Static VS Dynamic Websites: How the power of Static Sites can revolutionise your business

by Sophie | Jun 28, 2024 | Content Marketing, SME, Strategy, Web Development

The History of Static vs Dynamic Websites

For much of the past 30-40 years, the technology behind how the web operates has largely remained the same. The standard model of a web page, sent to your web browser via a server in the form of HTML and displayed via the DOM has been the foundation of nearly all websites since the internet began. In the web 1.0 days, web pages were incredibly simple – often made up of basic text and images with very little interactivity or dynamic content. These pages, often referred to as ‘static’ web pages, were called so due to their simplistic, unchangable nature. The page you were served was the page you received, with little to no state changes, built in HTML, CSS & javascript purely on the client side, with no content being rendered on a backend server.

As the web evolved and the internet became a greater force in everyday life, the demands and use-case of websites also grew. People needed access to websites with increased functionality – access to databases, dynamic and changeable content, and increased interactivity that became the standard of a what a modern website was. Support for these kind of features usually had to be supported by the power of a server. This era saw the rise in PHP-based platforms like WordPress becoming the king of user-generated websites, bridging the gap with client & server side dynamic content generation. With WordPress, you can create dynamic websites that allow you to build templates, connect databases and create a site with multiple different interactive features – particularly blogs, which is what primarily drove it to become such a popular tool. This accessibility, combined with the breadth of customisable features available via plugins made WordPress almost unrivalled as a web-building platform for the past 20 years.

Over time however, even more technological advances have been made, with greater challenges presenting themselves. A large majority of the world no longer access the internet via a traditional desktop computer setup. Smart devices such as phones, watches and speakers all access the internet, and require content to be served and displayed to the user in multiple ways. These days websites need to be responsive, and Social Media platforms have grown beyond what the traditional web browser model can sustain. Javascript-based frameworks such as React, Angular, Vue & Svelte have completely revolutionised how content and applications are built and delivered, and this growing demand for high performance and multi-platform content is at odds with the feature-heavy, mutable builds of a traditional dynamic website.

This is where the modern Static site has now begun to shine. Instead of relying on a server to render and deliver sections of content in chunks to a browser – Static sites are fully built, immutable and ready to go directly from the client / browser. This allows them to be super speedy, perform excellently (because you don’t have to wait for the page content to be rendered from a server), with minimal page size. This lack of client-server communication also makes Static sites significantly more secure, as they have less vulnerabilities open during the page rendering process.

Static vs Dynamic Web Pages – What’s the Difference? By Academind

A common build for a modern Static Site is what’s known as a JAMStack – which stands for Javascript, API & Markup. You can find out more about the JAMStack in greater detail over on their website, here: https://jamstack.org/

One of the major key differences between a JAMStack based Static site with a Headless CMS and a traditional all-in-one full stack web platform like WordPress is the customisability. There are multiple different platforms, frameworks, languages and APIs that you can choose to create your static-based site, and you can tailor it to what works best for your business and platform. Snipcart have a brilliant visual diagram example of what this looks like here:

The end result of this is a website with tons of scalability and high performance. However, this also comes at the expense of user accessibility. Whilst the platforms are relatively simple to update and create content on, the initial setup of a JAMStack website requires you to understand how all of the different composite parts interact. Whilst static site generators such as Next.JS, Hugo, Astro & Eleventy streamline the initial setup and deployment process with sites such as Netlify and CMS platforms like Decap and Contentful; knowledge on how to set up and create content for these sites requires coding and development experience, something that the average website user or business owner might not necessarily have.

With the right development partner, a static site with a Headless CMS could be an incredible solution for your business, provided you have the tools and setup to add content to the site via an accessible platform.

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Heres an overall summary of the Pro’s and Con’s of Static Sites to help you assess if they can be the right solution for your business:

The Pros of Static Websites & Headless CMS

Excellent Performance and incredible page speeds, even on sites with high page counts due to the serverless nature of how content is built and delivered to the browser.
Highly Secure and safe – Without the server-browser connection, there are significantly less vulnerabilities available for people to exploit, making your website much safer and less open to attacks.
Customisable and tailored to your business – You can choose the technologies, tech stack, frameworks, platforms and APIs you want to add to your website instead of being tied to one platform or provider.

The Cons of Static Websites & Headless CMS

Steep Knowledge Curve for required for Setup – You need a good understanding of code, how frameworks and APIs work to ensure that your site is set up and optimised efficiently
Lots of Moving Parts – Although the site removes the server, having lots of different platforms and APIs supporting your site requires management and upkeep to ensure every aspect is kept up to date and well maintained.
Potentially Less User-friendly – Depending on the backend / CMS, a custom Static & Headless website can potentially be less accessible for users or members of staff to populate and work on, compared to a more established platform like WordPress.

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At Brand Ambition, we’re dedicated to creating the best solutions for our clients, and we’re always looking into new and cutting-edge technology to help people get the most out of their SME’s and Businesses. If this sounds like it could be a solution for your business, get in touch and see how we can make a difference for your website.

