"Is a showcase site enough or do I need custom?" It is one of the first questions to settle, because it changes the budget, the timeline and what the site will be able to do. Here is how to decide without getting it wrong.
The showcase site: present and reassure
A showcase site serves a simple goal: when someone looks for you, they find a clear presentation of your activity, your services, your trust signals and a way to contact you. A few pages, a form, a clean SEO base. It is the right starting point for an artisan, a shop, a practice or an SME that wants to exist online and generate enquiries.
The custom site: when a showcase is not enough
You move to custom as soon as the site has to do more than present:
- A lot of content to organise: catalogue, geographic areas, case studies
- Features: booking, client portal, online quotes, payment, multilingual
- A strong visual identity to translate, beyond an adapted layout
- Advanced local SEO, with pages targeted by service and by town
- Connections to your other tools: calendar, accounting, client records
The questions that decide it
Three questions are usually enough. What exactly should the visitor do? Does the site need to handle data like bookings, accounts or orders, or only inform? And in two years, what will probably have changed? If the answers stay within "present and be contacted", a showcase site is enough. As soon as there is data or business logic, it is custom.
You can also start simple
Nothing forces you to build everything at once. A site is an evolutive base: you start with a solid showcase, and add pages, a store or a client portal when the need is there, without starting over, as long as the foundations are clean from the start.
Our starting prices and what drives the cost are detailed on the Pricing page. If you are still unsure, tell us what you need: we will tell you honestly what fits best.