What custom web design includes
Custom web design means the page structure, layouts and components are designed for your offer and your audience instead of adapted from a purchased theme. At Dardo, design and development happen in the same small team, so decisions about brand, content and code are made together. Your proposal lists which of these deliverables are included, who supplies each input and how each one is accepted.
- Audience, page hierarchy and sitemap built around the main action
- Art direction: typography, color, imagery and motion rules
- Desktop and mobile layouts for every unique page template
- Reusable visual components that keep new pages consistent
- Navigation and inquiry journeys, down to the confirmation message
- Development, content management and technical SEO foundations
- Launch checks and a handover of files, accounts and documentation
Is custom web design the right service for you?
Choose custom web design when your offer is established but your current site, or the lack of one, doesn't explain it clearly, and when brand, content and development decisions affect one another. It is the full project: strategy, design, build and launch in one scope.
Some briefs fit another scope better. With approved designs in hand, our web development service covers the build. If your current site has traffic and content worth keeping, start with a website redesign so migration is part of the brief. For one page and one campaign, a landing page is quicker to scope. If the core of the project is a logged-in product rather than a website, product design is the better starting point.
If you're weighing a theme against a custom build, our comparison of WordPress and custom websites lays out the trade-offs in cost, speed, updates and ownership, including when WordPress is the better choice.
How much does a custom website cost?
The price follows the work rather than a per-page rate: a five-page site with five original layouts can need more design than a thirty-page site built from three templates. Our inquiry form offers budget ranges of under USD 5,000, 5,000–15,000, 15,000–30,000, 30,000–60,000 and over 60,000; choosing one helps us propose a scope that fits instead of a generic package.
For a market benchmark before you ask for quotes, our free website cost calculator shows what providers publish for each kind of site, with running costs.
If your project targets Colombia, our country guide lists dated prices from Bogotá providers and local domain and hosting costs: what a website costs in Colombia.
Each proposal separates discovery and design, development, content, third-party software and recurring costs such as hosting and domains, and states its assumptions, exclusions and payment stages. To compare studios fairly, give every finalist the same page inventory, languages and integrations. These are the factors that move the number most:
| Cost factor | Less work | More work |
|---|---|---|
| Page templates | A few templates reused across many pages | Many pages that each need their own layout |
| Content | Final text and images supplied by your team | Writing, translation or image direction in scope |
| Languages | One language | English and Spanish, each with its own URLs and review |
| Integrations | A contact form that reaches one inbox | CRM, booking, payments or data from another system |
| Interaction | Standard transitions and states | Custom motion, 3D or interactive data |
| Existing site | No URLs or content to move | Pages, redirects and content to migrate |
Our web design process, from brief to launch
Each stage ends with a decision you review before the next one builds on it. Discovery covers your offer, audience, existing evidence and the one action the site must support; structure agrees a page and content model before any visual direction; design starts with representative pages, reviewed against the agreed goal rather than taste alone.
The build turns those pages into components and responsive states in a working version you can click through on your own phone. At launch we check production URLs, mobile behavior, keyboard access, metadata, inquiry delivery and the agreed analytics events on the live site.
We don't publish a standard timeline: the schedule depends on content readiness, unique templates, languages, integrations and how quickly decisions get made. The proposal includes one once those are known, with missing content listed as a dependency rather than hidden inside a fixed date.
Work you can inspect
Dardo created the name, web design, development and SEO for A medio tono, a music school offering classes in Bogotá and online. The site carries a vivid pink, violet and yellow identity, yet its structure has to answer practical questions first: which instrument, which teacher, which class format and how to start.
On the live site, a visitor can pick a course on the homepage, land in a teacher directory already filtered to that instrument, open a teacher's profile and contact the school with that teacher's name included in the message. We documented this journey on 27 September 2026. After the site moved to Cloudflare and launched in four languages, Google Search Console showed about 55,000 impressions and 416 clicks between 1 and 9 October 2026, up from 354 impressions between 30 June and 29 September. Enrollments and revenue haven't been measured, so we don't claim them.
The rest of our published work shows other sides of the same team: Janus Observatory, ten 3D worlds that still work without WebGL; Superame, a public ranking with verified payments; Hyper, a scroll-driven product story; and Shiimain, a public-data interface for La Guajira.
Web design for businesses in the US and Latin America
We work remotely with US and Latin American teams from Bogotá, Colombia. Discovery identifies your audience, offer, markets and review owners before design starts. The site can launch in English, Spanish or both, with copy and search priorities adapted to each audience and a URL per language, as we plan every multilingual website.
Being found in your target markets starts with clear service pages, accurate business information, structured data and language signals. We plan location and service-area information around where your business actually operates; keyword research and local search are scoped in our SEO service. To shortlist a team for a US or Latin American project, our guide on how to compare studios includes a scoring sheet you can use with every finalist.
Direct collaboration with a founder-led studio
Dardo is a team of three led by its founder, Nicolás Cerón. You talk directly with the people designing and building your site, and the proposal names each of them and their role. Before work begins we agree on meeting times, decision owners and review dates.
