October is Cancer Awareness month. I have two customers that develop medical products that can help combat breast cancer, and I wanted to post something about it on their home page, but I couldn’t manage it. Why? Because the websites were built on a Webflow platform and were not designed with add-ons to the home page.
What’s under the website hood matters, and startup marketers should have a basic grasp of web technologies so they can avoid mistakes and manage their subcontractors wisely. Let me give you some examples.
Plan Plan Plan
About four years ago, I took part in a branding and website project for an agro-tech company. The branding process was comprehensive, but when it came to the website, the company chose to build it on WIX, using the WIX basic plan.
The company’s website supports worldwide agricultural field mapping, making the WIX basic plan unsuitable for it. For example, the basic WIX plan has limited design capabilities, adding categories and pages, connecting to social platforms, and creating media galleries.
In addition, the website sits on the WIX servers, and the company’s URL belongs to WIX. Therefore, you cannot take your website code and go elsewhere.
If you want to continue building your website on another platform, you will need to start from scratch – which is precisely what this company did six months after the project ended.
We cannot stress enough the importance of writing good specifications that take into consideration future changes. Unfortunately, miscalculating future website amendments is the most common mistake we’ve come across.
Try to plan as much as you can your current needs from the website, what they may be six months from now, and two years from now. And take into account your budget and schedule.
You may decide to build a temporary website on WIX because your budget is limited and you need the website tomorrow. But at least it should be an informed decision.
The Dirty Little Secret of Designers
Designers like website builders such as Webflow and Squarespace because they enable them to build the website themselves. However, you should remember that what’s true regarding any software is true here as well: if you cut corners in coding, you pay for it with a lack of flexibility.
Those two customers from the beginning of the post? They made two mistakes. First, they built their websites on Webflow, which is excellent for quickly creating a pretty website but is not flexible to changes. Second, they didn’t design the home page for add-ons.
As a result, to add a paragraph on cancer awareness month, we needed first to find a Webflow developer (a challenging endeavor in itself) to rewrite the home page and a designer to redesign it. With the hectic life of a startup, you can imagine that the whole thing fell through.
So what’s the takeaway? Try to split between the website designer and the website developer. It may be more of a hassle, but in the long run, it will pay off: you’ll get a website that is more suited to your needs, plus a web developer to work with down the road.
Planning for the Unforeseen
We said startups have a problem specifying their current and future website, but it’s more complicated: a fundamental challenge is understanding that website changes are often unforeseen.
You need to plan for the unexpected, which is the hallmark of sound project planning (if you have studied project planning someplace along the way, you probably know that).
You never know how your business will change and how websites and connected technologies will change when it comes to websites. For example, until last year, we incorporated Hubspot only in websites that attract at least hundreds of users a month. Then Hubspot came up with a free plan for startups, and we started including it in every website project.
What’s the lesson here? Build your website on a platform that is as flexible as you can afford.
The Website’s Life Begins Once the Project Ends
A website used to be static. Built once and left untouched for years. This is no longer true. You will need to go back and change the website months and even weeks after you’ve built it.
So when you choose a website platform, think of who will maintain it. For example, a common problem with Webflow is that there aren’t many developers willing to maintain Webflow websites.
So our advice on separating between the website designer and developer is good here too. If you take an independent website developer, most chances are that you will have a reliable resource for making future changes.
Good luck with your website and if you need further advice don’t hesitate to contact us.