What ever happened to 'custom' webdev agencies?
Maybe my search skills have simply degraded with age more than I care to admit, but where does one find a good custom webdev agency these days? And I don't mean some company that will simply spit me out some templated riffraff but one that will actually sit down with me and plan something specific out. Somewhere where I can say "I'd like to rely on web components on the frontend and node in the backend" and that not seem like some asinine request...
I am still learning web dev but my guess would be that there probably just isn't a very big market for custom webdev agencies anymore, due to social media like Instagram and Facebook pages acting as de facto websites for many businesses, as well as generally most businesses being happy enough with a basic, and relatively inexpensive, website using a Wordpress templates (of which there are of course many to choose from). That's just my guess anyway.
I'm pretty sure the (good) custom web design agencies just rely on word-of-mouth for new work. I used to intern at one back in my undergrad that does what you described "sit down with me and plan something specific out". I just tried and literally could not find them on Google with generic web design keywords + city name. I had to use their actual name before being able to find them.
I decided to quit my fulltime job a couple of years ago and focus on building custom MVP web applications. We are out there, the problem is you can't find us. Ranking in Google is incredibly difficult compared to 10 years ago. Without large budgets you simply won't be found.