Bogotá is on UTC−5 all year, with working-day overlap for teams in the US and Latin America. We agree on meeting times, decision owners and review dates before starting. Documents and reviews are in English or Spanish; any other delivery language needs reviewers agreed in the scope. The proposal states the currency, payment stages, third-party costs and handover responsibilities.
Ownership and handover at launch
Handover names the owner of the domain, hosting, source code, design files, content system and every third-party account, and we prefer those accounts in your name from the start where the platform allows it. Before launch we check that the person responsible on your side can update representative content without technical help. If Dardo keeps supporting the site, the proposal defines that scope; if not, you receive the agreed files and documentation.
Questions before you choose
How much does a custom website cost?
It depends on the work: the number of unique page templates, who writes and translates the content, the languages, integrations such as a CRM or booking system, and whether an existing site has to be migrated. The written proposal separates design, development, content and recurring costs, so you can compare it line by line with other quotes.
How long does it take to design and build a website?
It depends on scope, so we set the schedule in the proposal rather than quoting a standard number. The biggest variables are content readiness, the number of unique templates, languages, integrations and how quickly feedback comes back. If you have a fixed launch date, tell us at the start so the scope can be planned around it.
Should I hire a freelancer or a web design agency?
A freelancer works well when the site is small, the design direction is clear and one person can cover design, build and launch. A studio makes sense when brand, content, development and search need to be decided together, or when you want more than one person accountable for the result. Dardo sits between the two: a three-person, founder-led team that handles design, development and technical SEO in one project with a written scope.
Is a custom website better than a template or WordPress theme?
Not always. A template is faster and cheaper, and it's the right choice when a standard structure fits your business. Custom design pays off when the site must explain an offer that templates squeeze, look unmistakably like your brand or connect specific content and integrations. WordPress itself can be custom or template-based; the real question is whether the structure is designed for your visitors or adapted from someone else's.
Do you design and develop the website, or only design it?
Both. A typical Dardo project includes strategy, web design, development and launch, with responsibilities stated in the proposal. We can also deliver designs for your own or a partner's developers; in that case we agree on file ownership, the documentation of components and states they need, and how the build will be accepted, so the design survives implementation.
Can the website be in English and Spanish?
Yes. We work directly in both languages. A bilingual website gets separate URLs for each language, localized navigation and metadata, language links search engines can read and a named reviewer for each version. Translating only the interface labels doesn't create a complete local experience, so the proposal states who writes, translates and approves the content in each language.
Will my new website be optimized for Google?
Every site we build includes technical search foundations: clean URLs, unique titles and descriptions, structured data, crawlable pages, internal links, language relationships and attention to loading speed. Those make a site easy to index; they don't guarantee rankings, which also depend on content, competition and links. Keyword research, content planning and local SEO can be added through Dardo's SEO service.
Why choose a studio founded in 2026?
Judge Dardo by work you can inspect rather than by years in business. Each published case study states exactly what Dardo delivered and what it doesn't claim, and every proposal puts scope, deliverables, acceptance criteria and ownership of files and accounts in writing. If you need a long client roster or a large in-house team, a bigger agency may be a better fit, and we'd rather say so early.
From the blog
- SaaS website design cost in 2026: what 12 providers publish, and what moves the price
Published prices from 12 providers put a SaaS marketing site at a median USD 8,750 to start. What drives the cost, and what it costs to run each year.
- Wix vs WordPress in 2026: three-year costs, ownership, SEO limits and real-user speed
Wix costs USD 612–1,044 over three years with upkeep included and passes Core Web Vitals more often; WordPress is cheaper and portable, if someone maintains it.
- Nearshore web development in Latin America: 7 countries compared for US companies
Time zones, English scores, developer counts, holidays, payments and IP rules for Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay.
- How long does it take to build a website? Timelines by type and phase, from published schedules
Published schedules put a professional marketing site at 10 to 16 weeks and larger builds at 4 to 6 months. Content and approvals, not code, set the date.
9 more articles
- Wix Studio vs Webflow (and Framer) in 2026: prices, CMS limits, code, speed and a 3-year cost
- Bilingual English–Spanish website: how to plan it, what it costs and how to rank in Spanish
- How much does a website redesign cost in 2026? Refresh, redesign and rebuild prices in USD
- How to hire web developers and designers in Colombia: vetting, contracts and payments for US companies
- Web design agency vs freelancer: who to hire for your website, and who carries which risk
- How much does a website cost in the US in 2026? Published rates, platform fees and what moves a quote
- WordPress or a custom website? How to choose, and when each one pays off
- How much does a website cost in Colombia in 2026? Real prices and what moves a quote
- How to compare web design studios before you hire one: criteria, questions and red flags
Free tools
- Website cost calculator
Pick your market, the kind of site and what's in scope, and see what freelancers, studios and agencies publish for it, with every price linked to its source.
- Website brief & RFP builder
Answer a few questions and get a website brief or a formal RFP, ready to send to studios. Export to Word or Markdown. Free, no email.
