The new year has started tumultuously, and the world is eagerly waiting to see how it will unfold. Here follows my selection of five books that can help us keep the bigger picture in mind for 2026.

You will surely notice that the selection—much like last year—only tangentially relates to the internet and web development. This is intentional. The internet, on a smaller scale, represents the world at large—in both its positive and negative aspects. Instead of getting lost in the minutiae of various technologies and developments, I believe it’s more important to maintain a bird’s-eye view of the significant trends and moods of our world.

Feel inspired—and please feel free to write to me at kontakt@netjutant.de to share your thoughts on this selection and which books you would recommend.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Fooled by Randomness

We humans often believe that we have our lives and careers firmly in our own hands. However, this is a fallacy. In the Book of Proverbs, written around 3,000 years ago, the wise King Solomon states: “A man makes many plans in his heart; but the counsel of the LORD stands.“

Believers refer to it as the counsel of God, while Taleb calls it randomness. Either way, it is important to recognise that we are all subjected to this uncontrollable force, as well as to acknowledge that the talk shows and bookshelves of this world are filled with individuals who mostly had luck in their lives and careers. We see success, overlook failures, and tend to seek connections where none exist.

The book “Fooled by Randomness” raises awareness of these cognitive errors and contemplates how to find a wise path in a world that we cannot control.

Title: Fooled by Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9780812975215

Trump / Schwartz: The Art of the Deal

Since his re-election last year, no one can ignore Donald Trump. Despite this being his second term, confusion remains widespread in Germany and Europe as a whole: How can we filter out what is truly important from the daily media frenzy on the USA and their president? What are Trump’s actual intentions? Are there guidelines that influence his actions?

Similar questions were asked about Germany and its new leader around 90 years ago—and people would have been wise to read his autobiography. This would not only have provided them with a better understanding of this man’s essence and worldview but also of his political plans and ideas.

History is repeating itself today. Yet, almost no one has read Trump’s autobiography. In it, he clearly explains his policies and attitudes—making it abundantly clear that a positive “deal” for himself is paramount for him. Above everything.

Title: The Art of the Deal
Authors: Donald J. Trump / Tony Schwartz
Publisher: ‎ Random House Publishing Group
ISBN: 978-0399594496

Harro v. Senger: The Book of Stratagems

While Donald Trump’s plans keep us on our toes, the People’s Republic of China is also pursuing its grand ambitions in the background. Few would doubt that China already plays a decisive role in the theatre of great powers—a role that is likely to grow even larger in the future.

One concept that every schoolchild in China learns, which has shaped strategic thinking for thousands of years, is the “36 Stratagems.” Stratagems are lists that can be applied in both wartime and peacetime to achieve the most favourable outcome for one’s own side. I have already introduced one of these, Stratagem 20, in a blog post.

If you are interested in China, its history, and the mindset of its rulers, I highly recommend this book by China expert Harro von Senger. It is extremely engaging to read and not only provides a deep insight into the fascinating culture and history of China but also recounts numerous anecdotes from world history to make the stratagems vivid and illustrative.

Title: The Book of Stratagems: Tactics for Triumph and Survival
Author: Harro v. Senger
Publisher: Viking
ISBN: 978-0670839629

Mark McCaughrean: 111 Places in Space That You Must Not Miss

For those seeking a bit of distraction after a dive into current world politics, I recommend the book “111 Places in Space That You Must Not Miss.”

Frequent travellers may be familiar with the book series “111 Places…”, which is available in both German and English for various locations around the world. Recently, there has been a similarly diverse travel guide released for outer space. Fancy a trip to Jupiter and its moons? Or perhaps to the 90-metre-high cliffs on the comet “Tschuri”? Or even to other galaxies?

The stunning images, along with the scientifically grounded yet humourously written texts in the style of classic travelogues, fill me with reverent awe for the enormity of the universe—reminding us to put the problems of this world into the right perspective.

Title: 111 Places in Space That You Must Not Miss
Author: Mark McCaughrean
Publisher: Emons Verlag
ISBN: 978-3-7408-0601-9

Peter Frankopan: The Silk Roads

The theme of this collection of books for 2026 is to recognise the broader trends of the world, enabling us to adapt more effectively in both work and private life. A look into history is always helpful, as it serves as an important teacher for the present.

Those of us who, like me, grew up in Germany typically have a very Western-centric view of world history. In his book “Light from the East,” Peter Frankopan attempts to broaden this perspective. While reading, I often experienced moments of revelation, where cultural and historical connections became clear that I had previously overlooked. I find it fascinating that the Vikings dined on Chinese porcelain, how the first stock exchanges were established, and how the British ultimately triumphed over the Spanish crown, despite being late to exploit the New World. But I don’t want to spoil too much—let yourself be surprised!

Title: The Silk Roads – A New History of the World
Author: Peter Frankopan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 978-1-4088-3999-7

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

For many companies, this week got off to a rough start: A major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on the US East Coast led to a variety of services going down, from Zoom and Atlassian to Signal, Slack, Jira, Cloudflare, and Google. So, what’s left of our dream of a decentralised IT infrastructure?

A Journey into History

It wasn’t that long ago—those of us of a certain age will remember—when software had to be purchased on physical media and installed locally. Dialing into the internet was still an audible event, and it wasn’t exactly cheap either.

Even back then, the idea of decentralised structures was already taking shape. In the 1980s, the first “peer-to-peer” networks emerged, Unix was developed, and in the 1990s, the Open-Source movement began to take hold. Websites and servers already existed that were decentralised and reachable across the network. But even these servers (and a server was essentially just a slightly different type of computer) had to be located somewhere and needed to be backed up to ensure redundancy in case of failure.

However, computers and internet connections became steadily faster and more widespread. The internet was standardised in many ways, but it still retained its fundamentally decentralised nature. It was not, or at least not easily, possible to suppress free exchange over the internet through centralised control structures.

Decentralised IT – At Its Core a Good Idea

With the growing importance of the internet and the ever-expanding variety of end devices (from smartphones to PCs), the significance of decentralised IT increased. More and more services and software were no longer installed locally but operated on servers and accessed via the browser. The idea behind this was simple: Software could be provided in the cloud, without the need for significant installation and maintenance effort, and scaled across a wide user base. The cloud itself could be operated in a decentralised and redundant manner—if one server failed, it could seamlessly switch to another. Services could be provided in a standardised manner and updated at the push of a button. As long as there was an internet connection, the service would be available. Here, concepts like “virtualisation” and “containerisation” play a key role, which could make interesting topics for future blog posts.

Soon, all major companies jumped on this bandwagon. They operated their own servers for internal communication, ERP and inventory management, HR, services, etc. During this time, companies like SAP and Atlassian became dominant players in these fields.

Decentralised IT on Steroids – The Hyper-Scalers

Operating redundant servers in-house was a major financial step forward. And if these servers were decentralised, it positively affected the resilience of the entire company.

“But,” some of them thought, “why should every company build its own server instance? Isn’t there a huge cost-saving potential here?”

This argument had some merit—after all, servers had to be provisioned at full capacity even if they weren’t 100% utilised. One of the companies that operated the most servers at the time—Amazon—then developed a new business model: Why not rent out its own server capacity to other companies?

Amazon, or rather AWS, then developed intelligent protocols that allowed server power to be provisioned on demand. A company that required little server capacity no longer had to rent and maintain an entire server. Large companies, like Deutsche Bahn, could flexibly add server capacity as needed. As a result, they only paid for what they used, saving on the costs of their own server infrastructure, redundancy, and staff.

The Impact of Hyper-Scalers on Our Everyday Lives

Today, hyper-scalers like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud, and Microsoft Azure have become indispensable in our daily lives. Businesses of all sizes rely on them to scale their services globally. Through these platforms, our private chats and video calls, email services, streaming, shopping, the software in our cars and gadgets, gaming, AI, and everything else we do online is powered. But without them, even the business world would grind to a halt: Trains wouldn’t run, supermarkets would close, flights wouldn’t take off, bookings would stop. Few people would be able to pay, shop, refuel, or charge. Entire industries would be paralysed, and logistics would be thrown into chaos. Power outages, emergency operations in hospitals, civil unrest, and chaos could be real consequences.

Conclusion: Distribution = Resilience = Sovereignty

A scenario like the one described above is unlikely—but by no means impossible. The risks are higher than ever:

• Terrorists and state actors have long targeted the (few) undersea internet cables as a potential target for attacks. And the increasingly popular satellite internet, like Starlink, is operated by companies many people don’t trust.
• Cyberattacks can increasingly focus on individual, enormous companies, where the potential damage is much greater. Just in September, cloud provider Salesforce had 1.5 billion customer records stolen.
• Politically and ideologically, trust in the USA is diminishing—but nearly all hyper-scalers are still in American hands. However, the EU is not necessarily a pioneer in decentralised ideas, as recent moves toward chat control show.
• The sovereignty of individuals and businesses over their data is increasingly being questioned. Legislative initiatives, like the EU’s push for chat control, increasingly target the central providers themselves.
• Wars and civil unrest make it more important than ever that we, as a society, are set up to be redundant and resilient.

How decentralised are we still? I see both light and shadow right now: On the one hand, the move towards decentralised services in the cloud has led to a new centralisation—not just of structures but also of providers, who have successfully resisted the creation of an open standard cloud API (for easier switching). As a result, our economy has become highly dependent, and society has become more fragile.

On the other hand, outages like the recent one at AWS, or the one last year at Crowdstrike, are slowly leading to a shift in thinking within business and politics. Digital sovereignty is once again at the forefront of discussions. New providers are emerging, even in Europe (e.g. OVHcloud or the GAIA-X initiative), and new approaches to decentralised IT are being discussed. One can only hope they arrive in time.

In the meantime, however, you should also consider: Where is your business, and even you personally, dependent on central providers? And how can you—at a reasonable economic cost—reduce this dependency (e.g. through a multi-cloud strategy or the use of FOSS and open-source software)?

I’m happy to help you with these questions!

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

We frequently receive calls from entrepreneurs who invest substantial amounts of money each month in Google Ads, social media, or SEO, yet still receive no inquiries.

The key to overcoming this frustration often lies in the conversion optimization of the website. In this article, I will summarise what this entails and what factors need to be considered.

When Do We Speak of “Conversion”?

In the context of SEO and online marketing, the term “conversion” refers to the moment when a passive visitor to a website becomes an active one.

In practice, a conversion can take many forms, depending on the website’s goals. For an online shop, a conversion typically involves a purchase, while for service providers, it may be an inquiry. For associations, a membership application could be the goal of a conversion, and for restaurants, it might be the reservation of a table.

Of course, there are often multiple types of conversions occurring simultaneously. For instance, an online shop may also be interested in users signing up for a newsletter or leaving a product review.

Once a website goes beyond merely providing information, the aim of all optimizations is to achieve the highest possible number of conversions.

The Relationship Between Traffic and Conversions

“Traffic” refers to all visitors who find their way to your website. This can happen in various ways, from search results and Google Ads to social media, advertising, word-of-mouth, and personal conversations.

One of the main mistakes on the internet is the assumption that more visitors automatically lead to more conversions. As a result, disproportionate amounts of money are often spent on advertising and social media, frequently without measurable effect.

While it is essential to have a sufficient number of visitors to attract customers, traffic alone is not enough. It is pointless to enlarge the entrance to your store if visitors do not make any purchases.

Why Visitors Do Not Become Active

To understand how we can optimize the conversion process, we must first examine the reasons why visitors to a website do not take action:

• User Experience (UI/UX): If the website takes too long to load, appears outdated, has unclear user guidance or navigation, or if it is not clear what actions to take, many visitors will leave and seek solutions elsewhere.
• Trust: Trust in the integrity of the provider is crucial for visitors to become active on a website. The absence of trust signals such as references, reviews, and certifications can negatively impact the conversion rate.
• Target Audience Engagement: The most common reason for a lack of conversions is that the content and advertising do not align with the needs, interests, and concerns of the target audience.

