Why choosing a reliable tech is essential for your new website?
When I built my first in 2014, I was confused.
Which platform to use? Which one is best? These were my only 2 questions. But the answers were so many. Every platform talked on why they are the best and it all became confusing to decide which one to choose.
And today 12 years later, this problem has increased exponentially. Now there are so many tools to choose from: WordPress, Blogspot, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Framer, Lovable, v0, Ghost, the list keeps on going. Obviously, we can't go on creating sites with each tool to experience them first hand. But we can learn from experience of others.
That's what I did.
I researched what people have to actually say about their experience on using these tools. And in this article I breakdown the findings and observations from my own experience on seeing the space evolve over the last 12 years. By end, you'll get a fair idea on why it's important to make an informed choice in the beginning, why is it challenging to select the right framework, and how I solved the issue for my self and for my clients.
Let's begin.
What even is tech?
Tech is simply the infrastructure you build your website upon.
It's the technology behind the website. It's also the hosting behind your website and it's also the security systems protecting your site.
Why is tech important?
Tech is important because it determines:
How fast your site will load.
How easy (or difficult) it'll be to add features.
How much will it support SEO growth and scaling with content.
Can't we switch tech later?
You can but, will it be easy?
Turns out, switching technology later is hard (and painful).
Imagine you build your dream house.
It has all the nice windows, sunlight, aesthetic indoors, parking space, garden and everything you ever wished for. But 6 months later, you realise that the neighbourhood isn't actually peaceful. There is constant party noises around and people are cold distant rather than being friendly. So what do you do? You adjust. All because you know that shifting house altogether isn't that easy.
The same happens with website.
When you select an online tool, a website builder, a platform, you actually select the neighbourhood of your website. The features your website will be able to support and the issues it will definitely have all are decided by the tool you select.
You can work on your website messaging and update your site design whenever you feel like, but moving to different website tool isn't easy.
It's a big shift, one requiring migrating multiple pages and learning the new tool.
If you've ever done website migration before, you know the pain and effort that goes in it, not to mention dealing with the frustration of being stuck with the wrong tool all this time. That's why it's important to make an informed choice in the beginning itself. To save yourself trouble later 6 months down the line.
But how do we do it?
Sea of tools
There is a sea of tools out there:
And of course, every company highlights the benefits of their tools on their homepage.
But what about the parts they don't highlight?
For example, back in 2014 I used to read about SEO best practices in different articles but I couldn't implement many of those practices because my site's platform at the time, Blogspot, didn't allowed access to all the settings of the site.
And I learnt by reading multiple Reddit forums that this pattern keeps repeating with each tool. Every platform I researched about on had some form of restriction that prevented me from selecting it to build my website.
Some had restrictions with SEO support, some had design restrictions, some built website with slow speed, some had editors which looked easy to use but gave pain in right index finger with constant 3x and 4x mouse clicking, some had poor Lighthouse score (one that Google considers for ranking), some were made specifically for e-commerce sites, some asked for crazy amount of money even for basic features which should technically be on the free plan itself.
But why does this happen?
It happens because each tool is a product.
A product that aims to make website development easy for their target audience.
For example, the target audience of Framer is designers. People who are already comfortable with Figma and need a tool with similar interface to bring their Figma design to life. Often designers just a couple of pages on their site and they don't want to spend hours learning another website building tool. Plus, their priority for SEO support is low. For them, spending the time doing client work and upskilling their design skills is the best use of their time, not learning to build websites in some random tool.
So for them, Framer solves the problem very well.
And WordPress is a general all purpose website builder that aims to cater all types of businesses.
Because they cater to every kind of business: be it news site, freelancing site, e-commerce site or just a blogging site, they need to ensure their platform remains flexible enough for every type of customer. And to allow customisation depending on the business needs, it allows its customers to add in 3rd party plugins based on their requirements.
That's how each tool evolves over time: solving one type of problem for a particular type of audience.
But it still leaves the question open on which tool should we select?
I struggled to find answer to this question for my business. But one thing I did realised was that no matter which tool I go with, there will always be some or the other restriction that I'd have to face down the line. So the question for me became: how do I build my website such that their is no restriction?
And I found the answer was "to code the website myself".
But how do I code a website?
Coding the website
Coding website is a challenge of it's own.
Just how there are numerous tools and website builders, there are numerous technologies available for coding a website: PHP, React, Angular, Vue, Gatsby, Astro, NextJS...
So over the years I learned React, NodeJS with Handlers, NextJS and even PHP. Plus, I learned what the experience of other developers in my network was on using other tools like Gatsby, Nuxt, Astro, Angular and others.
Eventually, I understood that so far, NextJS is the best framework to build websites.
Why NextJS and what makes it special?
Remember how websites back in 90s and early 2000s used to look like this:
But then came Facebook:
It had a different feel with it's interactive UI and buttons and chat feature.
