Essential Features Every Website Must Have

The internet is overflowing with more than 1.1 billion websites. While about 194 million of them are active in 2025, over 177k new websites are being created every day. To stand out in this ever-growing crowd, many website admins are building:

• “Custom-Coded Websites”
• “Custom Websites”
• “Hand-Built Websites”
• “Bespoke Websites”

These terms describe a website that’s custom-built line by line to meet an organization’s unique needs and design preferences. No pre-designed templates or CMS are used.

Every file, element, and functionality of these sites is created with custom code and custom design components. Developing such a custom-coded website involves a lot of work, including:

• Building the website’s architecture
• Designing custom layouts
• Designing custom user interfaces
• Using a combination of backend programming languages, frameworks, and tools to create unique functionalities for the site

10 Critical Features of a Custom-Coded Website

Why deal with higher costs, longer development times, and the need for constant maintenance unless your custom-coded site has all the features it needs to succeed? Here are the 10 critical features that you cannot afford to miss out on if you are investing in a custom-coded website:

1. Must-Have Home Page Features for a Custom-Coded Website

The homepage is the face of your website — it represents your brand, helps users find their way, and creates a lasting first impression. The following features are essential for your custom-coded homepage:

• Domain Name: Think of your domain name as your site’s address on the internet — it needs to be short, memorable, and easy to type.
• Company Name: Display your company name prominently on the home page to immediately reassure visitors they are in the right place.
• Search Bar: Add a search bar to empower users to quickly locate specific info on your site.
• Logo: Position your logo prominently to create a visual link between your brand and its identity.
• Description/Tagline: Include a brief description or tagline near your logo to succinctly convey what your brand does
• Navigation Bar: An intuitive navigation bar should be instantly accessible so that users can easily browse through the site and find the desired content.
• Calls-to-Action (CTAs): Clear and compelling CTAs must prompt users to sign up, book demos, make purchases, or engage with your site in other ways.
• Visuals: Use high-quality images or videos to complement homepage text content.
• Internal Links: Facilitate exploration of your site right away by including internal links on the homepage to direct users to relevant products, services, or on-site content.
• Testimonials: Showcase customer testimonials to build credibility with first-time visitors.
• Live Chat Functionality: Implement live chat options to provide immediate assistance.
• Subscriber Opt-in Forms: Include opt-in forms for newsletters or updates on the homepage to build a mailing list — even with first-time visitors.

2. Must-Have Footer Features for a Custom-Coded Website

After the homepage, the next thing that visitors see on a site is the footer. This section sits at the bottom section of all pages, so packing it with the right features is important.

• Navigation Links: At the bottom of every page, incorporate a hyperlinked list of all commonly accessed pages (blog, press releases, ‘About Us’, customer support, FAQs).
• Company Biography: Share a brief biography of your organization and its founders.
• Contact Information: Share necessary contact details (phone number, email address) and a contact form to let users get in touch with your team.
• Map and Address: Provide a map and physical address to guide users to your office or store location.
• Business Hours: Clearly display your business hours or specific availability criteria for customer service.
• Social Media Icons: Add your brand’s social media icons to encourage off-site engagement.

3. Mobile-First Development

Google doesn’t index websites that are not usable on mobile devices anymore. Over 63% of all Internet traffic came from mobile phones in 2024. You really do not need any more reasons to have a mobile-first coding approach for your site. But just in case, here’s more:

• The mobile-first design focuses on providing optimal experiences for users on smaller screens who represent the majority of the Internet.
• Optimizing sites for mobile enhances loading times, simplifies navigation, and fosters higher conversion rates.
• Mobile usage rates will only rise in the future so adopting a mobile-first strategy is the best way to future-proof your site.

Developing with a mobile-first mindset also means that your coding approach is simple from the start: start with a rationalized code set for smaller screens, and scale up as necessary. This approach reduces complexity, minimizes bugs, and cuts down development costs. So, when custom-coding your site, make sure to:

• Use responsive design techniques, fluid grid systems, and flexible images/media queries.
• Create and arrange content for mobile screens.
• Create intuitive navigation with condensed, small-screen-friendly menus.
• Optimize all interactive elements for touch input.
• Add swipe and tap gestures to enable swiping through website sections and image galleries.
• Continuously test your site across different mobile devices and screen sizes.

4. Dark Mode

If your custom website does not have a dark mode, it is simply not ‘hip’ enough as the millions of sites and apps that do. Offer a visually appealing and eye-soothing alternative to traditional light themes by implementing dark mode in your custom-coded website:

• Use CSS media queries to change the website’s theme automatically based on what the user likes.
• Let users easily switch between light and dark modes on your site.
• Use a cohesive color palette that complements the dark mode.
• Ensure that text and important elements stand out against dark backgrounds by using high-contrast color combos.
• Choose fonts that are legible in low-light conditions.
• Adapt icons and graphics to ensure they are visible enough in dark mode.