The Four Factors of Conversion Optimization

Based on the reasons why visitors do not become active on a website, conversion optimization relies on four main factors:

1. Consistent Focus on the Target Audience

I cannot stress this enough: the target audiences of a website are often overlooked, and it bears repeating. If you were to invest even a fraction of your advertising budget into a thorough target audience analysis, it would pay off immensely.

The result of a target audience analysis is always a so-called “persona,” a clearly defined fictional character that matches the desired customer in terms of gender, age, life situation, etc. However, merely describing the “external” characteristics of this person is not enough. You must also consider the constraints they live under, their fears, desires, hopes, and concerns. This can make a significant difference in how you engage with customers.

For example, the employee of a company searching for your service may not be the one who ultimately approves and pays for it. It could be that the logistics manager is looking for specific software, but the purchase decision will be made by the management. Their interests (work efficiency, cost savings) do not always align with those of the management (e.g., costs for purchase and implementation). Addressing not only the efficiency of your software but also providing the employee with supporting materials like white papers or checklists to present to their superiors can noticeably increase the conversion rate of an offer.

A trend developing worldwide is the “Fear of Messing Up” (in contrast to the previously significant FOMO, the fear of missing out). No one wants to make decisions alone or bear responsibility alone. Alongside financial benefits, it is almost always about minimising risks. Those who keep these points in mind can actively address them in the conversion process and eliminate many stumbling blocks.

2. Optimizing User Experience

In addition to addressing the target audience’s content, conversion optimization also involves improving the user experience. This includes:

• A clear, efficient menu structure of the website
• A technically straightforward checkout or conversion process
• Clear calls to action
• A tidy, user-friendly design
• Optimized loading times (over 40% of visitors leave if the site takes more than 3 seconds to load)
• An accessible, responsive design implementation
• Clear, structured, and varied content

Creating a website is relatively easy. However, optimizing technology and user experience requires significant know-how and practical experience. Here, a web agency can make a real difference.

3. Trust-Building Signals

In interpersonal contact, we have countless subtle cues that help us decide whether to trust someone. This is much more challenging on the internet.

Trust-building signals can significantly enhance the conversion rate. These include:

• References from actual individuals
• Product reviews from other users
• Recognizable seals and relevant awards
• Complete address details and directly reachable personal contacts
• Local, regional landline numbers

Often, especially in e-commerce, a vibrant community and active customer support can also have a noticeably positive impact on the conversion rate.

4. Long-Term Analysis and Measurement of Success

The conversion rate is a central metric used to determine the success of a website. However, it is not always straightforward to define and evaluate. Analysis software like Matomo or Google Analytics can provide valuable insights—if you know what to look for.

The Role of a Web Agency in Conversion Optimization

From target audience analysis to the technical optimization of a website, these points can generally be implemented without an agency, for example, with the help of AI. However, this concerns the core of your business. Personally, I prefer to rely on external experience and expertise when it comes to the heart of our business. Even obtaining a second opinion can be incredibly valuable. Optimizing your website’s conversion rate can yield significant financial returns. Therefore, I invite you to bring in external expertise—experience how more and more visitors become loyal customers.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

AI is dramatically changing the way we search the internet. Website operators must ask themselves: How does SEO work for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others?

How SEO Used to Work

Anyone who is no longer a complete novice to the internet knows how a search used to be conducted: You would enter a search term (in technical jargon: keyword) or a combination of terms into a search engine like Google, Bing, Ecosia, or DuckDuckGo and receive a long list of more or less relevant search results. SEO is the art of optimizing your content for these search queries to rank as high as possible on the list.

There has always been a small group of users who, instead of entering a few keywords like “Hotel Munich,” would input a whole question, such as “Which hotel in Munich is close to the Olympic Center?” However, such queries are relatively rare in traditional searches. We SEO professionals refer to them as “long-tail” search queries, and if you happen to run a hotel near the Olympic Center, considering such search queries could be worthwhile for you.

The Revolution of AI Search Engines and the Importance of GEO / SAIO

With the growing popularity of dedicated AI search engines like Perplexity or the new Google AI, as well as generative AIs like ChatGPT that also search the internet, search behavior is changing.

What is particularly noteworthy is the speed at which this change is occurring. In some analyses and through targeted inquiries with our client websites, we are seeing more than 30-40% of referrals coming from AI search engines—this trend is strongly increasing. This is why optimizing for queries in AI search engines is so relevant, whether you call it GEO (“Generative Engine Optimization”) or SAIO (“Search Artificial Intelligence Optimization”).

The Difference Between Traditional Search and AI Search Engines

There are numerous differences between traditional searches and queries made through AI search engines. Here are some key points:

• Longer Search Queries: Search queries are significantly longer, ranging from 3-5 words in traditional searches to 20+ words in AI queries (without follow-up questions!).
• Optimization Goals: The goal of optimization is no longer to land in the top 3 search results but to gain as many source citations as possible, linking from AI results to your own site. Therefore, it is no longer about ranking in search results or how often you are listed or clicked (measured by the so-called click-per-impression rate), but rather about visibility, positive mentions of your brand, and the clicks that result from them.
• Changing Evaluation and Ranking Factors: AI search engines perceive websites differently. While backlinks, keywords, and traffic were once important factors, today it’s about relevance, source authority, readability, word count, and content freshness.
• Visitor Intent: When visitors click on a link to a website, their intent today is different than before. Previously, they wanted to learn more; now they have already read the important information and want to take targeted action. This also means that the conversion rate for visitors from AI search engines is significantly higher.

Concrete Tips for Successful GEO / SAIO

What follows from these differences for successfully positioning your brand in AI queries? How can you effectively implement good GEO / SAIO?

The Key: What Does the Visitor Need?

We have been preaching this for ages, but regarding AI search engines, the topic gains new relevance: What does the customer search for and need? AI search engines have a much more precise “sense” of this than Google & Co. ever did. It is therefore crucial that your website meets these needs and answers the questions. If it does so in a relevant and high-quality manner, you will be provided with fewer but more targeted and highly motivated visitors.

Relevant and Authoritative Content

To appear as an authority and source for a specific search query in AI search results, it is no longer sufficient to optimize a subpage for one specific keyword. Instead, traditional content marketing approaches come into play: Write truly (!) relevant content! This means:

• Comprehensive Content Covering All Aspects: AIs perceive context. By thoroughly addressing all possible questions and points on a topic, the likelihood of being cited and linked in search queries increases. Dedicated FAQ blocks are also a valuable tool here.
• Smart Website Structure with Pillar and Cluster Content: A structure that works with a “Hub-and-Spoke Model” is much more effective for AI queries, where a comprehensive topic page links to various relevant subpages.
• No Traditional SEO Tricks: Avoid artificially inflating keyword usage to create relevance (“keyword stuffing”) or artificial optimization that offers no value to the visitor.
• Clear, Readable, and Understandable Language.
• Clear Structure on Pages: Organize content with headings, paragraphs, lists, formatting, etc.
• Media and More: Ensure all content is easy to read and process, including media, tables, etc., using alt texts, titles, and captions.
• No AI for Content Creation: This point is still debated, but it seems that AI search engines prefer original, authentically human content over AI-generated content.

Developing a Clear Brand

AIs do not view a website through individual URLs; they also assess the coherence and clarity of statements across all pages. Therefore, it is particularly important for AI search queries to sharpen your brand and communicate consistently and coherently across all channels.

Adapting Your Website for High-Intent Users

As mentioned above, users coming from traditional result lists differ significantly from those directed to your website by an AI search result. The former have little context and visit your site to learn more. The latter have already received the entire context from the AI. If they click through, it indicates that their intent is now focused on taking action.

This means that for conversions on your website, you should place greater emphasis on clear calls to action (CTA) and a smooth transaction process, rather than on basic persuasion.

No Technical Barriers

When the content is appropriate, you must ensure that AI search engines can find and evaluate it. These topics are also found in traditional SEO, but they remain important:

• No exclusion of AI in the robots.txt file
• Clear schema.org specifications on the website
• No client-side JS rendering
• Setting self-referential canonical tags
• Smart internal links with meaningful anchor texts

Looking Beyond Your Own Website

AIs assign authority to a website, but they do so not only based on the content on the website itself but also across the entire internet. This is similar to traditional backlink building but has a different focus. Sources with high authority that AIs prefer to “tap into” include Wikipedia, YouTube, Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Forbes. Many other sources that were traditionally significant for backlinks (e.g., news portals) often exclude AIs from their pages and are therefore less attractive in GEO.

Conclusion and Remaining Questions About GEO / SAIO

The technology of AI search engines is still new, and emerging companies are trying to compete against giants like Google or Microsoft. The entire landscape remains volatile, and one must expect significant changes and disruptions. In particular, it remains to be seen whether and how one will have to pay for mentions in AI search results in the future.

If you have previously oriented yourself to the standard of presenting genuinely visitor-focused, relevant content and an authentic brand, you will likely be less caught off guard by the AI wave. However, if you have relied more on traditional SEO tricks without optimizing content for visitors, it will certainly be more challenging to bridge the gap between impressions and clicks that AI search engines create.

Helpful Resources

For further exploration of the topic, I recommend the excellent checklist by Aleyda Solis [Google Docs].

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

The year 2025 will bring changes. Many of them we do not yet see, some are already visible on the horizon. Here you will find our shortlist of 5 books that may be helpful in navigating new waters.

The new year is already a few weeks old, and I hope you slipped into it well.

I like to use the time between the years to reflect on the past year and consider what went well and whether I should change the direction of the company and my personal life priorities. We all do not know what the future holds. Looking at it soberly, we cannot even control the next half hour of our lives—no matter how much we want to ignore this fact. And yet, some developments for 2025 can be anticipated that may influence our lives and the life of our company.

The following selection of books is meant to inspire you and provide a small insight into what will occupy us as a company in 2025. Feel free to write to me at kontakt@netjutant.de to share your thoughts on the list and which books you would recommend!

Note: This is a translation of my German article “5 Bücher für das Jahr 2025”. Some of the books mentioned are not available in English. But where applicable, I have changed the titles to the English edition and updated the relevant informations.

Inga Strümke: Artificial Intelligence

The topic of Artificial Intelligence is now an integral part of our daily lives. It is present everywhere, from our personal mobile phones to the services we use, the information we consume, and processes at the workplace. Everything is already permeated by AI or will be in the foreseeable future. And as technological progress has repeatedly brought about in humanity, AI will also fundamentally change our living and working environments.

Many people do not even know what AI actually is or how it works. What one does not know can be frightening. And fear is rarely a good advisor, especially not for entrepreneurs. I believe that the latter must engage with the topic to avoid being left behind someday.

The book by Inga Strümke, which was a number one bestseller in Norway and is now available in German, helps to understand AI and competently address its impacts—both good and not so good. The author, as a physicist and AI expert at NTNU in Trondheim and the Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering in Oslo, is uniquely positioned to treat the subject comprehensively and professionally, without falling into the traps of either doomsayers or blind tech enthusiasts. I personally appreciate her calm style in explaining complex issues clearly. I also like that she seems to be a nature-connected and down-to-earth person for whom technology and progress are not the only measures of value. The book reflects the sober clarity that many Norwegians possess, especially those who go ice climbing.

Title: Artificial Intelligence – How It Works and What It Means for Us
Author: Inga Strümke
Publisher: Rheinwerk Computing
ISBN: 978-3-367-10289-1

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Skin in the Game

It is foreseeable that the year 2025 will be a year of political upheavals. Not only in Germany are elections approaching, but new governments are also coming to power in Austria, the USA, France, and many other nations.

