I often have to explain to my potential clients what custom content is and why despite the initial higher cost it will most likely be better for them in the long term. I find it tricky to explain in words so here it is in a diagram and a comparison table. If you have a repeated pattern of information grouping then most likely using custom content for your website is the way to go. In this scenario we have a company that repairs and upgrades a specific car part. So we have:

Taxonomy: Car Brands

A taxonomy is a way to categories groups of things, so in this case we can group cars by brand, like so:

• Aston Martin
• Austin Healey
• Bently
• Ferrari
• Lamborghini
• Maserati
• Morgan

Then within each brand  

Feature	Custom Content	Manual Content
Auto taxonomy index	Yes	No
Auto item index	Yes	No
Auto navigation	Yes	No
Pagination	Yes	No
Custom fields	Yes	No
Custom search / filter	Yes	No
Display custom content elsewhere (eg in sliders or widgets)	Yes	No
Global control of content display and functionality	Yes	No Each item will need to be edited one by one
Initial cost of development	High	Low
Ongoing cost	Low Just fill in the details and you are done	High Each new item will need to be manually created
Design consistency	Easy	Hard
Content relationship