. It’s about appealing to the right audience and setting yourself apart enough that people are willing to give you a chance. Your brand and website are how you get your foot in the door.
When customers compare options, there needs to be an obvious reason to choose you. Maybe you were the most memorable of the bunch, they related to your company the most, or your features are the best (or some combination). Your website has to communicate that difference. If it’s about memorability, you might need a great copywriter and designer to create an experience that feels different from all your competitors. (This is one of the easiest ways to stand out, by the way.) If you have a feature other businesses aren’t offering, it should be front and center, maybe even the first thing people see when they land on your homepage. If your current site buries what makes you different, that’s a good reason to update it.
If none of this sounds like you, a new website might not be your first move. Your traffic, your pricing, or the offer itself might need attention first.
3. Your site isn’t doing its job
This is the one reason that has nothing to do with looks, but it can still be a reason to update your site.
A common problem is that people just don’t find your site. Most people land on a website through search engines, social media, or ads, and if you aren’t doing any of that marketing, your website can’t serve its purpose because nobody’s there to see it. The fix doesn’t have to involve touching the website at all. You could run ads, build on social media, or grow your network if you’re a service provider. (SEO content is an option too, but it’s not the only one.) You just need to figure out where the problem is.
The other problem is when people land on your site but don’t convert. They visit, maybe read a little, and leave without buying, booking, or inquiring. This one does require an update to your website. It’s usually a copywriting problem, sometimes a positioning problem, and sometimes a structural problem (the right information isn’t in the right order, or there’s no clear next step).
| What’s happening | Does it need a new website? | What usually fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Nobody finds the site | Not necessarily | Ads, social media, networking, or an SEO strategy |
| People visit but don’t buy, book, or inquire | Yes | Better copy, clearer positioning, and a structure with one obvious next step |
Signs your site needs an update
A few things you might be seeing that mean it’s time:
- You’ve raised your prices, but your sales haven’t improved (or they’ve stalled), which usually means people don’t feel the new price is justified.
- You’re going after bigger opportunities, but you keep hitting a wall.
- You hesitate before sending someone a link to your site.
- You’re losing customers to competitors whose work isn’t better than yours.
- Your site describes the business you had two years ago, not the one you have now.
- Your site feels like a duct-taped Frankenstein of plugins and workarounds, and it doesn’t run as smoothly as you’d like your business to.
- People who find you through referrals convert, but cold traffic doesn’t.
When should you skip a new website?
- You’re pre-revenue or still testing the offer. Get the sales first. Redesigning an offer that’s about to change wastes the money.
- Your positioning is still moving. If who you serve or what you charge might shift in six months, wait until it settles.
- Nobody’s visiting the site. A redesign doesn’t fix a traffic problem. Fix where people come from, then fix where they land.
- Branding is the bigger problem. If your logo, colors, and voice don’t fit the business you have now, a new site just puts the old problem on a nicer page. Brand first, or do both together, but never the site alone.
The in-between case
Maybe you’re a Vaseline today with Aesop ambitions. You’ve raised your prices (or you’re about to), your work is better than your website suggests, and your referrals convert while cold visitors don’t. That’s not a no. It’s a “soon,” and the next step is figuring out whether you’re ready to invest now or there’s groundwork to do first. A quick way to check:
- Is your offer settled? If you’ve been selling it consistently and don’t expect it to change in the next six months, you’re ready on that front.
- Do you know where your customers come from? A new site works best when people are already finding you through search, social, ads, or referrals.
- Can you name what the site should do in its first year? Set a goal for what a better website should add to your profit (more inquiries, a higher price point, bigger clients) and put a rough number on it. If a new site costs about 10 to 30 percent of that number, it’s likely worth the investment.
Waiting has a cost, too. Every inquiry that goes to a competitor because your site looked cheaper is money you’ve already lost, just not on a website.
Quick questions
Can a template website look premium?
Up to a point, yes. What a template is typically missing is specificity. Templates are built to be generic so they fit the widest possible range of businesses, but your customer has specific goals, specific needs, and specific things they need to see before they’re ready to buy from you. A template can be a good starting place, but you’ll always need to customize it to fit the audience you’re going after. An eye for design helps, too.
Should I rebrand before I redo my website?
If your branding doesn’t fit the business you have right now or the audience you’re targeting, then yes, and ideally you’d do both together. Building a new website on a brand you’ve outgrown means paying to redo it again later.
How long should a website last?
A well-built website should last around three to five years before it needs any major updates. In the meantime, you can swap out hero sections, update content, or add new products to keep it feeling fresh, but you shouldn’t need to overhaul a website that was done well for at least a couple of years.
How much does a new website cost?
It depends on what you’re building and how you’re building it, but here are some general ranges. If you’re working with a freelancer, pricing usually falls between $3,000 and $8,000. With a boutique studio, you might spend anywhere from $7,000 to $15,000. With a larger agency, you might start around $10,000 to $20,000 and go up from there.
If you only remember one thing
The point of a website is to do specific things (remember those four jobs?). So think about who you’re targeting. Are you an Aesop or a Vaseline? What kinds of customers are you trying to pull in, and what kinds of opportunities are you going after? If your website is already bringing in all of that and you have no qualms about it, then you are the exception and you can keep doing what you’re doing with peace of mind.
But if you’re not getting the customers or opportunities you want, or you’re not making as much as you’d like to (hello, pricing), you might need a website that does a better job of reaching those goals. And if the website isn’t the limiting factor (say it’s traffic or visibility), look at those areas first.
When you’re ready to talk it through, book a call. Fair warning: I’ll ask fifty questions about your customer before I show you a single mockup.
Coming soon: template vs. custom (what you get for the money) and freelancer vs. studio vs. agency. Yes, I’m sparing you for now.
