The future of websites
I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of websites over the past few weeks.
To save on costs I just shut down a WordPress server that I’d been running for 6-7 years. This was something that had been sitting in the back of my mind for a while. The server was woefully outdated and the whole thing felt overwhelming. It continued to be a small money pit each month while using technology that had security risks.
My blog, of course, has to stay on WordPress (at least for now). But the other sites were primarily information based, and not highly complex. For all but two of these I was able to switch over to Carrd.
I’m amazed by how creating websites has changed in the short time since I last took a deep look at what it takes to get a simple page online.
It’s so much easier now than ever before.
Most websites are not doing something unique. They’re not solving a brand new problem that technology can’t handle. They exist to relay information and in many cases to help interested people find the value they’re looking for.
This is a known quantity.
And for cases like this grabbing a pre-existing template from a website building service like Carrd is more than enough.
What used to take me weeks to build can now be done in hours.
There are, of course, quite a few caveats to that statement. But what I’m wondering next is how this could be shortened even further.
When I set out to put a website online I’m interested in the message it has to share, in the helpfulness it can offer. I don’t want to spend hours on the minutia that used to consume me. I’m more keen on knowing if the thing I’m throwing online can be of help, or whether we should pivot and try something new.
Take a business idea.
Imagine that I have an idea to sell a new type of service. In this case the service might be helping people learn how to use password managers (I just made that up, but seriously I know so many people who could benefit from that). I have a hunch that my method of teaching could be useful, and I want to charge for it.
It’s not worth the dozens of hours previously spent getting all the technology and design in place to then see if there’s a market.
In fact what we should probably be doing is talking to people ahead of time before even investing in a domain. But, that aside, what if I could have a website up and running in minutes or seconds that conveyed the idea and then used that as a marketing piece in my new business venture.
That’d be cool.
I don’t know where this is headed, but I’m excited to see how technology and good design continue to collapse the time it takes to run with an idea and have it quickly pass or fail.