Why Chicago Brands Should Invest in Custom Web Design

It’s hard to think of any successful Chicago company in 2025 that is constantly growing without a proper custom web design.

With 22% of all retail sales being online by 2027, it’s easy to understand why having a good website as soon as possible is important.

In 2025, if consumers want to learn more about a product and ultimately buy it, they will go online. People in Chicago and the U.S. want convenience, and online shopping gives that to them.

By having a custom web design for your Chicago website, you’re able to attract potential customers who are looking for a product you’re selling.

Want to redesign your website but don’t know where to start? We can help.

Should You Pick a Custom Web Design Over a Template?

It doesn’t matter in what industry you are; you’ll always have competition. A good custom web design makes it a lot more likely for consumers to pick you over your competitors.

There are many reasons why having a custom web design is vital to your business in 2025, and below we will be going through the most important ones.

But before we do that, let’s quickly go over the pros of picking a custom web design over a generic website template that you can find online.

While it might be tempting to get a template and create your website by yourself, there are a few reasons why it is not recommended:

• Website builders tend to sacrifice customizability for ease of use. This means that the chances of other websites looking like yours are very high.
• While templates are convenient, they tend to fall victim to slow loading speeds. While it might not seem like a big deal, it’s a factor that can severely increase your website’s bounce rate.
• There is little to no support if something breaks while using a template. By getting a custom web design from an agency, you will be able to ask them to fix any issues that your website has.

Using a template can seem like a great way to save money.

But, it often leads to many problems and frustrations.

Instead of that, we advise any company serious about online business to choose custom web design.

Below are the main reasons why a custom web design is the best option for you in 2025.

Top 6 Reasons to Invest in Custom Web Design, If You Are a Chicago Brand

1. A Design Unique to Your Brand

Regardless of the industry you’re in, chances are you have dozens, if not hundreds, of competitors.

This means that standing out has never been more important for your business.

One of the best ways to stand out from your competitors is by having a custom web design that is unique to your brand.

Cookie-cutter designs and templates won’t cut it anymore. You need a website that attracts visitors and keeps them interested as soon as they hit the main page.

Nothing deters potential customers more than a bad website with a generic template or a boring design they have seen hundreds of times.

A custom website should reflect your brand’s values, personality, and identity. With a custom web design service, you can ensure that every aspect of your website aligns with your brand. This makes it a lot more likely that visitors will remember and recognize your brand afterward.

2. Proper SEO Strategies

Not creating a website around SEO is by far one of the worst decisions you can make when making a website.

Without any SEO strategy in place, you’re practically invisible to the world. The only visitors you’ll have with no SEO in place are from pay-per-click (PPC) and from direct link clicks.

SEO is without a doubt one of, if not the most important strategies to implement on any website, regardless of the industry or brand.

With a custom web design, you’ll be able to create a solid base for any SEO strategy you want to pursue.

From a blog all the way to good product pages, there is a lot to consider when creating a custom web design.

Generic templates tend to ignore any sort of SEO strategies, so having to tweak them to fit your SEO can be a lot of work, too.

3. Good User Experience (UX)

Having a website with a unique appearance that attracts visitors is only one part of the equation. Visitors also want to go to a website that is both easy to navigate and not overly complicated to use.

While having interactive elements on your website is nice, too many of them can confuse visitors and frustrate them.

The reality is that people don’t want to feel like a brand is wasting their time. They want to get to the page they’re looking for as quickly as possible. The goal of a good custom web design is exactly that.

A good main page should provide visitors with all the information and links they need. Ideally, the team should implement a search bar to make it even faster for visitors to find the exact product or service they are looking for.

Creating a website that is both easy to navigate and still looks unique is tough, though. You have to strike a balance between them to get the best of both worlds.

That’s where finding a good custom web design agency comes into play. A good agency will have a group of seasoned web designers who can create a mockup of how your ideal website would look.

Do you want to make your first website but don’t know what to do? Let us help.

4. Mobile Responsive Website

If you’ve searched for a product or service online in the past couple of years, chances are that you’ve found a website that is not mobile-friendly. Websites like these are usually a headache to navigate on mobile and show that the brand doesn’t care about its customers.

Having a mobile-friendly website is a must in 2025; in fact, a lot of custom web design agencies have adopted a mobile-first approach. This makes it so that they create a website with mobile users as a priority.

Having a website that is mobile-responsive and easy to navigate on any mobile device, no matter the screen size, is vital.

With how convenient browsing the web is on mobile devices, it’s no wonder that more than 50% of web traffic comes from mobile nowadays.

Getting a custom web design agency to create a website for your brand will ensure that everything is mobile-friendly. This will not only increase the overall traffic to your website, but it will also reduce its bounce rate.

5. Faster Loading Times

In 2025, any website that takes longer than three seconds to load will instantly get a 32% higher bounce rate.

While it might seem exaggerated, the truth is that people don’t want to sit around waiting for your website to load. Even if it’s just a couple of seconds, visitors would rather find another brand that offers a similar product if it means the page loads faster.

It won’t matter if your page looks amazing and has the best UX ever if it takes too long to load; most people won’t even see it in the first place.

A good custom web design optimizes your website for speed without sacrificing its appearance.

One key issue with templates is their focus on style. They often overlook the importance of fast page load speeds. With so many high-quality images and moving parts, most templates take longer than three seconds to load.

6. Easier to Scale

Templates are unfortunately difficult to scale due to their coming with a certain number of pages, and that’s it. While it is possible to scale a website with a generic template, the process is a lot more of a hassle and tends not to look good.

A custom web design agency would ensure that your website is easy to scale in the future if need be. This means that they’ll make sure that adding more product pages or different landing pages for your website is easy and intuitive to do.

The sky is the limit when it comes to custom web design compared to having an actual limit with a template.

Get a Custom Web Design That Converts With Blacksmith

There are even more advantages that come with having a custom web design, but the ones we just talked about are the main ones.

It might seem a bit overwhelming to get into a custom web design project due to how many moving parts the project has. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

With Blacksmith, you’ll get a group of seasoned web designers ready to create the perfect mockup for your website.

As a professional Chicago web design agency, we will ensure your website stands out from the crowd while performing exceptionally well.

You’ll be sent regular updates on how the website is looking, so you can ask for changes in real time. No more having to wait weeks for a website you won’t like due to a lack of communication.

Still unsure if you need a custom web design for your brand? Let’s get on a call so we can explain why 2025 is the best year to do it.