That I personally resonate with many thoughts and ideas of the Lebanese-American author Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been clear since my article on antifragility. In his work “Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life”, he reflects on the human tendency to shift risk onto others and to minimize personal accountability for one’s own decisions and actions. He finds this tendency everywhere, from politics to economics and even in private life. He identifies it as one of the central problems of human orders and societies.

When we are led by decision-makers who have no “skin in the game,” meaning they do not have to bear personal responsibility for their decisions, it has severe negative consequences. Not least, the decisions made become worse and make a society increasingly fragile. What incentives should companies that are “too big to fail,” and thus can be rescued by taxpayers in emergencies, have for responsible management? What incentives should politicians have who do not have to be accountable for their decisions? What is still taken for granted by ordinary citizens—personal mistakes must be paid for—becomes less and less self-evident the higher one rises in a hierarchy.

This book also had a significant influence on the way I structured Netjutant as a company. Do I exclude personal liability through the legal form of “limited” (liability) or do I see it as a way to make better and more sustainable decisions? I recommend everyone to engage with these questions, but of course especially those who want to take on responsibility themselves.

Title: Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 978-0425284643

Daniel Büscher: TRUE PERSONAL BETTER BRANDING

Daniel Büscher is one of my great role models when it comes to design and authentic marketing.

Many people associate marketing with something rather unsympathetic: self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, arrogance, and pretense. That it can also be different is shown by my colleague Daniel Büscher, who is much more than “just” a designer, in his small book “TRUE PERSONAL BETTER BRANDING.” It is not a book in the classical sense, but rather a collection of thoughts and impulses on the topic of identity and personal branding. It is aimed at anyone dealing with so-called “personal brands,” meaning those who want to present themselves as a brand to the public.

What applies even more strongly here than for corporate brands is that authenticity is key. However, it is often not so easy to find the core of one’s own personality and communicate it authentically. What moves me? Why do I do what I do? Where do I want to go? How can I best serve humanity (and my customers)? How do I present myself so that these things come across authentically and clearly? Daniel Büscher takes the reader on a small journey of discovery into their own motivations, ultimately connecting it back to marketing—real, authentic, and honest marketing.

Title: TRUE PERSONAL BETTER BRANDING – Identity as the Key to a Strong Personal Brand
Author: Daniel Büscher
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 978-3-7347-8444-6

Wolfgang Schur / Günther Weick: Sales Tales

This book is somewhat older, but still valuable for anyone who needs to sell something professionally. But not just for that. Sales can be found in one form or another everywhere in life, and not without reason does Zig Ziglar say about sales: “Sales is the greatest life school there is. It teaches us how to deal with people, how to listen, and how to recognize the needs of others.”

In their book, sales professionals Wolfgang Schur and Günther Weick present the 20 biggest misconceptions about sales, from the mistaken belief that money is made in sales, to the statement “A good product sells itself,” to the realization that one never really knows 100% what drives the most important customers.

The authors do this in their typical—and personally very appealing—style, which can also be found in many of their other (also very readable) books: wrapped in a framing story that reads like a novel. The art of storytelling greatly aids in processing and storing important information. It is all the more surprising that so few professional books make use of this.

If you have always wanted to dive deeper into the world of sales and become better at selling, you will surely uncover valuable treasures in this book.

Title: Sales Tales – The 20 Biggest Misconceptions About Sales
Authors: Wolfgang Schur, Günther Weick
Publisher: Eichborn
ISBN: 3-8218-5602-5

Tristan Gooley: How to Read Nature

This book is somewhat out of the ordinary. What is a book about nature and its hidden signs doing on the reading list of an internet agency?

Before you think we are drifting into esotericism, please stay with me for a moment! The thought behind this book suggestion is as follows: I—and all of us here in the Netjutant cosmos—spend practically the entire workday at the computer, shifting pixels, and yet in the end, we rarely hold a tangible result in our hands. Almost everything is digital. And it’s not just us. All our lives are becoming increasingly digital and are drifting further away from the physical, tangible world. I am convinced that we need to actively counter this in our private lives to avoid falling into gloom and depression. It is no coincidence that these psychological side effects, as well as obesity, media addiction, and bullying, are spreading further in our society.

This is where this book suggestion comes in. We have unlearned the art of observation as humans. We can no longer deduce the weather from the clouds in the sky. We can no longer determine directions, and we can’t read terrain features, water surfaces, or vegetation—why should we? There’s an app for everything… Tristan Gooley takes us into nature and makes us aware of everything it wants to communicate to us. All we need for this is time, leisure, and observation. However, all three of these things are real luxuries nowadays. I want to encourage you to indulge in this luxury.

Title: How to Read Nature : Awaken Your Senses to the Outdoors You’ve Never Noticed
Author: Tristan Gooley
Publisher: Experiment
ISBN: 978-1-61519-429-2

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

A little anecdote from everyday life – about why tinkering helps you progress and why it’s still good to know a professional who is ready to assist with questions.

Small but Loyal

My clients know this vehicle. They often find it amusing how old and battered I appear, much like the famous “Inspector Columbo.” Not exactly representative of a successful company, and certainly not of a modern internet agency. It is, after all, an Audi, but a tiny A2, and it has now surpassed the 20-year mark. By no means a status symbol, but I love the car. It’s not as easy to repair as a Beetle, but much simpler than the modern computers you find on the roads today. With a large sunroof, a practically stowable back seat, and unbeatable low maintenance costs, it’s no beauty anymore, and it never was. However, it is a practical little vehicle. If you want, you can even fit a whole 2-meter mattress inside and comfortably sleep on the way to vacation – with a view of the starry sky included!

But this morning, not much was working. It’s Advent season – the days are getting shorter, and the nights colder. Last night, the thermometer dropped to -8 degrees. Too low for the old battery of my trusty little car. It finally gave up this morning.

The Tinkerers Own the World

So off to get a new battery. I was sure I could handle the installation myself. That would be a laugh. I’m not a born handyman, but I’m not completely inexperienced either, and I’m blessed with a healthy curiosity. Why call a professional for everything when you can tinker with it yourself and maybe learn something new in the process? The important thing with the battery is to pay attention to the order. Disconnect black first, then red, to avoid a short circuit – and later reconnect in reverse order. Secure it well, insert the vent hose, that sounds doable. The tinkerers own the world.

So, I got to work. Everything went like clockwork. Unscrew the bracket, disconnected the old battery and wrestleed it out, then put in the new battery and reconnected the terminals. And then it happened: I couldn’t get the plate that was supposed to hold the battery in place screwed in all the way. Something was stuck. So, I took the bracket out again to check. Compared it with the old battery, but everything looked the same. The bracket has two small notches that should snap into the recesses on the side of the battery. So, I wiggled the battery slightly back and forth, tried again – but the bracket wouldn’t secure. Out again, wiggle again, maybe try with force (after all, it was still around the freezing point)? Nothing helped. The battery was back in and properly connected, the radio was already working again. But it wasn’t secure.

What do you do in such a situation? First, Google it. But it wasn’t easy to describe the problem accurately. “Battery bracket won’t go back in”? Frustration rises. Maybe I’m not as skilled as I thought. But the problem remained. Ignoring it is not a good idea, as an unsecured battery can get damaged more quickly. On the other hand, I have enough else to do, and spending hours tinkering with the car is not an efficient solution for me. I would much rather develop creative things for our clients, something I really can do well.

He Who Doesn’t Ask, Doesn’t Win

In the end, I went back to the workshop – at least already with a functioning car. I explained my problem to the mechanic, and he, who had surely changed thousands of batteries in his life, knew within seconds what the issue was: Batteries are delivered new with small strips on the sides that are attached to the ledge where the bracket should snap in. Apparently, some manufacturers require a higher ledge, while others need a narrower one. The only problem was that the strips were the same color and had the same recesses as the factory ledge. So this clever solution (in the past, there were different batteries for different manufacturers) was practically unrecognizable to the layperson.

After 5 minutes, I had pried out the strips, and the bracket snapped in exactly as intended.

And the Moral of the Story

What do we learn from all this? I’m not talking about batteries here. I’m generally addressing the question of how much one can and should do oneself.

Many think that creating a website or writing texts for the internet is not that complicated; they can manage it themselves. And they are right – for the most part! Even if you don’t have 20 years of experience and have built hundreds of large and small websites, you can get quite far in this area and teach yourself most of it. And I want to encourage you – feel free to try it out! You can only benefit and expand your knowledge.

But what do you do when faced with tricky questions? When your website doesn’t rank well on Google? Or when you’re not sure if everything you’re building is legally compliant? Or if you need a special function that is giving you a headache?

I want to offer you this: Feel free to reach out to us with your concerns, just as I naturally went to the expert when I didn’t know what to do. We are happy to help you and will stand by you even if you – for whatever reason – do not want to take advantage of the full service that other clients enjoy with us.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

“Germany is on the decline” – such statements can now even be heard in the wealthy Chiemgau region. But we would not be entrepreneurs if we did not also see an opportunity in this situation. Or, as the Chinese say: It is a good time to fish in troubled waters.

Challenges in the Chiemgau and Southeast Bavaria

The Chiemgau, particularly the Traunstein district, but generally the entire Southeast Bavaria region, is one of the wealthiest regions in Germany. We are not only blessed with beautiful nature, which provides us with a strong tourism sector. The region also has many small and larger companies that have been growing for generations – as well as young companies that produce the latest innovations at a global level. All of this makes the Chiemgau an attractive place for businesses and their employees.

And yet, in conversations with entrepreneurs and among friends, there is an increasing feeling that we have already passed our peak. Wars in our neighborhood and the sense of powerlessness that comes with it. Climate alarmism and concrete weather disasters everywhere. The cost of living is rising ever higher, as are labor costs, insurance, and taxes… only wages are stagnating. Companies are being crushed by ever-new waves of bureaucracy and EU regulations. On top of that, there is the transformation of the economy, driven by politics or new technologies like artificial intelligence, which make old business models and solutions unprofitable. All of this has an impact on society and on people. Entrepreneurs are not immune to such gloomy thoughts either.

The 20th Stratagem: 混 水 摸 魚 (“Hun Shui Mo Yu”)

In Chinese culture and society, a collection of 36 “stratagems” has become deeply rooted. These stratagems, or “lists,” are short phrases that are backed by numerous anecdotes and long-held wisdom. They are meant to open up possible courses of action for people in crisis situations to still reach a desired goal. Most people in the West are unfamiliar with these stratagems, and some of the ruses may even seem directly unethical to Western ears. However, there is still much to learn from many of them – if only to be able to defend against them. For those who want to delve deeper into the Chinese stratagems, I recommend the book by Harro von Senger: “The Book of Stratagems – Tactics for Triumph and Survival.”

However, I would like to focus a bit more on Stratagem number 20, as I believe it has much to say to us currently. It is called 混 水 摸 魚 (“Hun Shui Mo Yu” – “Catch Fish in Troubled Waters”), or translated into understandable English: “Fishing in Troubled Waters.” The idea behind the stratagem is that it can be worthwhile to cast a line in chaos and opaque situations. Because fish often bite when the water is murky. The Chinese even go so far as to use the murkiness of the water, that is, the deliberate creation of chaos, to their advantage. This last interpretation of the stratagem is often used by politicians who want to catch disoriented voters behind a fog of trivial statements. I personally consider this application of the stratagem to be shortsighted, dangerous, and inauthentic in most situations.

But the first interpretation is, I am convinced, correct and important, especially for entrepreneurs, also (but not only) in the Chiemgau. Chaos is not necessarily a disadvantage. Those who manage to use chaos to their advantage can also survive difficult economic times.

