My belief is that web designers should design, web developers should code and web owners should keep the content fresh. Isn’t that right? Everyone should do what they’re good at. Is this the way current web-design world works?

The biggest web-creation issues:

1. Handcoding isn’t effective

Handcoding website from a scratch used to be the only acceptable way of building websites. Everyone laughed when themes first appeared, saying that they have no future. The main argument was that each website has to have a unique web design. No-one will agree on having a website built on standardized theme which probably have been used a thousand times before. How about paying money to a web agency that would just take a theme, drag few things here and drop them there? Non-sense!

People think that each website must have a unique web design.

Few years passed and now everyone seems to be in love with themes. Themes are universal and multi-purpose, fully customizable and adjustable to all your web design needs.

The reason, why people think themes are so great, is that you can build a unique website with a universal theme. With drag & drop page builders and front-end editors anyone can become a web designer. What’s even better that you can get paid for building a website using such builders.

Here’s the big shift from:

“No-one will ever use the themes…”

to

“Why would anyone bother handcoding a website when there’s a faster, cheaper and more convenient way around?”

But have you also noticed the big problem with themes of nowadays?

“With drag & drop page builders and front-end editors anyone can become a web designer.”

If you really think that your own drag & drop web design looks better than the one made by a professional designer, why don’t you go to Apple to tell them how should their next iphone look like?

2. All builders and themes have become over-complicated

It all started with the simple templates with just a text to be filled out and images to be uploaded. The following generation of themes had an adjustable colour scheme. Today, there’s a customizable big menu, small menu, contact form, favicons, dozens different types of header & footer, social icons, comments, reviews, portfolios, widgets, packages…

It’s the perfect example of competitive fight on a growing market of web building solutions. Every newly released theme is more enhanced than the previous one. Let’s be honest. How many end users / web owners are able to build their website on their own? Have I missed the point if I thought that the initial purpose of themes was to create a tool for non-IT people to allow them to create and administer their own website?

One way or another, we’re back where we started: websites can only be created by web design professionals. All themes and web builders have turned into the elaborated tool in hands of experienced designer or web developer.

3. Administering of the website IS a rocket science

OK, building a website is one thing. Even if we overlook the issue of complicated web building process and threat of unprofessionally looking outcome when using drag & drop page builders and front end editors. Administration of up & running website is far from the real meaning of “user friendly.” Web owners don’t know where to click when they want to add new product or company news to their website. And do you blame them? There’s so many fields in the menu and never-ending list of options.

An average web owner is also afraid that he might break something by mistake or that installing an update will smash his website into pieces. He doesn’t realize that he’s compromising security of the website by holding on to its ancient version.

4. People’s usual perception is: “I CAN’T” build/administer the website

BUT

5. Everyone can use instagram, snapchat or facebook

The best thing the average web owner can do is to leave his website alone while it’s still holding together and use some other communication channel to reach out to his potential customers. Previously, he paid the designer to make him a website, requested 100 little details to meet his expectations and once it’s all done the web owner abandons his website to go to facebook fan page to provide daily updates to his fans. He hopes that people will visit his site just because he posts on social media and vice-versa: he hopes that his web visitors will go to his fan page to read the company news. Isn’t it a little ridiculous the way it works? Shouldn’t the web administration be as simple as the use of social media?

Conclusion

Drag & drop page builders and front end editors are too complicated for the “normal” people to work with. Unless you have few tens of hours spare time to learn how to work with them, they’re useless. Therefore people are updating their social media while they should be paying more attention to keep the content on their website up to date. However, social media are getting a little overcrowded too and they can’t compensate the bad impression of static website.

This situation is not sustainable. How often do YOU update content on your website? What do you think the next big wave gonna be in a web development sphere? Please leave your comment below to let me know your thoughts.