Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed that his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That same wisdom has often been repeated as don’t judge a book by its cover. Outward appearance isn’t everything—it’s what you’ll find at the core that truly matters.
At the risk of applying the one of the greatest civil rights speeches in history to something as mundane as web design, the same ideas actually apply.
There’s a temptation to focus on the color of a website’s skin. Everybody wants to have eye-popping design and drool-inducing techno goodies. But web design doesn’t have to be fancy, flashy or funded by millionaires. It’s the content of a website that makes it work.
- You don’t need the latest in hipster design.
- You don’t have to hire some whiz kid programmer.
- You don’t need the newest widgets and gadgets.
All you really need is what people are looking for: Content. If you’ve got stellar content the rest will take care of itself. All those other things can help, but without content your site is sunk. A beautiful site with useless content is impotent. An ugly site with helpful content may be ugly, but it gets the job done. Do what you can to get good design, a functional site and whatever bells and whistles you might need. But focus your efforts on great content.
This should be good news for the small business website. You can’t compete with the well-funded sites that hire full time designers. They’ll win that beauty contest. But you’re not looking to win a beauty contest, you’re looking for customers. The content of your site is what will win them over and no one should be better at creating content for your site than you.