5. A Voice User Interface (VUI) to Enhance Your Site’s Accessibility

Ask your developers to create and integrate a custom VUI into your site so your users can interact with it through voice commands. A VUI enables hand-free navigation, allows users to ‘search’ or ‘order more’ on your site, and boosts your site’s overall user satisfaction rate.

Use APIs like Google Speech-to-Text, Microsoft Azure Speech Service, or Speechly. Ensure that your chosen technology stack supports the integration of these voice recognition and language conversion tools.

6. AI-Powered Chatbot

Ask your team to build a custom AI chatbot for your site that can understand and respond to users using advanced language processing and learning tools. Integrate these bots with large-scale LLMs. Let them operate around the clock and give your users immediate assistance.

7. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Adopt Google’s open-source Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework. Use it to create fast-loading pages that deliver superior experiences on mobiles for your site. Follow Google’s guidelines on how to start using the AMP framework.

8. Content Personalization with Machine Learning

Content personalization driven by Machine Learning (ML) is reshaping how modern websites interact with users. By analyzing data and recognizing patterns, ML can help your site tailor its content and recommendations to individual users’ preferences. This can do wonders for your site’s engagement rate. To incorporate ML-powered content personalization on your site:

• Implement methods to collect user browsing history, preferences, and other interaction data on your site
• Use cookies or local storage to track user behavior
• Select a suitable ML framework (e.g., TensorFlow.js) that can run on your server to analyze user data and generate personalized content recommendations
• Create algorithms that analyze collected data to identify patterns and preferences
• Use server-side rendering to dynamically display personalized content based on user profiles

9. Must-Have Inner Page Features for a Custom-Coded Website

Make sure your site’s inner pages have the following essential features:

• Team and Careers Page: Showcase your team with a dedicated page that highlights key members, their roles, and contributions. Include short biographies for team members that highlight their expertise.
• Features Page: Clearly outline the functionalities of your brand/product.
• Case Studies: Present case studies that demonstrate how your product or service has positively impacted clients.
• Blog Section: Maintain a human-written and curated blog section to share insights, updates, and industry news. Implement a search function within the blog section to help users find relevant content quickly. Enable comments on blog posts to encourage user interaction.
• FAQ Section: Create a dedicated FAQ page where users can find answers to common FAQs by topic.
• Documentation and Guides: Provide access to user-facing documentation that outlines processes or features of your products.

10. Strong Focus on Cybersecurity

Every year, the number and severity of DDoS attacks on active websites keep intensifying. Thankfully, with custom-coding, you can make your site immune to most cyber threats:

• Ensure your website uses HTTPS by obtaining a valid SSL certificate.
• Conduct frequent security audits to identify vulnerabilities and ensure compliance with data protection standards.
• Adhere to local and international data protection regulations.
• Develop a comprehensive incident management plan that outlines procedures for responding to data breaches.
• Employ advanced security measures such as multi-factor authentication, encryption, and Zero Trust Architecture.

Reasons Why You Should Opt for a Custom-Coded Website

So much being said about the features, you might still ask-

Why go through so much effort instead of using site builders or CMSs?

Here are some quick pointers.

• Designs of custom-coded websites can be optimized for lightning-fast load speeds.
• You can make these websites mobile-first.
• Focus on testing with users early to improve your site’s design and make it easy to use.
• Skip the restrictions of basic website builders and create a site that truly reflects your brand.
• Avoid outdated content management systems and make managing your website simple.
• Shield your site from cybersecurity threats that come with generic platforms and pre-built templates by implementing the latest security standards and measures
• Boost your online visibility by implementing SEO-friendly coding and design elements
• You can freely integrate your custom site with third-party payment gateways, inventory management tools, third-party APIs, and other independent systems
• Custom-coded sites can also be optimized for code cleanliness: something that’ll make it consume far less energy than dynamic websites built on bloated site-building platforms.

In other words, with custom coding, you can take advantage of as many sophisticated functionalities and integrations as you want. You can also add as many high-value features as you want to your site.

Conclusion

In 2025, having a custom-coded website is essential to stand out online. Adding features like mobile-friendly design, dark mode, strong security, and AI tools ensures your site works well, looks great, and fits your brand.

Seek out custom web design & development services that can help you get 10 out of 10 of these features. Remember — if you are spending extra resources on custom coding, go all the way and do not make any compromises!