5 Tips for Better Website Design

by Sophie | Mar 25, 2024 | Design and Branding, Web Development

With the landscape of social media algorithms growing ever more volatile, it’s become more important than ever to have a good home for your online presence. Having a website gives your business a solid, centralised base – a one stop shop for customers to find out all they need to know about who you are, and what services and products you offer. More importantly, a website gives you absolute control over your content and messaging to customers. With your own website, you don’t have to worry about a platform changing significantly in a way that could negatively impact your business model, something that is increasingly becoming a regular occurrence for many businesses with an online presence spread across various social media platforms.

In 2024, there are more ways to build and design a website than ever before. The good news is, you don’t have to be an amazing artist or designer to be able to build an amazing looking website. Regardless of the platform you choose and how technical your web build is, fundamental design principles can help take your website to the next level.

Whether you’re building from scratch or using a pre-made layout – Here are 5 tips that can help you improve your website design:

Think of the Customer Journey

Good web design isn’t just about the overall appearance of your website – it’s also about the structure, and how you navigate it.

In marketing, there is a strategy structure known as a ‘funnel’. The marketing ‘funnel’ shows the steps of interaction a customer is guided through to reach your desired goal – whether that’s a sale, or engagement with a particular post or platform. A common marketing funnel looks something like this:

Good web design operates on a similar structure. Most websites have a particular goal or purpose – whether that’s to signpost customers to other services, to sell via ecommerce, to function as a blog, or more. Regardless of the purpose of your website, It’s important to take visitors on a journey through the site to tell people who you are, the services you have to offer, and how people can get in touch with you. This can be achieved with the layout and design of your website!

All websites should have a solid Home Page – which acts as the landing page for all other areas of your website. Your homepage should have a clear ‘Hero’ section, with a clear description and introduction to who you are and what your business is. The rest of the page can then be dedicated to signposting other areas of your site – whether that’s a product page, your blog, or how to get in touch with you.

A good overall website hierarchy can look something like this:

In this example, the homepage is the primary landing page. Then all other pages link from the homepage to other category pages. These could be product hubs, a blog, a service landing page or a contact page. Under these category pages can sit other sub categories – like specific product pages, blog articles and more.

Following this top-down, hierarchical website structure not only takes your customer through an easy-to-follow journey through your site. It also follows good SEO design practice, which helps boost your website’s level in search engine rankings, making your website easier to find.

Keep Your Design Consistent Throughout

It’s really tempting when designing a new website to use multiple different styling options and different layouts on every page. It’s easy to fall into a trap of thinking that variety will add excitement to a web design, and make it more interesting for customers. Often, this can lead to the opposite outcome. A website full of conflicting fonts, colours and layouts can create a confusing user experience, which can reflect poorly not just on your website, but your business as well.

When choosing designs for your website – make sure you use the same fonts, colours and themes throughout. Your website is an extension of the other aspects of your business, so it’s important to make your web design consistent with any other branding you might have. Do the fonts and colours on your website match up with the ones you’re using on business cards, or other stationary you own?

Most modern web themes and layouts available online have a good selection of these pre-selected, so do research to find the ones that best suit your websites and business.

Think Accessibility

A Screenshot of the CMO Paris Homepage – https://www.cmoparis.com/la-marque/

In recent years, web designers have begun to experiment a lot more with websites. After years of very minimal, stripped back web designs – developers and designers are now playing with animations, scroll effects and transitions a lot more.

The end result of this has lead to a lot of very cutting edge, exciting web design. However, some of these website experiences can be difficult to navigate for users who might not explore the web with a traditional mouse-and-keyboard setup. Elements like Parallax scrolls, videos and complex animations can add hefty loading times for users who might not have the fastest technology or internet connection to access them.

As these trends become more widely in-demand, website templates and pre-built layouts are also now beginning to appear with similar complex layouts and animations. Even more ‘static’ web layouts can often sometimes be difficult to navigate for those who use assistive technology – with missing alt text, lack of tab navigation, and flattened text unreadable via screen readers.

When Designing a website for your business, it’s important to ensure that your website is accessible for anyone who might visit it. It’s better to have a more stripped-back website that is clear and easy to navigate than it is to have an exciting, heavily customised one that is a nightmare to look through. Avoid heavily-animated pre-built layouts where possible. Use animations and videos in sparing quantities, and make sure that none of your design choices are made in sacrifice of accessibility.

Design Heuristically

A Screenshot of the Sainsbury’s Homepage – https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/

Every person browsing the internet can visit hundreds, sometimes thousands of different websites. Most businesses these days have some degree of online presence – be that Supermarkets, major high street retailers, to ecommerce giants with only online outlets such as Amazon or Temu.

Through browsing the web, we all subconsciously pick up habits based on the things we most commonly interact with. Over time, these habits become expectations. Within a few seconds, we can use quick assessment to make judgements about what kind of business a website is for, how that website should function, as well as what kind of services or information we can expect to find there. This is what is known as Heuristics – or, Heuristic Behaviour. Patterns of habits, behaviours, or expectations we form without thinking, based on repeated experiences.

