What's the point?

Are you looking for a low cost, or possibly free website? You should probably head over to 1and1 or Wix and get a free website that looks like everyone else’s.

There’s nothing wrong with having a website that looks like millions of others. It just looks as though you don’t really care, which is fine. The problem is that soon all websites are going to look the same, so it’s going to become more and more difficult to stand out in the crowd. So what then?

At some point, probably when someone realises that we’re not actually in a recession or that Brexit isn’t going to push us back into the Dark Ages, some bright spark is going to wake up and realise it’s probably a good idea to invest a little bit of money and get a website that looks a bit different and can be tailored to their exact needs, you know, like was the case a few years ago.

The problem then is going to come when they try to move their site away from one of these free web-in-a-box companies. They’ll soon find this isn’t possible because those companies probably hold intellectual copyright over everything. They might be able to move their domain name away by jumping through hundreds of hoops and paying a thousand million dollars to release it and, good luck if you think there is any sort of technical support from these companies. Even if there is a human at the end of a phone line, they’ll probably charge you another thousand million dollars per minute to give you any sort of coherent advice.

The other problem with these free template sites is that they’re actually very limited. Sure they look nice, and there are very functional plugins that allow your website to sell things online, integrate with Facetube and Youbook and probably wipe your backside, plus you’ll get third party companies offering to do this, that and the other for you for practically nothing but the reality is that doing very simple things almost certainly won’t be possible.

Also, I’ve used the administration of some of these web-in-a-box templates before and they are about as intuitive as a health and safety document. So chances are if you aren’t technically minded or simply have the IQ of a potato you’ll need to pay someone to update the site for you anyway, which kind of negates the point of having a content management system in the first place.

The other option is to get a proper web “design” company to install a Wordpress theme for you, do all the technical stuff (like click a few buttons to install pre-built plugins) and host it for you. The problem there is that they’ll charge you the same amount as a real web design company would for building a proper website which, again, negates the point of going down that route in the first place.

Still, if a Wordpress site is what you want, we can now do that too. I need to go and wash my hands now; I feel so dirty.

Content editing service

So you’ve got yourself a website. Perhaps it was one built by us. Perhaps you did what a lot of people have done and got yourself a cheap Wordpress website that looks identical to millions of others. Great. Now you want to tell people about it, right? Now you want to “get to number one on the Google”. Perhaps you just want to keep your customers and visitors interested so they keep coming back.

What you really need is engaging content. Prominent calls to action on your home page, regular news stories or blogs. Engaging e-newsletters. The problem is that this is not only time-consuming, it also requires creativity and a good grasp of the English language (i.e. knowing the difference between “your” and “you’re”).

Datapartners can help you out. We are launching a new content editing service. This includes updating basic site content to focus on key words, regular blogs or articles, e-newsletter content and even providing stock privacy policies and cookie policies which are now mandatory for the majority of UK sites.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in, please visit our content editing page to read more and view our very competitive prices.

The halloween horror of the web industry

I was talking to my wife the other day about work. She is in the same industry as me, although she’s more a graphic designer, whereas I’m more of a programmer/nerd. She’s also inherently happy, whereas I’m a natural grumpy git.

Anyway, the point is we were both talking about how hard our industry is at the moment. She’s recently had to take a small pay cut as well as reduce her hours to help cashflow . Although things aren’t that bad for me, there has definitely been a noticeable drop in sales over the last few years. This is partly due to the recession, partly to do with it being such a saturated industry but mostly it’s to do with the way the internet has gone thanks to social media and also companies like Wordpress, Wix and other “web in a box” companies offering nice looking and fairly functional websites for next to nothing. I’m sure there are people out there who will blame climate change and Brexit as well but those people probably aren’t worth talking to.

My wife made a fairly valid point that, although things are looking a bit unsettling now, these cheap template sites are probably just a fad. Sure they look quite nice now but they all look the same. You look at most modern websites built or re-designed in the last two or three years and they all follow the same template: A big banner across the top (usually with rotating images), three featured boxes underneath and a bit of text. This is a layout that works well on all devices.

The thing is that in a few years, people will probably get bored with having a website that looks identical to every other site. Also, website visitors might start looking at sites and thinking “you know what, these people obviously haven’t spent much time on their website because they’ve just used a template like everyone else, so what does that say about their attention to detail and general interest to do work?”

In a few years time, it may very well be that people start ditching Wix and Wordpress and all these other annoying companies that are trying to put hard-working web developers out of business. It may well be that they will start wanting unique looking websites. It may be that tastes will change again and people will stop thinking that websites with a big banner image and three boxes look nice.

Of course there is the argument that, if people are used to having nice looking and fairly functional websites almost instantly and for next to nothing, why would they want to go back to paying someone lots of money to develop something different?

At the end of the day, the future of the web developer is uncertain. People are always going to need programmers and they are always going to need designers but is the world going to need as many and will it still be a lucrative industry to be in? Will I be sat here in five years time doing this job and asking people if they’d like a new website, or will I be stood behind a counter asking people if they’d like fries with that?