Over the last two years we started offering a new way to redesign your website with us called Crafted. These are semi-custom websites that allow bloggers like you to get a one of a kind look without the hefty price tag of a custom website. But if you’ve ever wondered what exactly semi-custom means and whether it’s right for you, this episode is for you. I’ll share exactly what we mean by semi-custom, how our approach differs from others in the industry and ultimately whether it’s a good fit for you or it isn’t. Let’s jump in.

Before we jump into what semi-custom means and what Crafted is all about, I think it’s helpful to start with why we started offering this approach.

One thing that Grace + Vine is known for and I am super proud of is that our websites do not look alike. We really value the unique perspective you bring to blogging and want to ensure that your website reflects you, your personal brand and your audience, uniquely.

Almost 2 years ago, I started to see a shift happening in the food blogging space. We started noticing that bloggers were needing a different solution than the pre-made themes out there but couldn’t afford a $10-$40k custom website.

We also started to notice that while externally and visually our client websites were all unique, that behind the hood we were going back to the same core functions and main tools every time.

So we went to the drawing board to find a sweet spot between a custom look and feel, without the custom price tag.

What does semi-custom mean?

Semi-custom is our hybrid approach to make sure our clients have something that truly feels unique, but doesn’t have to be fully custom coded from the ground up. Rather than spending 2+ months working with us to create a completely custom look and functionality, we spend half the amount of time and a quarter of the investment but with all the same excitement of a custom website.

We decided that there were 3 parts of the website that needed to be unique every time:

• Header (first impression)
• Footer (great for branding)
• Blocks (helping your content shine uniquely)

Weaving in your personal brand and details from your branding into every part of the site comes naturally to us and was an easy win for us to ensure your site is unique to you.

What about our approach is semi-custom?

We don’t believe in a one size fits all for bloggers. In working with food bloggers exclusively for over 5 years, I learned that even two food bloggers with the exact same niche (sourdough for example which we’ve now worked with 3 of the largest sourdough websites and each are insanely different!) could have vastly different approaches, audiences and therefore website needs.

This made our custom websites such a fun process to figure out what was important and needed to shine for each client.

We’ve taken that same approach in our Crafted website projects, but streamlined it to be able to fit it into a semi-custom approach.

Whereas in the past, we’d built a custom theme and completely design and develop each page of your website from scratch, we’ve now turned our best practices and design approach into a well-oiled machine that produces amazing results with a fraction of the work.

This begs the question, which parts of your project are custom?

• Header and footer: Each project has a custom designed and developed header and footer. This allows for the first impression of your website (no matter which page someone lands on) to be professionally designed with SEO in mind.
• Fonts and colors: These details might sound small, they are the shining star of making sure your website feels polished and on brand. You can either suggest exactly what fonts and colors you want (important if you have an established brand) or let our team of expert designers create something incredible for you.
• Button styling and image orientation: Whether you prefer rounded corners or square, square images or vertical, the choice is yours.
• Content order: Whether you prefer the top of your website to showcase latest posts, a seasonal highlight or your top categories, you have the freedom to choose (and change your mind later if you want to rearrange things!)
• Custom blocks: One of the most requests pieces of our custom websites is custom blocks. There was no way I could not include this in Crafted. Each client gets a handful of custom blocks designed for them – based around the content in your blog posts.
• Homepage, Recipe Index and About Page: Each of these pages are hand built based on your choices. We can guarantee these pages won’t look like any other food blog out there.

How is Crafted different?

We created this semi-custom approach because we saw that there was a gap in what people were needing. I was hearing from people over and over again that they couldn’t afford a custom website but they needed something that was between a pre-made theme and a custom website that didn’t skimp on excellent design.

Crafted is a great option for somebody who really cares about the design of their website. If you put a top priority on design and want to create that cohesive branded experience across your website, then Crafted is going to be an amazing solution for you!

Related post: The Crafted Website Experience

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