Using Chaos to Your Advantage

How can one use chaos to their advantage? The first insight is that chaos usually does not last forever. During the Covid pandemic, for example, there were two opposing reactions in the Bavarian hospitality and gastronomy sectors, which were particularly affected by the virus. Some scaled back their operations, essentially conserving themselves for better times. Others used the time to invest, for instance in their website, search engine optimization, social media, and marketing. They built a strong brand while they had the time to do so. And they are benefiting from it today.

A second way to leverage chaos is to take the opportunity to look beyond the horizon and perhaps explore new business areas. Much that was previously perceived as a threat could then become a significant opportunity. An example of this is artificial intelligence. It will disrupt work and business life like few technologies have before. The first effects are already visible. But viewed optimistically, AI also offers many unforeseen opportunities and possibilities, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, of which we have so many in the Chiemgau.

A third way to fish in chaos is through building strong networks. In a community of like-minded and well-meaning individuals, one is significantly safer and better anchored than without such a network. Local initiatives play a role here, as does clear communication with customers and involving employees in internal processes. How often do we see that the problems of a company are already clear to all employees, but management only learns about them when it is too late?

And fourth, chaos is not just chaos. In chaos, those who succeed in the long term will be the ones who can distinguish between information and noise. Those who maintain a clear head even in vague situations because they apply heuristics (rules of thumb) that are timeless and well-founded. Here, a solid historical education and a clear moral compass play a significant role.

The Value of an Internet Agency

In all four areas—sustainable investment in a strong brand, exploring new business fields, building strong networks, and distinguishing between information and noise—we would be happy to be your sparring partner! Our clients, mostly entrepreneurs themselves, greatly appreciate exchanging ideas in an open brainstorming session and clarifying important questions regarding the internet and new technologies, as well as dispelling uncertainties.

And not infrequently, concrete ideas emerge from these discussions on how to advance one’s own business. Not despite the currently unclear global situation—but precisely because of it! Only in this way can one preserve what has proven effective while simultaneously breaking free from old and entrenched habits and ways of thinking that can quickly take hold in companies.

Don’t bury your head in the sand because of the uncertainty around you! Instead, seize the opportunities that lie within it and fish in troubled waters! This way, you will still catch plenty of fish tomorrow.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

Over 40% of websites on the internet run on WordPress. But WordPress is not the only solution for building websites—and often not the best one. Additionally, I often receive questions about good alternatives, especially after the recent drama surrounding WP Engine and ACF. Here, I present three alternative solutions, along with their pros and cons: one for a small website, one for a medium-sized site, and one for a large website.

This list is a selection I make subjectively based on my previous experiences. What is excluded from this selection are so-called website builders. They may be an alternative for the blogging system WordPress.com, but not a real alternative to the CMS system WordPress, primarily due to their subscription billing system. A website builder that ties you to a provider and requires regular payments to keep the website online is not an alternative to a free system that allows you to switch easily from one web hosting provider to another.

And I will write a separate article on the topic of online shops at some point. It is amazing how far you can get with free plugins for WordPress (WooCommerce, Germanized for WooCommerce)—but of course, there are also good alternatives here.

Pros and Cons of WordPress

As a tool for creating websites, WordPress is undoubtedly one of the best options currently available. Even people who usually do not have much to do with web development and programming can quickly and easily build a modern website with WordPress. Whether it’s a small web business card or a huge online shop—technically, you can build anything with it, and at a very low cost, since the core system and most of what you really need can be found for free, thanks to the open-source philosophy and its licenses. However, the system is not equally well-suited for all use cases, and a professional web developer makes a significant difference when it comes to the security, stability, and performance of a WordPress website.

Advantages of WordPress

• User-friendliness, Block Editor: WordPress is easy to use, even for beginners. The well-thought-out and now mature block editor Gutenberg allows for intuitive creation and editing also of complex layouts.
• Flexibility and Customizability: With thousands of themes and plugins, WordPress can be easily tailored to the specific needs and design of a website—and in many cases, completely for free. It is therefore very rare that you need to develop a function yourself for WordPress.
• SEO-friendly: WordPress offers many built-in features and plugins that make achieving a good ranking in search engines much easier. This includes, for example, media management, which automatically takes a lot of work off the user’s hands, from alt texts to the correct image sizes. Plugins like RankMath also provide an incredible number of important SEO functions even in their free version.
• Large Community, Future-proof: WordPress has a huge community of developers and users who provide support, create tutorials, and regularly develop new plugins and themes. Because everyone is familiar with WordPress, this also increases independence from individual agencies. The large community is a guarantee that the development of WordPress will not suddenly stop, leaving you in the lurch with your website.

Disadvantages of WordPress

• Security Risks / Maintenance Effort: Due to its popularity, WordPress is a frequent target for hackers. It is important and takes time, experience, and money to perform regular updates and implement security measures. However, the process of applying updates is well and efficiently solved in WordPress through extensive automation.
• Many External Plugins Required: To operate a website securely and well, WordPress requires a much larger number of external plugins than other systems. This increases maintenance effort and dependence on third-party providers, lowering the security and integrity of the overall system.
• Performance: Most themes and many plugins are overloaded with features. It takes a lot of experience and know-how to build a website with WordPress that not only looks good but also loads quickly and is optimally positioned for both users and search engines.

WordPress Alternative for Small Websites: Automad

For those who want to create a small website with only a few subpages and no special functions, WordPress is essentially too large even in its basic version without extensions. What does such a website really need in terms of functions?

• A type of editor to adjust content (also for SEO)
• A function to add and embed media
• A system that combines and delivers content and layout
• Possibly a caching system to speed up page delivery

Such a system does not really need a relational database or a sophisticated user management system. And already two of the four conditions can only be solved in WordPress through external plugins (SEO and caching). Additionally, the high maintenance effort for WordPress seems exaggerated in relation to the size and importance of the website.

Our WordPress alternative for such small websites is the CMS Automad. Automad is a lean and powerful flat-file content management system that does not require a database and instead stores content in text files. It offers an intuitive user interface with a block editor and an editing mode that allows you to adjust text directly on the website itself. Both features make creating and managing website content particularly easy. Automad is extendable through numerous plugins but already offers advanced functions in its core system, such as search, tagging, and a multi-layer caching system for optimal performance. For us as an agency, Automad is interesting because the creation and maintenance effort of an optimized Automad website is much lower than that of a WordPress website.

Advantages of Automad Compared to WordPress

• Easy Installation and Maintenance: Automad does not require a database; all content is stored in text files. This significantly simplifies installation and maintenance.
• User Experience: The user experience in Automad is similar to that of WordPress, although not quite as smooth and refined. With the in-page editor, an Automad website can be edited directly on the website itself, which WordPress only allows through external plugins.
• High Performance: With a multi-layer caching system, Automad is very fast, even on limited hardware (e.g., in a “normal,” inexpensive hosting contract).
• Security: As a flat-file CMS without a database, Automad is less susceptible to hacker attacks.
• Multilingual Support: Multilingual functionality works in the core system of Automad, while WordPress requires (somewhat cumbersome or expensive) extensions for this.

Disadvantages of Automad Compared to WordPress

• Lower Popularity: Automad has been around since 2014, and the community is very active again after a brief hiatus. Therefore, it is unlikely to disappear from the scene. However, Automad is much less known than WordPress, leading to a smaller community and fewer available extensions—and fewer agencies that are familiar with this system.
• Limited User Rights: Without a database, detailed rights management for different users is not easily possible. However, this is not really necessary for a small website.

A Static Website as an Alternative Without a CMS

In the previous suggestion, I assumed that a client is not familiar with HTML but still wants to edit their small website’s content themselves. This is the only reason to use a content management system like Automad or WordPress. If content editing by the client is not desired (and not foreseeable in the future), it might be worth considering a purely static website consisting solely of HTML and CSS (and possibly some JavaScript) for small websites. Such a site is not vulnerable to hackers, loads extremely quickly, is (if done well) also optimally configured for SEO, and the regular maintenance effort is completely eliminated due to the lack of a system to maintain.

WordPress Alternative for Medium-Sized Websites: Contao

In principle, Automad is also suitable for medium-sized websites that need to manage more subpages. Contact forms or multilingual support are also possible with Automad. A classic use case would be a company website that provides content in German and English.

It becomes interesting when the following functions are additionally required:

• Extensive Media Management: The website should incorporate many different or variously sized media (photos, videos, etc.).
• Relational Content: The website should include a blog system or a database with various similar but individually configurable entries (hotel rooms, rental cars, etc.).
• User Management: The website should allow for the creation and management of different users and user groups.

In this case, Automad is not ideally suited. Here, a “classic” medium-sized CMS is recommended. In our opinion, the best alternative to WordPress is Contao.

Contao is a powerful, page-based content management system that features an intuitive user interface and flexible design options. It offers a central page structure, extensive editing functions, and a detailed rights system, making it suitable for both small websites and large corporate projects. Contao is characterized by its accessibility, SEO-friendliness, and integrated modules such as calendar, news/blog, and newsletter, and it is customizable for nearly every requirement thanks to numerous extension options.

Advantages of Contao Compared to WordPress

• Functionality in the Base Version: Both Contao and WordPress are open-source and free to use, but Contao has many central functions integrated into its core system that are only available in WordPress through external plugins (editable user roles, multilingual support, news, etc.).
• Better Performance: With large amounts of data and high visitor traffic, Contao is more powerful than WordPress, especially (and particularly) for more complex websites with many functions.
• Higher Security: Contao is considered more secure than WordPress, partly because significantly fewer hackers are interested in the system, but also because far fewer external functions and extensions are needed.
• Multilingual Support: Like Automad, Contao has multilingual functionality built into its core system, while WordPress requires (somewhat cumbersome or expensive) extensions for this.
• Long-Term Support and Data Protection: Contao has a large community, especially in Germany. The system places a high focus on data protection. Additionally, it offers four years of support for a program version (LTS), providing more planning security than WordPress.

Disadvantages of Contao Compared to WordPress

• Missing Block Editor: Contao does not have a block editor, which some might consider an advantage. We believe that the modular integration of content elements in Contao is a good (perhaps even better) alternative to the block editor in WordPress. However, we have found that users may initially struggle with this.
• Distribution: Significantly fewer agencies are well-versed in Contao, which may make it somewhat harder to find a replacement agency if you are not satisfied with your current one.

Another Good Alternative: Drupal

Drupal is one of the oldest and most well-known CMS alternatives to WordPress, but it is by no means outdated. The Drupal community is exceptionally active and creative, and the system remains one of the most robust and best systems for larger website projects. Drupal primarily showcases its strengths in large and very extensive projects (see there), but it should also be kept in mind as an option for medium-sized projects, especially when there is a possibility that the website will be expanded and developed with new features in the future.

WordPress Alternatives for Very Large Websites: Directus or Drupal

Both Contao and especially Drupal, which we have already encountered for medium-sized websites, are fundamentally suitable for large web projects. I define a large web project here as websites with thousands of subpages, complex database structures, complex user management, or unusual special functions.

However, a particular requirement brings us into a new area of web development: the condition that a system must maintain content for multiple applications simultaneously. A classic use case is a website and a smartphone app that should both be maintained and edited from the same user interface. In this case, it makes little sense to build complex parallel structures. A similar requirement, which is also not uncommon, is that content from several other systems should converge in one system and be edited there. A use case here could be an app for a tourism region, where content (e.g., about hiking trails, events, weather forecasts, etc.) from different providers flows into one system and should be delivered to the app from there.

In such scenarios, a “classic” CMS like Contao reaches its limits. This is where the territory of headless systems like Directus or CMS like Drupal begins.

