Custom means built for your specific business, not adapted from a theme someone else picked. Every decision — layout, structure, how content is organized, what gets emphasized — comes from understanding what you actually do and who you're trying to reach.
A template site looks like every other site. That's fine until you're trying to stand out, win a client over a well-funded competitor, or communicate something specific about your brand. At that point the gap between custom and generic becomes obvious fast.
I build for performance from the start. Fast load times, strong Core Web Vitals, clean code that search engines can read. Speed isn't a checkbox — it's part of how the site feels and how it ranks.
Because I work alone, design and code come from the same brain. There's no handoff between a designer who had one vision and a developer who built something different. The result holds together. And when it's built right, it doesn't need to be rebuilt in two years.