But how did the engineers at Facebook actually build it?
In order to build Facebook, they first build another piece of technology that then helped them build Facebook. That technology was called React.
Basically, React is a library of code that makes different parts of website easy to maintain and update.
This technology was kept confidential for only Facebook to use. But then in 2013, the team at Facebook decided to make it available to public. That's how everyone got to know about React.
React is a great tool that simplifies website coding.
Without it, every website had to be built with long lines of code written in separate HTML and JavaScript files. But React brought HTML and JavaScript together into a single file and made it super simple to manage UI on the screen.
It was great but, it still wasn't perfect.
Remember React was built by Facebook's team to help them build Facebook.
So naturally, React was optimised to build an interactive software and not a business website that aims to win clients from internet.
That's why React lacked SEO support.
For example, one the biggest limitation of React was that it first loads a blank HTML page and then later fills it up with website content. This is terrible for SEO because this means that Google sees a blank page on initial load instead of page with content in it. And because Google considers the content present on initial page load for ranking, it meant businesses lost ranking on results page despite having solid content.
Guillermo Rauch saw this issue (and many others), and decided to fix it all.
That's how NextJS was born. Together, Guillermo and his team built NextJS, which is a framework built on top of React with support for SEO.
This means NextJS carries all the power of React while ensuring best technical support for SEO growth.
After knowing all this, I had to try NextJS myself.
So, I embarked on the journey of learning to code a website.
Downside of coding website
Learning to code a site was definitely not easy.
It was a long road. And a difficult one.
I had to learn various coding frameworks and making updates to website was no longer as easy as using a drag and drop tool. The comfort of easily updating site's design was something I had to give up. But, now when I look back, I don't regret it.
Because design is anyways not something I wanted to update every Sunday. If anything, updating the site frequently meant that I am dissatisfied and that the site isn't working perfectly the way it's meant to work.
And when I looked at websites of thriving businesses, I noticed that they rarely change.
They continue to look the same and the business keeps growing. And when we think about it, it actually makes sense. Because website is like our online office. Just like how we craft the interior of our office once and not keep on changing it it every Sunday, likewise is our website. Once built and designed, it should act like our online office that drives people into our business to become our clients, without requiring us to constantly look after it.
When I realised this, I no longer dreaded the downside of coding. I went all in to actually experience the benefits of full code access.
And my experience was phenomenal.
Bright side of coding
Because NextJS gave me full access to the site's code, this meant there was no restriction and I was able to add any feature I desired.
And by hosting the site on Vercel (also built Guillermo and his team), I finally got the website I had wished for in 2014! This makes NextJS my number 1 choice for building websites for businesses who want to grow, and not just settle with what a tool has to offer.
For example, one of client started a YouTube series where he shares his insights on supply chain management. And in the description of the videos, he shares a PDF resource which he created related to his insight in the video.
This link leads to his website, which collects his audience's email, adds it to his newsletter, and then automatically begins the resource download.
And building all this flow within the website itself was possible only because of code access.
Without code access, my client would have to rely on creating different welcome sequences in his newsletter platform to trigger sending different emails based on different links in his YouTube videos. This would have been too much work and of course hard to manage later down the line. But NextJS saved all this trouble, plus now everything lives on the website helping my client create a strong brand presence.
And because NextJS is reliable, it continues to power his website even after 2 years.
What makes tech reliable for years?
I once read that NASA doesn't touch the code that landed Neil Armstrong on the moon.
That piece of code is now sealed because it is battle tested tested to actually work. I believe websites should be built the same way. Once live on the internet, it should continue to work forever, without breaking unnecessarily.
Unfortunately most website builders break few months down the line.
After all, those tools handle the website code. So if their engineers change anything in their platform or if there is a change in a plugin, that change is bound to affect the website. This means extra work for website owners to ensure that the site keeps working as expected.
And I didn't wanted this uncertainty.
I wanted a site which I could trust will continue to work even after 5 years. And I found such certainty with NextJS. Because the entire code is hand written and all of it is bundled together without any dependency on any 3rd party, I know once I make the code live, it will continue to work forever.
Such reliability gives me peace of mind that I wouldn't have to fix my website every Sunday.
Many people have shared how building a website has become a source of stress for them. Like this reddit user shared how they got stuck spending hours doing technical stuff instead of working on their business:
And this user who created a post to learn how other business owners actually go around handling their website to face any limitations:
As a business owner, if you want to ensure that your website won't breakdown every Sunday, then make sure you select a reliable tech.
So take your time to list out your key requirements, the features you need today and the features you will be needing in future. Then research which tool actually offers them.
If a tool looks good and promising but doesn't offer one of your requirement, say best in class support of SEO, then don't settle for it. Because then you'll eventually feel regret later on, and who knows how hard it'll be to transfer to a new tool.
My go to choice is NextJS. What's yours? Let me know on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Until next time,
Pratyush Goel