Headless Architecture Explained

While in a traditional CMS the so-called “frontend” (the interface that a visitor sees, e.g., the website) and the “backend” (the layer where the data resides and logic is executed) are combined in one system, they are separated in a “headless” architecture. In this model, the backend communicates via APIs (e.g., REST or GraphQL) with one or more different frontend applications, such as a website, a smartphone app, and an interface for smartwatches. This separation allows for greater flexibility, as developers can design and update the frontend independently of the backend without affecting the entire infrastructure. Additionally, individual components can be swapped out during operation without needing to renew the entire architecture. Furthermore, content and functions can be consistently provided across different channels, enhancing the user experience.

The combination possibilities in a headless scenario are endless. Theoretically, one could also connect a system like Drupal (or WordPress – or even Automad!) to a smartphone app via an API and operate it either completely headless or dual with a connected website that is directly fed by the CMS.

Advantages of Directus over WordPress

• Complete Freedom: Directus is designed to integrate and make editable content from various sources and structures within the system. The database structure can be completely customized. Custom content types and fields are endlessly expandable.
• API Integrated: WordPress also has an API that allows access to the content. However, this API is limited and does not automatically adapt to individually created fields, content types, and database fields.
• User Management: Just as content can be managed individually, users and their permissions can also be managed. This is only possible in WordPress through plugins and then only very limited compared to Directus and similar systems.
• Performance: WordPress is neither designed for large websites with many contents and/or user interactions, nor is it performant at such scales. This also decreases the quality of the individual user experience and the attractiveness for search engines.
• Price: Depending on the requirements, some functions are not covered by WordPress extensions and must be purchased at a high cost. Often, these functions are already available in Directus or easy to add.
• Security: Directus is significantly more secure than WordPress and is also less frequently targeted by hacker attacks.
• Division of Labor: Different teams can work on the backend and frontend. Additionally, one of the two can be replaced or a new one added at any time without affecting the other.

Disadvantages of Directus Compared to WordPress

• Infrastructure: A headless architecture is inherently a bit more complex and expensive than a standalone CMS. For the installation and operation of Directus, one cannot use a standard hosting package, for example.
• Frontend: Developing custom frontend solutions can be more labor-intensive than creating a WordPress website. However, this is also inherent to the nature of the task, as these solutions are rarely one-size-fits-all and must meet very individual requirements (e.g., field staff app).
• Block Editor: Directus does not have a block editor, which makes creating more complex layouts and nesting more difficult there.

Conclusion

Which solution is ideal for you and your project can only be determined together in discussion. This choice depends on the desired features, medium-term planning, and overall online strategy. WordPress is not the best solution for every case, even though it still has many advantages that make it the most well-known and widely used CMS in the world.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions regarding this article. You can reach us by phone, via email, on LinkedIn, or through Instagram.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

WordPress is a system that enables millions of people to easily and quickly build websites. We also use WordPress for many of our client projects. But behind the scenes, something is brewing, and we wonder: should we still use WordPress this way?

To explain this, I need to elaborate:

What is WordPress?

Most people who have ever dealt with websites are familiar with WordPress. It is a widely used blogging and content management system (CMS) that allows users to easily and flexibly create and manage websites. It was launched in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little and has since become one of the most popular platforms for web development. The company Automattic, founded by Mullenweg, plays a central role in the ongoing development of WordPress and offers numerous services related to the platform, including hosting and premium plugins.

One reason for the widespread use of WordPress is its user-friendliness, which allows even less technically skilled individuals to create and edit appealing websites. Over time, thanks to the work of thousands of developers, a vast selection of themes and plugins has emerged that expand the functionality and design of websites. The community around WordPress is very active and contributes to the continuous improvement and updating of the system. This flexibility and constant development have led to over 40% of all websites on the internet being powered by WordPress today.

A Blog System or a CMS?

Initially, WordPress was developed as a simple platform for creating blogs. Many fundamental features that characterize a modern content management system (custom content types and fields, multilingualism, clearly defined user roles, etc.) are still missing today. While all these functionalities exist in very good extensions, the fact that they are not included by default makes it difficult to distinguish between a blogging platform and a full-fledged CMS in WordPress.

Therefore, it is particularly important not to underestimate the significance of plugins in WordPress. Plugins are extensions to the system, mostly created and maintained by independent developers in their spare time. They are just as much a part of the WordPress ecosystem as those who provide translations or documentation, fix bugs, and promote WordPress. This ecosystem, the vast global community, is the main reason why WordPress has been so successful and is used for a wide range of purposes, from personal blogs to complex corporate websites.

Open Source and the Importance of “Giving Back”

The WordPress community, like the world of open source in general, is based on the belief that everyone benefits when they invest their time and talents for the public good. Previously, a group of developers (e.g., in a company) was paid to develop a system, and this system was then sold at a high price. In this resulting proprietary software, the source code is not publicly accessible, and its use, modification, and distribution are restricted by licensing agreements. In this model, a company or organization controls the development and distribution of the software, often leading to higher costs for users, potential security issues, or limited adaptability.

Open source, on the other hand, is based on the openness of the source code, allowing anyone to use, modify, and share the software. This transparency fosters collaborative development, where developers worldwide work together to improve the software. The benefits for participants include the opportunity to enhance their skills and save costs, while the general public benefits from innovation, competition, and digital sovereignty. Overall, open source strengthens the community and enables broader access to high-quality software solutions.

WordPress is also open source. Anyone can view, copy, modify, and publish its source code under the same conditions. At the same time, WordPress, with its global significance, is a field where a lot of money can also be made. From hosting companies to plugin developers who release paid pro versions with more features, to creatives and companies like us that earn their living by creating (among other things) WordPress websites.

The “Five for the Future” Program

Open source projects thrive on the active participation of their community. Moral considerations of fairness dictate that those who benefit the most from the projects should be particularly encouraged to contribute. This can happen through the investment of time and skills (e.g., for development and documentation) or in the form of financial support and donations. You are probably familiar with the annual donation banners on Wikipedia. This is the idea: the project itself is freely accessible and sustained by thousands. But the millions who benefit from it can and should contribute a small amount in return.

For WordPress, there is the “Five for the Future” program. It encourages companies, developers, and individuals to invest five percent of their working time or resources into the development and support of WordPress. The goal is to promote the sustainability and growth of the WordPress ecosystem by actively involving the community in improving the software and its features. However, it is noteworthy that only contributions to the WordPress core system itself are counted, not the countless hours that people invest in the development, maintenance, documentation, and translation of plugins. This is important to keep in mind.

The Drama Begins: Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine

After this somewhat lengthy introduction, we begin to describe the current drama. Two influential protagonists in the WordPress world play a role here. On one side is the company WP Engine, which was founded in 2010 and primarily earns its money through WordPress hosting. Additionally, it released a plugin called “Advanced Custom Fields” (ACF), which makes WordPress a true CMS by allowing the easy integration of custom content types and fields. For this plugin, WP Engine offers a paid pro plugin with extended functionality, but even the free basic version is exceptionally well programmed and sufficient for most use cases.

On the other side of the drama stands Matt Mullenweg, the founder and one of the leading figures of WordPress. He has long been troubled by the fact that venture capitalists have invested in WP Engine, whose main focus, in his opinion, is on quick profits rather than the sustainable development of the WordPress ecosystem. He has accused WP Engine of not paying for the commercial trademarks of WordPress and WooCommerce and generally not doing enough for WordPress, especially not within the framework of the “Five for the Future” initiative. He demands from WP Engine 8% of their revenue or 8% of their developers’ working time for the WordPress core (or a combination of both amounting to 8%), as well as the cessation of what he considers unlawful business practices.

ACF Becomes SCF

In the course of this feud (legal claims have already been exchanged), and to emphasize his demands against WP Engine, access to WordPress.org, the official WordPress platform through which security updates for almost all plugins, including ACF, have been running, was recently cut off for the developers of WP Engine. Millions of ACF users suddenly had no way to receive security updates from WP Engine. The developers were not given the opportunity to officially inform them or provide alternative update paths.

In a second step, Mullenweg went even further and simply seized the ACF plugin from WP Engine—under the pretext of security concerns, as no security updates could be applied anymore (how could they?). On WordPress.org, instead of the previous plugin “Advanced Custom Fields,” there is now only a plugin called “Secure Custom Fields,” with exactly the same functionality as the previous ACF, even with the same formatting and the ACF logo in the banner. Instead of developing a fork (which is common in the open source world) and starting from scratch, Automattic has simply seized one of the most well-known (and in our opinion, best) plugins. This is a unique occurrence not only in the WordPress world.

Just the Beginning?

Statements from Mullenweg suggest that the seizing of ACF may not be the end, but rather the beginning of a larger initiative to integrate popular plugins with essential CMS functions into the WordPress core at some point. Why develop everything anew when the code is freely available? But these are speculations.

It is evident to us that Mullenweg and Automattic are now carrying the conflict on the backs of helpless users and creating a terrible precedent that has nothing to do with the idea of free code. Who would still have an interest in investing their time, skills, and effort into a plugin, only to be effectively expropriated overnight in the event of success? The impact of such an action on the WordPress ecosystem is unpredictable.

What’s Next for Us and Our Customers?

As an agency, we currently find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. We have happily used the ACF plugin as one of the best and most helpful plugins for WordPress and have, of course, implemented it in client projects. We cannot confirm that the quality or support for these plugins has suffered since venture capitalists invested in WP Engine in 2018—in fact, quite the opposite. However, due to the changes at WordPress.org, the ACF plugin has now been automatically replaced overnight in all our projects with Automattic’s SCF alternative.

This change does not have immediate acute effects, and we are closely monitoring the situation. Personally, I expect that the SCF plugin will be integrated into the WordPress core in the medium term—but that is pure speculation. We are offering our clients the option to switch back to the original ACF plugin for free, for which there are now alternative update options available. However, because the developments are still too fresh and we do not know how everything will evolve, we are currently (still) not explicitly recommending this step, although such a switch would be principled and a form of protest for some.

We deeply regret these developments and are considering what this means for us as an agency. WordPress is by no means the only system we use for client projects. The specific system used in each case always depends primarily on what our clients need. However, we are keeping an eye on developments in the WordPress ecosystem, and it is likely that alternatives to WordPress will be used more frequently in the future than before.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

In 1970, the magazine “Astronautics & Aeronautics” published an eight-part article series titled “What Made Apollo a Success.” In it, leading NASA personnel describe the principles that brought humans to the Moon. We can also learn a lot from this. Part 3: The Team.

Review

In the first part, we looked at how the technology for the Apollo moon missions was developed and which points were crucial. The second part highlighted the role of thorough mission planning and NASA’s criteria for it. But the entire project would have been completely useless and impossible without the people behind it. The astronauts who were personally in space. But also the ground crews, the staff in the control center, the engineers, scientists, mathematicians, IT specialists, craftsmen, doctors, and the countless other helpers across America. Everyone had their place in this massive undertaking and contributed with their talents to make it a success.

My goal with this article is not to provide an introduction to team building, crew resource management, or employee motivation in general. Experts in these fields can certainly do that better. However, I still want to briefly highlight what was important to NASA in the selection and training of their crews and consider how we can transfer that to IT projects.

A Strong Team is Formed

At the beginning of the Apollo project, it was determined which suppliers and employees NASA wanted to engage for this great undertaking. The selection was primarily focused on the professional and personal qualifications of those involved. With Apollo, the boundaries of human experience and knowledge were pushed. Relying on companies and employees who were not optimally qualified for their jobs would have been dangerous and foolish.

What criteria do you use to select your employees and those you surround yourself with? The answer to this question certainly depends on the significance of the project. If you want to build a house or have a tumor removed, you will not assign these tasks to people who are not perfectly knowledgeable. And what about your website?

