Over the years, things have really changed in the website design industry. Back in 2001 when we got started, all websites were straight HTML and there was maybe one CGI script set up for the form on the Contact Us page. E-commerce stores were pretty complex to set up, too. Today, there's a lot of point and click, right? You see a lot of website builders online and is it to the point where you don't need a website design company?
Here's something that happened recently...
We had a client who we used to help quite a bit. They then hired someone internally to work on their websites and we helped even less but they would come to us from time to time when they got stuck on something. That's totally fine with us - we're happy to help as much or as little as needed.
So, eventually, the person working on their websites left the company and they turned to an online website builder. I think someone in the company just sat down one day and in a few clicks, they had a website... or so they thought.
Some time passed and someone reached out to them about their website and they (our client) finally discovered the website wasn't showing up in search. They contacted us at Webstix and we took a look at their site.
Maybe this is a bit too technical for most people but in the code of the home page, the BODY tag in the HTML code didn't start until after 5,000 lines of code. That's like... whoa! Having that start within the first 200 lines is good. Less than that is great. Being WAY higher than that is just not good. That means Google or someone browsing your website, their browser has to first go through all that code and load tons of libraries to figure out how to render a page.
In other words, it's code bloat and it's going to take a long time for a page to load.
Why?
It's because these online website builders need tons of extra code in order to work. So the "easy way" is actually pretty detrimental and works against you. So although you can easily build websites online yourself, that "easy" part is something you're going to pay for later with lower rankings or not being ranked at all - yikes!
In some ways, we're going back to static HTML websites with caching and other techniques. HTML code has to be very, very light. You can't load more than what's needed on a page.
Why?
Think about it... Google has to figure out which page should be #1 in the rankings and there are hundreds of thousands of possible websites to put there - sometimes there are millions. In order to provide the best results for people using their search, they need to provide the best results. That means the websites that not only have the best information, but websites that load the fastest, have the best experience on mobile devices, are secure, and probably another couple hundred factors or more.
I guess you could sum this all up by saying... you only get out of something what you put into it.
If you think you can whip up a quick website, that's something anyone can do, so it won't rank. If you get expert help and carefully craft a website, then you'll have something unique, which will rise above the rest.
I mean, doesn't that just make sense? Isn't that how it should be?
And that's why Webstix is here. That is exactly what we do - we hand-craft websites to provide the best experience possible for website visitors. Google likes that and ranks those websites high. It's a simple formula and it's... how it should be.
Your website design company should work on your website, right?
You trust experts to do what experts do, so the same should work with your website. Just because I can design a brochure doesn't mean I should. Just because I write copy doesn't mean I should produce radio spots. Just being able to do something doesn't make you an expert or the word "expert" loses its meaning. We all know this, so if you want your website to be a success, turn it over to a team that has studied, has training, an excels at everything needed for a website to give you a return on your investment.
To make something simple takes work - I could build a car but it would be 10 times the size of a normal car. You need to know what you're doing or it'll be a mess.
True artists have training and know exactly what to do. People who are inexperienced have to do a lot more to accomplish the same thing. The same thing applies to the code on your website (HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, databases, etc.) - there shouldn't be 1,000 lines of code when 100 will do the same thing. You need code that's lean and works well. Less code means it'll work faster. We all like fast-loading websites. Your website should load fast and leave a great, first impression.
Let's talk! Contact Webstix and let's talk about how quickly we can get your website loading.