We can use Heuristics to help design a website experience that communicates the type of business you are to a customer subconsciously. This can be helpful, as it can handle a lot of the legwork required to make customers to develop a sense of familiarity with your business and website, in a very small window of time.

If you are a tech business, for example – your customers may already have an experience of other similar tech companies or brands in your field. Researching companies like Apple or Dyson, and identifying the ways they layout and sell their products can be helpful in establishing design patterns that could work for your own website.

The goal isn’t to copy their branding or website verbatim – it’s to identify patterns, signifiers and layouts that you can use when designing your own website to help communicate to customers what kind of business you are, without them having to consciously think about it.

Think Responsively

These days, people access websites on a vast range of devices and screen sizes. Your website could potentially be viewed on a large 4K display, or a small mobile phone screen, and many different sizes in between.

When designing a website, it’s important to ensure that your layout throughout is responsive. This means that your website has no fixed asset sizes (like hard-coded pixel limits), and that the layout and contents on your webpages can be moved freely to different dimensions and sizes, depending on the screen view.

This can seem overwhelming when first encountered. It can be frustrating to design a beautiful layout for a desktop view, only for the same layout to break entirely when viewed on a mobile screen.

In web development, a common design approach is known as ‘Mobile first’ design. This means that all your web pages should be designed from the mobile screen first, then scaled upwards to work across tablet and desktop views after.

Luckily, most modern web design platforms and web templates are built with responsive views in mind. If you aren’t a web designer, it can be helpful to use a pre-built theme, or some of the in-built site builder features to make sure your website is kept responsive without needing to handle the layouts manually yourself.

When choosing layouts and themes, always research how responsive they are. Don’t just rely on your website looking good in one particular view. You can use your browser’s in-built inspection tools to view how your website looks across multiple screens, and make adjustments to your layouts as needed.

Web Design & Development with Brand Ambition

At Brand Ambition, we help businesses get the most out of their websites. If you’re looking for web design support – whether it’s to update a previous site, or start a new one from scratch, we can help you every step of the way. Get in touch with us for further information on all of our web design and development services.

What is a Responsive Website?

by Sophie | Dec 20, 2023 | Web Development

In the age of digital marketing, audiences seek connection beyond plain sales pitches. They crave narratives that resonate on an emotional level, which is where the magic of storytelling comes into play.

The Art of Crafting a Story

The first step in our storytelling approach at Brand Ambition is digging deep into our brand’s values. We distil these into a captivating story that serves as the backbone of our marketing campaigns. Rather than an isolated narrative, this story forms an overarching theme that guides our brand message and lends unique flavor to all our communications.

Balancing Business and Emotion

Balancing the human element with business objectives in storytelling can be a tightrope walk. At Brand Ambition, we craft narratives that strike a perfect balance. While our stories are designed to forge emotional connections, they also align with our strategic goals, subtly guiding the narrative towards the value our brand delivers.

Ensuring Consistency

We weave our story into every piece of content we create, be it a blog post, social media update, or an advertising campaign. This narrative consistency helps underscore our brand’s values, resonates with our target audience, and differentiates our brand from competitors. The competitive analysis software we use offers crucial insights into maintaining this narrative consistency across various content formats.

Unifying Multiple Narratives

Coordinating various teams managing different channels can pose a significant challenge for maintaining a unified brand narrative. Our approach? We develop an overarching theme based on our brand story. This theme then gets rolled out across all channels, from social media to email marketing, ensuring our audience receives a consistent and unified brand message.

Leveraging Technology

At Brand Ambition, we harness the power of technology to streamline our storytelling process and create compelling narratives. We use AI-driven content generators and analysis platforms that aid in maintaining narrative consistency and enable us to craft narratives that resonate with our target audience while standing out in the crowded digital space.

The Power of Storytelling: By the Numbers

Still not convinced about the power of storytelling? Here are 10 statistics that demonstrate the immense potential of narratives in content marketing:

Brand messages relayed as stories can be up to 22 times more memorable than mere facts (Jerome Bruner, Cognitive Psychologist)
92% of consumers want brands to make ads that feel like a story (OneSpot)
Messages delivered as stories can be up to 22 times more memorable than just facts. (Stanford)
Consumers’ emotional response to an ad has a far greater influence on their reported intent to buy a product than does the ad’s content (Harvard Business Review)
Storytelling can boost conversion rates by up to 30% (Aberdeen)
55% of people are more likely to buy the product in the future if they love a brand’s story (Headstream)
64% of B2B marketers agree that storytelling can significantly help attract a larger audience (LinkedIn)
Brands that have a consistent narrative in their content marketing could increase the memorability of their content by 118%. (Prezi)
Companies that use storytelling in their marketing have reported a 20% increase in revenue (Forbes)
78% of CMOs believe content is the future of marketing and storytelling plays a massive role in content marketing (Demand Metric)
At Brand Ambition, storytelling is not merely a marketing technique—it’s a powerful tool to forge deeper connections with our audience and reinforce our brand identity. Your brand has a story too. Isn’t it time to share it?