As an agency, we find ourselves in the same situation. Our business model is based on not building a large full-service agency with numerous permanent employees, but rather assembling agile and professional teams that can look very different depending on the client and their requirements. We believe that this way we can provide our clients with the best and most cost-effective service without compromising on quality. Everyone we assign to our client projects is a professional in their field and has excellent qualifications. Because we are convinced that the website remains the cornerstone of a successful online presence. And accordingly, we carefully select our collaborators.

Gemini, or: The Importance of Experience

Project Apollo did not arise in a vacuum. For many years, the USA had been in competition with the Soviet Union for the conquest of space. So it is not surprising that both ground and flight crews had already gained some experience when it came to how a moon mission could look and what qualifications were necessary. And the list is impressive.

The astronauts were all trained and experienced fighter pilots, and most of them had already completed at least one space flight with Gemini. They were trained in the operation and development of computers, in navigation (both computer-assisted and manual), in controlling two different spacecraft in various flight phases and behavior patterns, in operating various rocket engines and life support systems, in working in zero gravity, and with space suits. All of this would have been unthinkable without the prior experience gained in the Gemini project. Here, future Apollo astronauts were able to learn and gain experience in most of these areas. Their feedback also directly contributed to the further development of the spacecraft.

But not only the astronauts, but also all other project participants benefited from the experience they gained in the Gemini project. Rocket launch procedures, docking maneuvers in space, spacewalks, and much more could also be trained, revised, and improved by the ground crews and the staff in the control center before the decision for Apollo was made.

In this context, it is important to note that almost our entire lives are determined and influenced by the experiences of previous generations. It has become rare for us to venture into completely unknown territory. But we ourselves have also been shaped by our experiences and the things we have learned in our lives. And these do not always have to be positive things. We can learn a lot from the mistakes of the past.

Developing and operating a website or web app is no longer rocket science. There are already initial AI models that can do this completely autonomously. However, what will always be needed is experience. Experience is hard to replace. It makes a difference for a client whether they or their agency only know how to build a website at the push of a button, or whether they truly understand the system being used, know the pitfalls, and are able to respond quickly and efficiently when things do not go as planned. Beware of agencies that develop fancy websites or apps but do not want to be responsible for maintenance afterward. Beware of agencies where one person wants to do everything. And beware of people who always want to use the latest and coolest technologies. Often, these are also the least tested and documented solutions—there is little experience behind them.

How to Simulate the Moon

With all the experience: Apollo was a different beast than Gemini. In Gemini, many techniques (e.g., docking maneuvers in space) were tested and perfected for the first time. But Apollo was a project with even more unknowns. It was not just about working and flying in the weightlessness of space, but about safely landing a spacecraft in the Moon’s gravitational field and allowing astronauts to exit and work there. How do you simulate an environment where no one has ever been?

The NASA team started with the spacesuit. They quickly realized that parabolic flights, which temporarily created weightlessness, were not perfect for simulating the exhausting work in a heavy spacesuit. So they constructed huge water pools, which are still used today for realistic weightlessness simulation. Landing a vehicle on the Moon was also a challenge. The astronauts were experienced pilots, but the Moon has only 1/6 of Earth’s gravity, and aircraft behave completely differently there. So NASA designed the so-called “flying bed frame” to simulate the flight behavior on the Moon. It nearly cost Neil Armstrong his life once, but in the end, the astronauts figured it out.

And the list could go on. The emergency stage designed to save astronauts in the event of an explosion of the massive Saturn V rocket had a performance comparable to that of the Gemini mission rocket. It was a huge undertaking with many unknowns.

We are far from such scale in web projects today. (Almost) everything has already been developed, tested, and implemented by others. We rarely tread into unknown worlds. And yet, for us developers, simulation is a daily companion. Whether we present a new design to clients as a mockup before developing the actual design (here we developed a color demo a while ago, where one can experiment with possible website color combinations). Or during development, when we simulate functions and content to test them thoroughly before going live. Like NASA, we also aim to get as close to the real thing as possible to avoid unpleasant experiences later on.

Training, Training, Training

In the development of the spacecraft, the motto was: “Test, Test, Test.” In the training of the crews, the motto is “Training, Training, Training.” Countless hours have been spent by both astronauts and ground crews in simulations and training. Every to-do list was internalized multiple times, every action memorized. Because only when all routine matters function without much thought does mental capacity remain free to look beyond the immediate tasks and keep the big picture in mind. And for possible unforeseen events that everyone experiences in life from time to time.

Here, mission planning was also an important factor, as effective training and safe flight would have been nearly impossible without the many “if-then” procedures for every conceivable incident.

Our relationship with our clients is quite similar. Many agencies create significant dependencies for their clients because they want to do everything themselves and do not even grant clients access to their own website. They behave like the Soviets, who (at least initially) did not want to allow their cosmonauts any influence over the spacecraft. We believe that clients—if they wish—should have full control over their website. That is why training is so important to us.

In practice, it is often the middle ground that NASA (and later the Soviets) chose: We empower the client to successfully accomplish everything they want to do. At the same time, we stand behind them with our experience as a web agency and support them in ongoing operations where it is necessary and sensible.

What Can We Learn?

At the end of this small series on the Apollo program, we want to briefly reflect and consider: What can we learn from the successes and experiences for our daily work? What makes a web project efficient, sustainable, and successful? Here, in bullet points, are some thoughts summarized:

• New, untested technologies should only be used where they truly provide significant added value—and where they are not critical to the success of the mission.
• Through testing and experience, many problems can be avoided in advance.
• Adhering to established safety standards protects against dangerous and costly mistakes.
• Redundancy is paramount for all essential functions.
• The maintenance and monitoring of all critical functions keep you on course over the long term.
• The simpler a system, the more robust it is. The more complex it becomes, the more prone to errors it also becomes.
• Previous experiences and mistakes should be consciously used to grow from them.
• It is crucial to aim for the right goals before the launch.
• It is wise not to implement everything at once, but to reach the goal in consciously chosen, sequential steps.
• Checklists increase safety.
• Pilots fly, the flight control supports.
• Simulations are essential to avoid ending up with a completely different result.
• Training and education create freedom and enable a successful collaboration between client and agency.

I hope you enjoyed this small article series. Feel free to write to me if you have any further thoughts on this! And follow us on LinkedIn or Instagram to not miss future articles!

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

We have launched a small demo site where you can try out how different color combinations affect you on a website. Here, we explain a bit more about its purpose and how it works.

You can find the demo site at https://www.netjutant.com/farbdemo/ [German]

Why a Color Demo at All?

Colors and their effects are something very individual and intuitive. Everyone associates different things with various colors—mostly subconsciously. While there are similar associations within certain cultures, everyone feels and sees colors a little differently.

Why is this a challenge for us as designers?

Well, on the one hand, many clients already bring a fairly advanced corporate identity when it comes to a project with us. Colors, shapes, and a specific language have already been established for a company. These aspects should, of course, be considered in a new design. However, there is still a lot of room for interpretation when implementing a corporate identity on a website. With the color demo, one can already experiment a bit and see what works and what doesn’t.

On the other hand, we, too, are humans, and we associate colors on a very personal level. Sometimes a dialogue arises where one realizes: the other person connects entirely different feelings with a color. This dialogue is often tedious. Initially, not every red is just a red; it depends on the shades. And then, of course, on specific combinations of colors. Often, small changes are enough, and the feeling is entirely different. Putting this process into words is extremely difficult.

So far, we have managed by specifically asking in advance about websites or other designs that the client associates with positive or negative feelings. With some experience, one can already narrow down quite well how someone thinks, what they like or dislike. Although it is primarily about the target audience of the client and not their own feelings, the website should still appeal to the client and represent them well. Therefore, it is always exciting to present a design to a client for the first time.

To simplify this process and support the dialogue about colors, shapes, and ideas, we have released this color demo in its initial version. We will likely expand and improve it later, and we are very grateful for your feedback!

How Does the Color Demo Work?

On the website, you will find five starting colors (the Netjutant colors) in the upper left corner of the screen. They are:

• The primary color – the most prominent color next to the background color, which can be found in many places on the website (usually in larger areas).
• The secondary color – a color that is meant to support the primary color but can also introduce some tension.
• The accent color – for important but smaller elements of the website, such as buttons or notifications.
• The background color – the color that represents the standard page background, as well as
• The secondary background color – usually a color with only slight deviations from the primary background color. It is often used for large areas that should be clearly separated yet visually calm and unobtrusive.

By clicking on one of the five colors, you can adjust that color accordingly. There are no limits. You can also directly paste color values in various formats that you may have found on sites like coolors.co.

Because the page should look reasonably good with all selected color combinations, we have mostly refrained from coloring the headings in one of the colors. Where we have done so, it may happen that the contrast between the heading and its background becomes too small to meet the strict accessibility requirements of modern websites. In this case, we will display a small warning.

The other fonts are set to remain as readable as possible, regardless of whether the page has a dark or light background. Of course, in a real project, one can also play more with the font colors, as one knows in advance what color the background will be.

We have deliberately refrained from using photos. They bring their own color language and may not harmonize well with the chosen color combinations. However, a good designer can later embellish the website with color-coordinated images and avoid such clashes.

If you find a color combination that you like, you can either take a screenshot or click the button “Copy Colors to Clipboard.” This will load the five color values into the clipboard of your device, and you can send them via email, WhatsApp, or other text messages.

Please note: Your combinations will be lost if you reload the page for any reason.

We Welcome Your Feedback

We would be very pleased if this tool could be useful not only for us and our clients but also for you and your clients. If you have any feedback, please feel free to contact us! You can reach us at kontakt@netjutant.de, by phone at +49 8685 30998-22, on LinkedIn, and on Instagram. We also appreciate it if you follow us there—this way, you will never miss similar actions and news again.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

In 1970, the magazine “Astronautics & Aeronautics” published an eight-part article series titled “What Made Apollo a Success.” In it, leading NASA employees describe the principles that brought humans to the Moon. We can learn a lot from this as well. Part 2: Solid Planning.

What Do We Want to Achieve?

At the beginning of every new project, whether large or small, the question of the mission arises: What do we want to achieve? Where do we want to go?

Regarding NASA’s ambitious Apollo lunar landing program, the general direction was set by President John F. Kennedy in a speech on September 12, 1962: “We choose to go to the Moon.”

This speech followed years of disappointments, during which the Soviet Union achieved one success after another in space, while the USA consistently came in a dishonorable second. Now, the goal was to catch up and land a person on the Moon by the end of the decade. This was to close the technological gap, restore the USA’s reputation, conquer space for the “free world,” and simultaneously give the US economy a new injection of investment.

Even when I sit down with our clients to discuss the key data of a new project, the fundamental question at the beginning is always: What is our goal? The scope of the project may be smaller than the US space program of the 1960s, but it is important that everyone agrees at the outset on where we are headed. Do we want to improve visibility on the internet? Sharpen the client’s brand? Gain ground against the competition? Get more or more suitable applications? Launch a new product?

It may sound trivial, but it is not uncommon for agencies to jump straight into the “how” before clarifying the “where.” The “how” always depends crucially on the “where.” Without a clear “where,” it can happen that many (expensive) activities are developed, but in the end, little is achieved.

Steps to Success

Once the “where” is established and all parties agree, planning can begin. How do we achieve the goal we have set for ourselves in the best possible way? And what does “the best” mean anyway? The most thorough? The fastest? The safest? The most cost-effective?

