Your Business Doesn't Need a Hand-Coded Website - Here's What It Needs Instead!

Every client pitch is different, and nothing’s ever cookie-cutter about selling digital marketing services. There’s always a new ‘lightbulb’ moment. But there are a few winners which we’ve come across more often than not. We’re going to address one of them here.

‘My Company Needs A Hand-Coded HTML Website’

At first, we laughed the point off, then when the question began to pop up in various guises, we realised this was genuinely a question that needed to be answered. A concerning number of business owners believe the only way to have a ‘quality website’ is to have a team of coders hand-code a full website from a blank canvas. We were simply taken aback, honestly. 

The ‘Good Old’ Days of Buggy Websites

And before one assumes that these business owners are boomers (which we had assumed as well), the opinion was held firmly by boomers and millennials simultaneously. Gen Z business owners realise that swanky websites, Apple-esque glass panels and responsive builds need current-gen tech. Sure, an HTML website will load quickly and has unlimited potential in terms of animation, page layout and what not. But hand-coding a website required hundreds of man-hours then and still does now. What has changed is the cost of those man-hours - wasn’t cheap then… isn’t now, either. 

Even if we removed the money and time constraints, there are still major flaws with an old-school website infrastructure. As we explained to a client, such a website will need the tending of a coder. With security patches, Google Lighthouse updates, near-constant A-B testing of said patches and updates, the coder will be gainfully employed as a full-time staffer. Do we really want that as a critical business expense? And days spent on bug-testing and responsiveness on different devices. Then…a website that unique… might also have similarly distinctive, undocumented loopholes and vulnerabilities. Do we want to incur that headache and man-hours for testing and patching? We 👏🏼. Really👏🏼. Don’t👏🏼!

See, we almost said that together. 

Cookie-Cutter… Rules: Easy, Maintainable, Responsible

Platforms like Wix, WordPress, Squarespace are robust, have been endlessly tested, broken and fixed by teams of coders and offer a vast variety of themes, pictures and video (we’ll come to that), business-focused and customer-friendly widgets, and support. Yes, maybe it’ll not have the one-in-a-million aesthetic and bespoke transitions, but a business’ website can be up in less than a week - with a one-man team. An agency can work even better. Give an agency 2-3 weeks, they’ll come up with numerous design choices and make the website SEO-ed to the gills. For growing businesses, this is a critical advantage.

The ‘Custom Code’ vs. ‘Modern Builder’ Debate

There are use-cases where modern site-builders will not work, and everything has to be custom coded. These are usually highly-complex websites - think social media platforms, banking and non-banking finance apps, video-sharing sites and so on. More often than not, these sites will house people’s personal and financial data, often biometrics and AI handling. Here, trusting modern website builders would be a vulnerability. The list includes government websites, defence and tech companies, deep science, and even dating platforms. Especially the last one - did you know that in the last five years alone, over 15-20 major dating sites and apps have been breached/ hacked/ leaked, leading to over 1.8 million personal pictures, details of people and banking records and more floating forevermore on the internet. Episodes like Tea Dating Advice, Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, Hinge… we can go on. Here, with so much at stake - building a website from the ground up is the only solution. 

But for the other 85% of businesses - cookie-cutter templates works. 

So, What Do 99% of Small Businesses Actually Need?

1. A logical website design: All great designs start with a structure, and so does a website. A website exists because there’s a need for a business to show up, connect to its customers and have a voice of its own. Therefore, a logical website structure and design. 

2. A great mobile experience: People reach for their phones first, not desktops (OK, iPads comes a close second.) With Wix, Squarespace and Wordpress, almost anybody can make a nice, basic website. A second-year developer can make a very slick website, and a matching mobile experience. But a marketing agency would tell you to make a website from the mobile experience first, and then expand the idea upward and outward for the tablet/desktop experience. Not all customers would wait to go home and fire up the laptop/desktop - just because “our design looks better on the big screen”. You’re a day late and a dollar short, friend.

3. The ability to sell products or services: For small shops, restaurants, bakeries, saloons, and dairies, ‘e-commerce’ does not start with Amazon. Yes, a presence on Amazon is great, but savvy customers would also like to visit your website and place an order directly. 

4. Capturing leads: Enter contact forms - friendly, hassle-free and great for connecting high-intent customers to you, quick. 

5. To be found on Google: Your business website can exist on the internet for all ages and still be of little use, unless your coder (or you) puts in a sitemap, meta-headings and descriptions for pages and images, and puts in keywords so that Google understands your site clearly and then directs your future customers to you. That’s what SEO-friendly websites do - power businesses by directing customers to your website via search engines and then motivating them to call you.

6. To be easy for you, the business owner, to update: A bakery owner doesn’t have to build his brick and mortar shop physically, but they should know how to open the shop, where the light switches are and how to manage the ledger. The website is a digital storefront that new-age business owners have to be familiar with - passwords, making and deleting pages, and freewheeling with a new blog or a social media post. Basics, nothing more. 

Hand-coded websites do not allow such liberties, but guess what? Website builders, on the other hand, have an extremely low learning curve. 

The Power of a Template: Busting the ‘Cookie-Cutter’ Myth

Templates are not a limitation; they are a starting point. Let’s see the business benefits of prioritising a template-based website. 

• Speed: Most templates, regardless of platforms, have their structures tested, features reviewed and are updated with the latest security patches. This cuts down the website-building process by a factor of weeks, if not months. Basically, get visible now and not later this year!

• Cost: A platformer is so. much. more. more affordable than a custom build from the ground up. Imagine it this way - several thousand owners banded together and pitched in a little cash to a developer to build them one great, tested website. 

• Control: Here is where agencies like Neutonic differentiate themselves. We teach clients how easy it is to operate and update their website, add products, write simple blog posts, or add AI-assisted social media. Just as custom websites are completely hands-off, cookie-cutter templates are beginner-friendly and immensely fixable in case of whoopsies. It’s a hugely empowering fact for a business owner to not be dependent on a developer for every small change.

• Reliability & Security: Platforms make it their job to ensure all their templates are pushing across latest security and usability updates (if not, then at the very least warnings and emails). These platforms are maintained by large teams, meaning they are secure, updated, and 99% reliable. Nothing is 100% in website development and digital marketing, and if anybody is peddling that, they’re hoodwinking you. 

• Focus: And of course, leave the ‘web-tech worries’ to us. You can focus on what you do best: running your business.

Your Website Grows With You, Just Like Your Business

Platformed websites bridge the gap between free Google sites and bespoke websites with reduced time to live, backend updation, maintenance and a large set of choices for colours, designs, animation and UI.

Here’s another thought. Any digital marketing agency can build websites. A good one builds websites the way clients desire. But only a really good digital marketing partner will take the time to understand what the client wants vs what the client’s business needs and then strip away the fluff to deliver a smart, online experience that helps customers find the business owner, and then connect both with a minimum number of clicks and taps. 

Ready to launch your business online without the stress? Contact Neutonic Marcomm today, and let's talk about building a powerful website that works for you, fast.