User experience (UX) is a crucial factor to consider when selecting your theme. UX has a direct impact on how visitors interact with your website and can influence important metrics.

Here's how UX factors into your website when you are considering a new theme or redesign:

1. Customization of User Journey: With a custom theme, you have the ability to tailor the user journey to your specific audience and goals. You can design the flow of your website, the navigation, and the call-to-actions to guide users through a specific path, making it easier for them to find what they're looking for, and increasing the chances of conversion.

2. Personalized Interactions: A custom theme allows you to create personalized interactions and touchpoints that can enhance the user experience. This could include interactive elements, animations, personalized (smart) content, and more. These elements can make your website more engaging and memorable.

3. Accessibility and Inclusivity: A custom theme gives you the opportunity to prioritize accessibility and inclusivity in your design. You can ensure that your website is accessible to people with disabilities, works well on all devices and screen sizes, and caters to different user preferences. While some marketplace themes may have these features, with a custom theme you have full control to implement them as needed.

4. Performance Optimization: Optimizing for performance is a key aspect of user experience. A slow website can frustrate users and lead to high bounce rates. With a custom theme, you can work with your dev team to ensure that your site loads quickly, functions smoothly, and provides a seamless experience for your users.

5. Unique Design: A unique, aesthetically pleasing design can enhance the user experience by making your website more enjoyable to navigate. A custom theme can reflect your brand's identity and create a cohesive, visually engaging experience for your visitors.

6. Data-Driven Decisions and User Testing: Incorporating data-driven decisions and user testing into your UX design process is a powerful way to optimize conversions. By conducting user testing, you can gather feedback from real users to identify any pain points or areas for improvement in your UX design. This feedback can be used to make necessary changes and improve the overall user experience.

Important to note that a website's template or theme design is similar to the foundation of a house, concrete and lumber. How the homeowner finishes the building gives it curb appeal. And, how they furnish it makes it a home. To this point, consider templates to be the foundation, layouts to be the finishings, and content to be the furniture. Once we understand that, we see how themes can be crafted into a cabin or a mansion and that while having many similarities, no two are the same.

While general marketplace themes can provide a solid starting point or foundation, a custom theme gives you the ability to design a user experience that's tailored to your audience, your brand, and your goals. This can lead to higher user satisfaction, better engagement, and ultimately, higher conversion rates.

Kayak's DropZone Pro Theme for the Hubspot CMS utilizes master templates for branding, global styling, and headers/footers; Pre-configures Advanced Content Modules to design page layouts; and lets you modify them at the page level. It's a welcome custom website design experience executed in a fraction of the time and budget of a traditional website design or redesign project. Reach out to learn more.