This can vary from case to case. For NASA, it was clear at the time: The program should be successful by the end of the 1960s, which was an extremely ambitious timeline. Therefore, things had to move quickly. At the same time, the timeline meant that there could not be many setbacks along the way – it had to be planned very carefully. Naturally, as few accidents as possible should occur, because too many human casualties among the astronauts would not only mean the end of the program but could also permanently damage the already tarnished reputation of NASA and the USA. The safety of the astronauts was therefore a very high priority. The costs, on the other hand, had a relatively lower priority in this project.

This can look quite different for other projects. Perhaps costs play a larger role, while the timeline is less critical. Whatever the case may be, it is essential to carefully consider which intermediate steps are necessary to achieve the goal.

The NASA defined these steps in various missions. From Apollo 4-6, in which the lunar rocket Saturn V and the re-entry of the spacecraft were tested and refined (still without crew involvement), they progressed mission by mission until they were ready for the actual lunar landing with Apollo 11. The missions were designed to bring new progress while not overwhelming the crews and ground teams with too many innovations.

A “mission plan” for one of our projects can look quite similar. One step builds on the other, each bringing important innovations and laying the foundation for later developments – until the set goal is finally achieved. This graphic lists the steps that could be planned, for example, for a new website in connection with a revised corporate identity, logo, etc.:

One step builds on the other, ensuring that everything is well defined and tested before expanding functionalities in the next step. It also ensures that everyone involved in the project can immediately see where we currently stand – and what is needed next. Which in turn makes the entire project development transparent and efficient.

The Power of Checklists

Every pilot knows: with complex processes, it is impossible to keep everything in mind. Pilots use clear checklists for all mission-critical procedures, even if they have performed a procedure thousands of times. Because it is precisely then that carelessness and oversight can creep in.

This principle from aviation was adopted at the very beginning of space travel. Checklists have since demonstrably increased safety and consistency in both fields. In the Apollo program, specialists from development, flight planning, and management came together and played out all conceivable scenarios: What if a fuel tank fails? What if two fail? For each of these scenarios – and thousands more – a corresponding checklist and concrete action steps were defined.

One might say: Much effort wasted. Most of the scenarios are known to have never occurred. And yet, the mere fact of being prepared for these possible scenarios has led to missions not having to be aborted, even when unexpected events occurred.

In our industry, checklists are fortunately much less critical for human life than they are in aviation and space missions. And of course, we do not rewrite our checklists for every client. But we work with checklists, and we do so consciously because, despite all our experience, some things can slip through the cracks. By having clear checks for the launch of a website, for example, we can be highly confident that we won’t make any major mistakes. The consequences of a careless mistake may be less deadly – but they can certainly be expensive and frustrating for us and our clients.

Flight Management and Mission Control

The question of who should pilot a spacecraft is not as trivial as it seems today. At the beginning of human spaceflight, it was solely the technology that controlled the spacecraft. Yuri Gagarin was still in a capsule where he had practically no control of his own. And even the Americans primarily used automated control, as was common with the warheads of ballistic intercontinental missiles, well into the Mercury program.

Very soon, however, both sides of the Atlantic realized that it could be advantageous – and also serve safety – if the pilot had a greater influence. Thus, the control of the Apollo missions was partly automatic, partly manual, but always monitored and supported by ground control. This system proved particularly effective when the computer systems erroneously reported errors, as was the case during the Apollo 11 lunar landing. During the descent, the computer suddenly displayed an unexpected error. However, the crew under Neil Armstrong was able to quickly assess, override, and continue the descent with the help of the experts in Mission Control.

This interplay between crew and technicians is reflected – on a smaller scale – in our daily interactions between clients and the agency. Modern content management systems allow clients to edit and change their own websites almost at will. And we are happy to give clients this freedom. At the same time, regular backups must be created, and security updates must be implemented. Ideally, we should not have to intervene in any of these cases. But we continuously monitor the progress of automated processes and also gather data on the overall functionality of the website. This way, we can quickly respond to possible outages or errors and effectively support our clients.

I personally see this as one of the great advantages of a professional agency. Anyone can develop a reasonably functioning website these days. However, keeping it secure during ongoing operations and being able to respond quickly to possible errors requires a lot of experience. This experience is based, in our case, on decades of practice in web design and many mistakes we have encountered ourselves and with others, for which we have already developed good responses in advance.

Is All of This Really Necessary?

One question remains: Can’t it be done more easily? Such an effort must surely be very expensive?

My answer is: Of course, it can be done more easily. One can develop a website quickly and “by feel.” There is no need for checklists or significant intervention in the ongoing operation of a system. But is that good and sustainable? I don’t believe so. The effort should be made – but it only needs to be made once. In contrast, websites developed differently often have a very short half-life and soon require an expensive overhaul.

And is it very expensive? No, if done correctly, all of this does not have to be expensive. The Apollo program cost 25.4 billion US dollars, which would be about 150 – 160 billion US dollars today. That was expensive. But it was also entirely new from start to finish: new technologies, new science, new processes, a “giant leap for mankind.” This is different in web design today. Checklists and clear processes do not need to be reinvented for every client. And a clear goal definition at the beginning of a project, combined with well-thought-out and practically tested intermediate steps, ultimately saves money.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

The tiler, slab, and mosaic layer Benjamin Hammermeister from Ainring in the Berchtesgadener Land, Germany, needed a new website that ideally represents his company and supports marketing. You can read here how this looks in practice and what to consider for such a project.

Benjamin Hammermeister and His Team

You can usually tell at the first meeting whether someone is passionate about their craft. This is certainly the case with Benjamin Hammermeister, whose clients are often surprised that his name is actually his family name and not just a brand. He and his large team of tilers take care of their clients with commitment and impressive know-how. Whether it’s intricate bathrooms, natural stone terraces, or artistic mosaics for the sauna – no job is too difficult for them. Clients can always trust that they will be advised diligently and that the planned project will be implemented on time and reliably.

Only the highest quality equipment and the trained eye of a professional are used. Tiling is precision work, and in very few trades does the wheat separate so clearly from the chaff as in the tiling craft. Those who do not take their work seriously from the start often end up somewhere else than they intended. And this quickly becomes visually apparent – especially with the currently popular XXL tiles. One wrong move, a brief mismeasurement, and an expensive tile is lost.

The Target Audience

The target audience for the new website is primarily comprised by potential customers of the Hammermeister company. These can be private individuals planning a new build or renovation, as well as large construction companies and clients who want large areas tiled quickly and reliably. What unites all customers is an above-average demand for craftsmanship, precision, and trustworthiness, perhaps combined in this case with a tendency towards a bit of luxury and extravagance.

When someone is getting a new bathroom, they are planning one of the most intimate spaces in their home. In almost no other room does a person feel so vulnerable. At the same time, the bathroom is usually the first room one enters in the morning – and the room where one washes away the traces of a tiring workday in the evening. It is a place of relaxation, well-being, and tranquility. And here, one is reluctant to let in craftsmen who do not know exactly what they are doing.

But it’s not just bathrooms that are tiled. Tiles are also indispensable in kitchens, laundry rooms, saunas, and pools. More and more people are also choosing tiles for living spaces and facades: easy to clean, customizable, and unbeatably warm with underfloor heating, tiles are ideal for many applications. Customers expect honest advice, reliable calculations, and professional work.

You can find the new website at https://www.hammermeister-bgl.de.

The New Website

The new website should represent the high quality of advice and execution of the tiling work of the Hammermeister company, while also inspiring and showcasing the range of the craft. The world of tiling is constantly evolving, and new, exciting innovations are always coming to market, allowing for unique solutions.

The website…

• …is responsive and adapts to all devices and screen sizes.
• …supports the existing corporate identity, as well as the logo and the Hammermeister brand.
• …loads quickly and has a clear structure.
• …is visually tidy and has clear edges related to the theme of tiles.
• …should inspire customers with many large images showcasing the possibilities of the craft.
• …is easy to adjust and maintain thanks to the use of the WordPress CMS.
• …naturally respects data protection and copyright.
• …is at least technically optimized for search engines.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

In 1970, the magazine “Astronautics & Aeronautics” published an eight-part article series titled “What Made Apollo a Success.” In it, leading NASA employees describe the principles that brought humans to the Moon. It’s literally rocket science – but still, we can learn a lot from this. Part 1: The Right Technology.

How to Build a Spaceship Properly

Over the centuries, there have been many innovations that have advanced humanity. The Apollo spacecraft (and its launch vehicle, which is not covered in the articles) certainly belongs to this category. In 1969, three astronauts embarked on the dangerous journey to the Moon and made history with their landing. In total, humans landed on the lunar surface six times, and once, a crew narrowly managed to return to Earth after an explosion on the way there. Overall, the Apollo program was one of the most expensive but also one of the most successful large-scale projects in human history. In our small article series, we want to take a closer look at the principles that led to these successes and apply them to web projects on the Internet. After all, that is our industry.

Use of Established Technologies

The first point that Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, an engineer and scientist in the Apollo program, mentions in his article about the development principles of their spacecraft is the use of established technologies. Although NASA engineers operated at the edge of scientific, engineering, and manufacturing knowledge with the lunar module, they made sure to use technologies and manufacturing methods that were already tested and proven wherever possible. Their goal was not to develop a completely novel spacecraft but one that consisted of as many known components as possible.

This principle can be directly applied to web design. As web designers, we can either rely on a wealth of proven technologies that date back to the early days of the Internet or utilize the ever-new innovations that our industry constantly develops. The great art is to recognize when something new actually offers enough added value to justify the risk that it may become obsolete in just a few years. What often backfires is incorporating new and unproven techniques in areas of a website or web app that are “mission critical,” where the entire project could fail. And that is not as rare as one might think. Kleinknecht’s advice to use only established technologies is therefore as relevant as ever.

Strong Focus on Technology Reliability

One aspect that held a very high priority at NASA in the development of their technology was the reliability of the technology used in all conceivable mission scenarios. The list of rigorous tests that they subjected their hardware—and software—to seems almost endless. Every component was tested in all conceivable scenarios and was only integrated into the spacecraft once it had proven itself in all tests without exception.

Testing is sometimes taken more and sometimes less seriously in the world of developers. However, it is essential for all projects, whether large or small. I can recall instances from my time as an employee in large agencies where things went wrong. For example, a colleague copied a contact block from one website to another without testing it afterward. For weeks, a hotel received inquiries that were actually meant for a completely different hotel because its number was still stored somewhere in the system. The error was eventually noticed by the client, which was at the time a significant blow to the agency’s reputation – and rightly so.
From seemingly trivial technology like contact forms to complex functionalities—much can go wrong on a website or app. Here, only a strong focus on the reliability of the technology used and good checklists can help. And, of course: testing, testing, testing …

Compliance with Safety Standards

In every industry, safety standards eventually emerge. There is a good reason for this. Each industry has its specific safety risks that have been identified and documented in the past—sometimes very painfully and expensively. These risks also existed in the Apollo program. They were identified in advance, ranging from cracks and leaks to short circuits, loose fittings, and line breaks, among others. Subsequently, appropriate standards were developed for these risks, and compliance was strictly monitored. Not least because of this, even the potentially fatal explosion of an oxygen tank in Apollo 13 did not lead to a loss of the crew. Here are some features in the design of the Apollo spacecraft that made them so safe:

• Triple Redundancy: The systems of the Apollo spacecraft, including control, navigation, and communication, were designed to be triple redundant. This means that there were multiple independent systems that could take over in the event of a system failure.
• Emergency Procedures: The astronauts were extensively trained in emergency procedures. This included training for various scenarios, including system failures and emergency landings.
• Safety Checks and Tests: Extensive safety checks and tests were conducted before each launch to ensure that all systems were functioning properly. This included both simulations and physical tests of the spacecraft and its systems. We have already touched on this point above.
• Communication Systems: The Apollo spacecraft was equipped with robust communication systems that allowed the astronauts to stay in constant contact with the ground station for support and instructions.

