“Would My Mom Be Able To Use This?”: Hot Takes On How Our Director of Web Development Ensures His Sites Are Easy for Clients to Use

When developing a website, it’s extremely important to not only make it work, but also make it easy for our clients to use. We believe your website is meant to be a constantly evolving tool for your business, and it cannot evolve if updating it is painful.

My motto as a developer has always been “would my mom be able to use this” (and, no, my mom is not also a web developer).

Here are some things we do when developing a WordPress Site to ensure it’s easy for clients to use:

Only use the plugins that are entirely necessary.

Far too many WordPress websites are packed with plugins. Not only does this make your site slower and less secure, but it creates a huge spider-web that you need to navigate to edit simple content on your website. Not cool! We don’t do that.

Whenever it’s possible to build site functionality right into the theme and save a plugin download, we do it. The less code the better. Not only does this make your site easier to manage, but less code means more speed, which means better SEO.

Custom themes from the ground up

Far too many WordPress websites use big, bloated, feature-rich themes or page-builder plugins. You end up with lots of features that are unnecessary and completely unused by your business. This means code that slows down your site and opens you up to malicious activity for absolutely no reason. Also not cool. We don’t do that either.

All of our sites start from scratch. Your business is unique, which means your WordPress theme needs to be unique to properly serve your needs. Everything is custom-built with your goals in mind.

Make things automatic

We don’t want you to have to remember to make a change in three places. Plenty of websites cross-populate content. This means we can set up your latest blog posts to appear on your home page or under certain service pages. This is very common! You shouldn’t have extra work when updating content.

We make sure that adding or changing content in one place will automatically update that content everywhere it appears. If you change that blog title, it will change on the homepage. If you add a new blog tied to a service, it will appear on that page too if you wish.

Update content with the least clicks possible

The fewer clicks, the better. This is a hallmark of good user experience (UX) across the board.

We leverage the new WordPress Block Editor to keep the vast majority of your page editing right in the Pages section. The new Block Editor lets us make your admin editing interface look just like your website’s front-end experience, making things as easy and recognizable as possible for your internal team.

Everything goes in your toolbox

We make sure all the cool stuff on your site can be put anywhere.

Does your homepage have a list of upcoming events? Does your About page have a nice testimonial carousel? These elements can be put anywhere on your site. They are in your toolbox.

By the time a site launches, we’ve typically packed the site with a number of these interesting site elements that are entirely unique to your business and brand. This lets you create new page layouts with your toolbox, making fresh and interesting pages without the need of a developer.

Ready to update your site so that you can actually use it! Let us help. Send us a message and we will set up a meeting to develop a plan.