The intriguing notion of a no-code website
Is a pre-templated website as good as it sounds or too good to be true?
This post has been prompted by a few conversations that I’ve had with founders during user interviews. They’ve shared that their preference would be to move their company website to a no-code platform. A platform with pre-designed templates that you can publish without any additional design or development.
When I probe further as to why, the responses have been:
- It’s very simple and clean; it’s just a list of words with icons
- It’s so easy to navigate and move through the content
- It’s really easy to maintain and update by anyone in the team
Sounds like a dream. As a UX and Content Designer, the question shouting in my head is: ‘Why isn’t your website already like that?’ but I fear that’d derail the session and I suspect I already know some of the answers.
If a no-code website is something that you’re considering for your organisation, hopefully this will offer some reasons to pause before you throw out what you’ve got and start again.
‘So simple and clean’
Yes, platforms like Notion and WebFlow have an appealing UI — the simplicity of the colours, fonts and the icons — offering the familiarity of the emoticons some of your audiences will use every day.
Does your website have a Design System? An online resource that is widely adopted and regularly updated, containing your organisation’s brand guidelines, logo, typography, colours, accessibility guidelines, style guide and more.
If you’re not familiar with Design Systems, here are a couple of examples that the William Joseph team admire:
- GOV.UK — with a recently published update (GOV.UK Frontend v4.0.1) from Feb 22
- Barnardos — based on user research and a collaboration between designers and developers
- Co-op Experience Library a recent reinvention of their design system (because ‘design system’ implies it’s only for designers)
- Shopify — their ‘Polaris system includes visual and content design including accessible and inclusive language
However, they aren’t a silver bullet to consistency and clarity, José Torre from Shopify’s Polaris team has explored why Design Systems are flawed. He makes some excellent points on how Design System’s should be used and the part that stuck out to me in relation to no-code is:
“The [Design System] library is just the what. We can’t forget about the how and the why.”
I find that this is so often the case with company websites. “We’ve got a rubbish Wix, Squarespace, WordPress [insert CMS here] website.” People dismiss the what, because the how and the why is much harder to get right.
Example elements of an organisation’s website
What:
- The CMS (Content Management System)
- The code framework
- Brochure style, e-commerce, blog
How:
- Built and maintained by an in-house team
- Built and managed by an agency
- Content managed by multiple editors across the organisations
- Content managed by a single, centralised team
Why:
- Your audiences
- Those audience’s needs and behaviours
- The information architecture, journeys, features and content to meet those needs
It’s easier (but not easy) to change the how — how the team is structured, how the editorial guidelines are applied, how content is created, shared and distributed.
The path of least resistance is to change the what — ‘upgrade’ your CMS, start again with a blank page and hope this time things will fall into place (scary stuff!).
The why is the really sticky (and brilliant) stuff. It involves getting to know your audiences and balancing their needs with your organisation’s objectives. Creating and structuring content to serve those needs and leaving out what doesn’t (no matter how much you want to share it).
No-code websites can be tempting when you want to ‘get something out there’ but putting the wrong thing out there, that doesn’t serve your users and do justice to your brand, can do more harm than good. When speed is needed, a quick and dirty prototype that is tested with real users is the way to set you on the right track.
‘Easy to navigate and move through the content’
Starting with the clean templates of a no-code platform, ready to populate with text, icons and images takes away the cognitive burden of how things should look or be laid out on a website.
As web editors, if we can’t get hung up on these visual things our mind is focussed on sharing the most useful and relevant information. Similar to how a PowerPoint that already has a theme makes you focus on what you actually want to say in the slides.
In a bullet-pointed list, there’s less temptation to repeat ourselves and succinct points are easier for our brains (and fingers) to make links between.
When complex mega-menus are stripped away, we’re forced to think about where a user would want to go next from the page we’re editing. What’s the call-to-action and where can they read more? We’re thinking about journeys rather than stuffing the navigation with everything we offer and everything we’ve written.
These principles can be applied to all websites, not just those built without code. And for more complex sites, sometimes a multi-layer, custom navigation is exactly what is needed, which a no-code template might struggle to cater for.
‘Easy to maintain and update by anyone in the team’
Great — no one wants to risk a single point of failure, whether that’s a Web Manager or the agency that built the site originally. But before being seduced by the democratisation of editing, ask whether your organisation has a robust content editorial process, the internal skill set and crucially, the time, to adopt this approach?
If not, it’s just a transfer of risk rather than the removal of it. Everyone in an organisation has their own priorities rooted in their roles, their ambitions and what they care about. If an understanding and respect for your various website audiences isn’t one of those priorities, you’re heading for a pickle.
No-code platforms definitely have their place — I’ve used them for personal and professional sites. They break down potential barriers to web publishing and can work well as intranets, but they don’t act as a substitute for the ingredients of an effective company website.
Designers, developers, content designers and product managers aren’t just valuable for their technical skills. These are coupled with a user-centric approach and deep understanding of online behaviour. Platforms may be able to replicate the look and feel of a website that takes more time, money and thought, but, in my experience, shortcuts are usually just that.
