Web 2009-2019: Better Tools. Higher Expectations.
We live in an online world. If your digital presence isn’t modern and polished, you’re vulnerable. You’re vulnerable to a competitor who truly cares about their digital strategy. You’re vulnerable to attracting the wrong types of clients. You’re vulnerable to misrepresenting or damaging your brand image.
In 1999, it was considered impressive to even have a website at all, let alone understand what the heck this internet thing was all about.
Needless to say, times have changed.
By 2009, websites had become commonplace — to stand out, your website had to be functional and look decent. Expectations had changed drastically, yet only a small fraction of websites were beautifully designed, user-centric, solidly engineered, and gracefully solved a business goal. In 2009, the concept of a company or product being “mobile-first” barely existed, if at all. We had the iPhone 3 and Android version 2.0. User interfaces were rudimentary. We were still pre-tablet. APIs and developer tools were limited, and generally everything about web development was much more difficult and much more time consuming. Simply put, many of the most important tools we have at our disposal today did not exist. Sure, Wordpress had been around for a few years by this time, but the Wordpress ecosystem of developers/plugins/themes/support was more akin to a rapidly growing city than the global metropolis it has since become. This meant that building world-class websites often required an expert developer and designer (perhaps multiple) with considerable knowledge of PHP, web security, browser compatibility, HTML, and CSS.
But don’t fret, it’s 2019 now.
The tools at the disposal of developers and designers today is truly extraordinary and growing by the day. Product development teams the world over have by and large abandoned waterfall development in favor of a more agile approach backed by version control (git) and project management tools (JIRA). Improvements to modern IDEs like IntelliJ now allow developers to move drastically faster. Designers have a wealth of incredible tools now at their disposal, such as Sketch, Adobe XD, and Abstract. And let’s not forget how fundamental online communities have become to engineers and designers. Whether Stack Overflow, Github, Behance, or Dribbble, in 2019 we are spoiled with places and people to turn to when we get stuck or need inspiration. Now, building websites is more like putting a bunch of puzzle pieces together than building individual puzzle pieces from scratch. Sure, there are times when you might need super custom puzzle pieces and a team of highly specialized experts to build them, such as when the website is the product/business and requires custom web app development. However, for the vast majority of brand-focused and informational websites, it almost always makes more sense to leverage existing frameworks & adapt code for what you need rather than starting from a blank text file with <!DOCTYPE html>.
This all sounds pretty great, huh? It sure is, and should make you feel at least a little grateful for where we’re at, how far we’ve come, and how much easier everything is now. BUT (oh and there’s always a but)…that certainly doesn’t mean it’s easy. EASIER? Big time. EASY? Not so much. To build a website that shines, the engineering needs to be tight, the design polished and modern, and the UX buttery and intuitive. Additionally, it turns out that even if all these things are accomplished, that’s only half the story. A truly world-class website must also solve a real problem your customers or your business faces and it must solve that problem gracefully.
“Okay, now I’m intimidated. Sounds like a lot.”
And it is a lot, but thanks to all the tools and resources mentioned above, it doesn’t have to feel that way. Having such a wealth of tools and resources at our disposal means that developers and designers have more time and space to focus on the “gray areas” of building a remarkable website. Rather than a developer spending precious time sifting through their PHP for security vulnerabilities or a designer painstakingly figuring out how to scale the website to countless different screen sizes, they can instead use trusted libraries and frameworks. This allows focus to shift to the more nuanced parts of developing a world-class website, such as an individual client’s unique brand and figuring out how the website’s design and UX can effectively communicate the brand and drive business goals.
And on a broader level, these tools allow you iterate quicker and more often, which gives developers and designers the cognitive space to focus on details that matter, however small they may seem. For example, when a designer uses source control and is no longer spending time tracking down a file from 2 releases ago, they can focus on applying some “good-to-great” varnish and thinking about how a design might better accomplish the client’s goals. In the end, this leads to the best developers and designers having more time to focus on what they're best at: being creative critical thinkers.
All these advancements and new tools are wonderful. However, it must be stated that customer and client expectations have also changed in tandem. It's easier to build great websites, but what defined “great” or “world-class” in 2009, and even 2014, is much different than in 2019. Just do a quick Google Image search for “thefacebook” — I’m willing to bet there aren’t many clients who would be thrilled if you made a website that looks like thefacebook did circa 2005. Or — if you can find one — try using a PalmPilot for actual business and see how long it takes before your nostalgic joy turns to frustration. Technology that once was state-of-the-art, impressive, and dazzling is now considered outdated, inefficient, and visually underwhelming. Expectations change over time and will always continue to do so, which is why the only way to stay ahead is to treat your website with constant care, like a garden that requires regular tending.
What year does your website feel like? How much care are you giving it? Are you pruning, watering, and giving it the love it deserves?
