In spite of all the new developments and technologies it is still hard to find good affordable web design.
To Good to Be True
There is an array of options, from pre-built Wix or Squarespace platforms to high end application development. Most of my clients fall somewhere in between. The question is what system is going to grow as your brand grows?
Why WordPress
I recommend the WordPress platform CMS to many of my clients. This gives us an affordable platform that we can start small and scale up with the clients needs.
Many of the other platforms are either easy to get up and running but do not scale well or will take much more time upfront and more experienced management down the road. This can be a costly mistake.
“As development grows the knowledge to manage that development must also grow.”
But even in the WordPress platform there are many crucial decisions that need to be made when building the site. When it comes to the theme and the plugins it can make a huge difference of how the site is going to perform and how easy it will be to manage.
Jamstack and Static Site Builders
The serverless Jamstack option is quickly taking web development by storm, and rightfully so.
If you have developed with WordPress, you know there is a lot of maintenance that goes with managing a large software, like WordPress and a SQL server to run it.
The Jamstack is taking those headaches out of the picture and with Netlify you can also add a CMS. Know the Jamstack is not some new technology that is the flavor of the month.
This is basically taking us back full circle to where we started before the content management systems market took over the web. It is just now we have the power of Node.js and JavaScript to spin up these Jamstacks and automate the unmanageable feat of building a static site.
I would not push a client into this technology if there priorities are set on being able to have dynamic content and a all-in-one place to manage there website, but I would let them know the benefits they would be missing out on.
What Does Google Have to Say About It
There are plenty of articles that rave about the benefits of static sites, but you don’t have to look any further than what Google has to say about it. For example PWA’s progressive web apps have been gaining popularity and they go hand in hand with static sites.
The Google Chrome Developer Team has dedicated a huge play list of how to’s on PWA’s. They also focus on core HTML and CSS principles. So to me, that say’s they want clean, semantic, fast websites that are robot friendly and that would static html files at the top of there list.
Developments That Come & Go
I have seen allot of developments come and go. Take drag and drop theme builders for example. Many of these developments look promising at first and come out strong, but as development languages grow the builders become deprecated and start malfunctioning.
“The new and the tried and true.”
This becomes a big problem. As a developer you can spend more time fixing and managing a drag and drop builder than it would take to manually build out the features many times over.
Leveraging the Right Technologies
On the other hand some of these developments and technologies can stream line or even eliminate time consuming web design. Take email form plugins and email marketing for example. Having a reliable email form and email marketing is crucial and there are many good solid tools available to choose from.
Conclusion
So when it comes to affordable and reliable web design it comes down to finding a web designer that has a strategy for balancing all these developments. This way time and energy is put into the right place for your needs.
It is important to not only be on top of effective new technologies, but to be able to use tried and true slimmed down custom design and development. In the end it should not only do what you need it to, but it should be SEO friendly, easy to manage and easy to scale.