It’s been a while since we’ve done some consistent blogging, but since we’ve been given this uninterrupted time we have been digging in and creating content as much as possible each week. Even when we teach others about blogging, and help businesses in times of crisis communicate, we are still susceptible to fall into the same traps as everyone else.

When things get hairy it’s easy to lose the rhythm of creating your own content, consistently. We will give ourselves a bit of grace and say that the world is changing and NOW is the perfect time to get back at it. More importantly we have some pretty awesome thoughts to share, that can be helpful to building your business up through anything.

We have been really focusing on what are the best ways to help our client’s businesses grow. We see it every day, business owners have built strong foundations for their business, now they are reimagining what the future holds for them. They have also learnt that crafting a strong and relevant brand and a website around those products are much harder to achieve without help from area experts.

If you are past the DIY stage of marketing your business, it’s easier to see what you need (the forest for the trees idea). You can focus on the fact that you want harmony with your messaging and your digital web presence. Both need to work together to draw the right people to your brand, at the right time. Once your prospects are on the path, how do they engage with you more, to learn more about what you have to offer?

Our thoughts on combining form (design) and function (website) are what we think we are particularity good at. We think of that like two of our favourite things – peanut butter and jelly. Suzy (me), rooted in visual communications and a well-rounded graphic design background, looks for the best ways to present information verbally and visually. What is the problem you solve, what do you want people to feel about your brand? When you have that established do you have the right colours, words, images and layout to express those things to your target audience? Of course, it needs to look great, but it also needs to have the right cues that inspire and propel your customers to ACT.

Trevor, on the other hand, is a full-stack web developer, rooted in function – determining what the best way to do something from a technical aspect is, accounting for best practices in website development. Using a tech stack like GatsbyJS to create decoupled headless WordPress websites, mean users get the benefits of Gatsby’s much faster, more secure and user-friendly frontend, while still using WordPress as the CMS (content management system) backend. It also means that he knows how to bring our designers full-vision to life, for the client. He’s the secret sauce in this storytelling recipe. Cheesy but true.

The end result for you means that you receive exceptional design and functionality in your custom website, but more importantly the website resonates with your target audience in a big way – it makes a great first (and second) impression. This is something that is very hard to achieve with an out-of-the-box solution.

We only do custom websites because we want to ensure that if our clients, or our design team, dream up an idea that we can build it – build it properly so that the key SEO factors are checked off. It can then be seen by the right people when they need you the most.

If you are using templates or site builders like WIX or Squarespace there is a place and time for them but you need to understand their limitations as well. If you have a designer setting up a template for you, they can only affect so many aspects of the design without knowing code. Their full vision will likely not be able to come to life within the restrictions of the template. Once live, the site will also be full of code (extra data weight) that isn’t actually needed for that design. This can lead to slower website download speeds, and lower SEO scores. it.

On the other hand, if you have a web developer setting the design and UX (user experience) for your website there will likely be something less aesthetically pleasing about the layout and flow. Small custom graphics and design touches might be missing. The key messaging and graphics will have limitations because it’s a different skill-set than understanding and writing code. The two need to work together in tandem – one is not more important than the other when it comes to websites. Bottom line is poor WEB DESIGN will lead to lower engagement and lead generation; poor WEB DEVELOPMENT will lead to lower engagement and lead generation. You need a great design and a great web developer.

Trevor and I sometimes forget how lucky we are that we can challenge and push each other through the client work, by needing to keep up with each other’s ideas in order to develop the most functional and high-end website possible. It’s a very good thing we are both hyper competitive and love the opportunity to lead our web and design teams to always grow and be better on the next project than we were the last.

If you want to learn more about how we can bring the next chapter of your business to life we would love to talk. Email us at hello@switchbackcreative.ca or go to Start a Project and tell us more about your thoughts.