There are also numerous risks and dangers on the Internet. Often, one is seen as a killjoy for pointing them out. However, being aware of these dangers is already an important step forward. Even better, though, is to take the numerous safety standards for operating websites and apps seriously and adhere to them. Design features of a secure website include, for example:

• Redundant Design: It doesn’t matter much, for example, if a visitor cannot or does not want to use JavaScript. The website and its essential functions will still work.
• Security Updates: Regular security updates are essential to keep a content management system secure and up to date and to close potential attack vectors early.
• Emergency Plans and Backups: Clear plans for emergencies not only help prevent issues but also ensure that damage is limited if something does happen.
• Agency Availability: We are reachable for our clients through many channels and can respond immediately in emergencies.

Learn more about our services regarding your security on the Internet here.

Minimizing Maintenance and Testing During Flight

In this regard, the US space program differed significantly from that of the Soviet Union. While the Americans had the necessary resources to test practically all critical components on the ground before they were integrated into the spacecraft, Soviet developers could only test many systems in flight. This led to early and significant successes for the USSR, but in the end, only one nation landed humans on the Moon. And that was the nation that aimed to keep maintenance and testing during flight to a minimum.

This was not only due to financial resources but also for another reason: Testing and maintenance during a flight can lower the required quality of the parts somewhat—after all, they can be replaced if necessary. However, this was not necessarily needed for the short duration of the lunar missions, and building a part correctly also meant relieving the crews, saving weight, and reducing the overall complexity of the systems.

Similarly, this is often the case with websites. Their lifespan is often perceived as not particularly high. Why invest in sustainable and robust technology when we will soon build a new website anyway? – You would be surprised how often this mindset still prevails in the minds of clients and agencies alike. However, it is neither particularly difficult to build a website that will still function in 10 years nor particularly challenging to minimize the necessary maintenance and repairs. One just has to want it and think about how to best achieve this goal in each case…

What was also made possible by Apollo was the continuous monitoring and analysis of all critical functions from the control center on Earth. For this purpose, over 330 telemetry radio channels were established with the spacecraft during the flight, and about 1100 data channels were set up before launch. This monitoring from Earth allowed the utilization of the entire knowledge and experience of the engineers and technicians on the ground while the crew could focus on the important tasks in the spacecraft.

This is also reflected in our daily practice. Clients who have a maintenance contract for their website with us often do not even notice what the systems in the background are handling—and how we automatically keep an eye on everything. This way, we can quickly intervene in case of an emergency while our clients can focus on their tasks. This relief for our clients is so important to us that we have even included it in our name. Because an adjutant does exactly that: it frees decision-makers from all mundane tasks that are important but could distract them.

Simplification

A part that is not there cannot break. The same applies to a check step that does not need to be performed or an action that does not need to be taken. Simplification in all areas, from the design of the spacecraft to the processes, not only led to a reduction in the weight of the spacecraft during Apollo but also to less distraction for the crew. Every astronaut had to be able to operate all essential functions of the spacecraft in their space suit with their bulky gloves. This meant reducing buttons and switches to an absolute minimum and eliminating all systems and components that were not truly necessary.

Simplification not only ensures more clarity, safety, and reliability but also leads to good design. That is something we have known not only since Jony Ive’s iconic simple designs at Apple, nor did NASA invent it. But how rarely do we still find truly functional yet simple design today! Achieving this is not always easy for us web designers either. Our approach at Netjutant is that of “Resilient Web Design.” Those interested can learn more about this approach on our website. But here’s the gist: We always start a website with the content and functional core and then carefully add only as much as brings real added value to the visitor. This way, we build robust, functional, yet simple and generous websites that we are truly proud of.

Minimizing Interfaces

This topic is more for the nerds among us. And generally speaking, the same principle of simplification applies here, which I just mentioned. When it comes to “interfaces,” it is always about multiple components that need to be connected. In the case of the Apollo program, it was the launch pad and the spacecraft, but also the lunar lander and the service module that remained in orbit around the Moon during the lunar landing. For these interfaces, there were clear documentation manuals so that all involved teams knew what type of data should be exchanged over the interfaces. Both the number of interfaces and the amount of data were strictly reduced to the absolute minimum.

Interfaces also exist in many modern web applications, for example, between a content management system and the so-called “frontend,” which is the part of the website that the visitor sees. But mobile apps also typically access the data they display through interfaces. Designing and documenting these interfaces wisely enables the efficient collaboration of different developer teams. What is needed for this is a clear focus on the desired functions and the discipline to stick to these functions.

Leveraging Experience from Past Missions

The last point that made the construction of Apollo so successful was that they did not reinvent the wheel but could draw on the experiences of earlier projects, such as the Mercury program. However, this retrospective also requires a conscious decision to engage with previous programs and the humility to learn new things.

I have had the opportunity to gather over 20 years of experience as a developer. That adds up to quite a few mistakes—my own, as well as those of others. All of this makes our websites better than ever today.

However, one does not necessarily have to gain experience only within their own industry to apply it. I hope that with this article, I could make a small contribution to ensuring that the experiences of the Apollo program are not forgotten and that we actively think about how we can benefit from them—regardless of the industry.

What are your thoughts on these questions? What conclusions could you draw for your industry? I would be very pleased to engage in a dialogue with you! And perhaps you would also like to follow Netjutant on LinkedIn — this way, you won’t miss any articles. Parts 2 and 3 of this series, which will focus on the processes during a mission and the activities of the crews, will be coming soon.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

In the picturesque village of Lampoding by Lake Waging lies the holiday apartment “Am Rehwinkel” (translated, the name roughly means: “At the Deer Nook”). It was time for a new website. Read here how this looks in practice and what to consider for such a project.

The Holiday Apartment…

Since 2003, there has been a small but special holiday apartment in Kirchanschöring / Lampoding, a municipality by Lake Waging in Upper Bavaria. It is located in complete seclusion at the edge of a forest above the lake, with no immediate neighbors (except for the owner couple living next door). It features some unique characteristics that are rarely found in combination in holiday apartments. These include a large tiled stove, a gallery as a play and retreat space for children, a lush, large garden in front of the terrace, and – a concert grand piano in the living room! Guests can explore the immediate surroundings of the Rupertiwinkel and the southeastern Bavarian foothills on rental bikes. Alternatively, they can discover the nearby mountains, the region’s lakes, and surrounding cities such as Salzburg, Burghausen, Traunstein, or Prien am Chiemsee.

The holiday apartment is the perfect retreat for anyone looking to escape the hectic everyday life. In the magnificent nature, amidst fields and meadows, at the edge of the forest and surrounded by flowers and animals, the soul can breathe, and the body can relax.

…and its Guests

The target audience for the holiday apartment can and should be precisely defined. Guests looking for a wide range of wellness options or good walking access will likely miss these features at the “Deer Nook”. Overall, the entire apartment is rural and cozy, pleasantly cooled by the forest in summer and very snug and comfortable in winter thanks to the tiled stove. However, it does not meet a luxury ambiance in terms of furnishings and entertainment options. People expecting sleek modern decor or special luxury may be disappointed.

On the other hand, the apartment is ideal for nature-loving singles or couples seeking a quiet retreat, for families with children – or specifically for musicians who enjoy the piano and the seclusion.

The Old Website

The existing website had been around almost as long as the apartment itself: since 2004 (!). I had programmed it back then using the technology of the time – classically and conservatively as a static homepage based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Major content changes were not expected, which is why we decided against a Content Management System like Drupal oder WordPress and against any other dynamic structure for the site at that time. It was intended as a showcase on the internet where potential guests could find information about the apartment and its conditions. In this role, it was meant to answer many possible questions in advance, without interested parties having to call for inquiries.

The design was deliberately understated. The colorful images of the apartment and nature were meant to take center stage. The apartment’s connection to nature was also highlighted by the colors (earth tones and green):

The Advantages of the Old Website

• Robust Development: Exactly 20 years online without technical or legal issues – and thanks to static HTML, unbeatable loading times!
• Target Group-Centered, Clear Communication: (Almost) no bookings from guests who had different expectations or were ultimately dissatisfied.
• Simplistic Design and Clear Structure: Despite its age, the website still appears tidy and organized, and you can immediately find what you’re looking for.

The Disadvantages of the Old Website

• No Responsiveness: The website was created before the first iPhones, and therefore it was not designed to be responsive for small screens. This became increasingly problematic, not only for visitors but also for search engines, which now have a “Mobile-First” approach and rank other websites worse (or not at all).
• No Content Management System: A static HTML-based page was a good decision at the time. For some use cases, it still is. However, the significantly increased demands for content – especially due to SEO and accessibility, including content that a user normally does not see – make the use of a CMS more sensible nowadays.
• Outdated Design: While the design was decent for such an old website, it was clearly no longer fresh.

The New Website

In relaunching the website, our goal was to retain the advantages of the previous version while bringing the website into 2024 – both technically and design-wise. We had the following considerations:

• We want to retain the colors and basic layout of the old website to create a sense of recognition. A new logo should create a brand and communicate this brand visually even more clearly.
• We want to use a Content Management System (here: WordPress) to be able to edit and add content more quickly. This primarily serves search engine optimization today.
• We tried not to change the overall feel of the website too much to continue appealing to the right clientele. This also includes the – now rare – layout of less than 100% screen width. Nature should continue to be in the foreground. The design should, however, become a bit more vibrant and optimistic – while still radiating individuality, calm, and relaxation.
• Despite all the changes (CMS, larger images…), the loading time of the website should still be as fast as possible.
• Of course, the new website should be responsive and accessible.
• An online booking was deliberately not desired by the client.

You can find the new website at https://amrehwinkel.de.

Challenges for Hosts and the Hospitality Industry in Rupertiwinkel

Whether a small holiday apartment or a large hotel: hosts and the hospitality industry in Rupertiwinkel face new challenges on the internet. Guests are becoming increasingly tech-savvy and expect more and more digital offerings for vacation planning and booking. At the same time, competition is getting tougher, as the world is coming closer together digitally and through globalization. While in the past one competed with a hotel in the neighborhood, today one competes with hosts worldwide. Specifically in our region, the so-called “overtourism” is also a challenge.

Here, a clear, very individual brand, a niche of one’s own, and a personal website are the focal points for successful market positioning. It is essential to analyze the target audience precisely and to align not only the offering but also the entire communication (website, social media, advertising, apps…) to this target audience.

We support hosts in our region with brand and communication expertise and a fresh outside perspective, and we are happy to provide comprehensive advice on these topics.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

In his eponymous book, Nassim N. Taleb defines “antifragility” as the property of systems to not only survive stress, uncertainty, and chaos but to actually benefit from them and become stronger. What could this look like in our digital lives?

What is Antifragility?

Companies, political systems, and we as individuals are exposed to various stressors and pressures. While many risks are predictable, some—especially the very large ones—are not. They catch us unprepared. This can happen for various reasons. Sometimes, events have never occurred in this form before. Like a black swan, they appear where only white swans existed before.

But how do we deal with such events when they are unpredictable? Especially when they have the greatest potential to upend our lives, our businesses, and our society? How should we organize systems so that they do not collapse under pressure and unforeseen events?

This question is also posed by Nassim Taleb in his “Incerto” series. He notes that intuitively, most people think that the opposite of “fragile” is “stable.” Like on autopilot, they try to construct systems to be as stable as possible, forgetting two points. First: stable systems are only stable up to a certain point. Second: a stable system ideally does not change at all. But this also means: it does not benefit from the unforeseen.

For the actual opposite of “fragile,” we previously had no word. A system that does not break under pressure but actually benefits from it is therefore called “antifragile” by Taleb. He finds it, for example, everywhere in nature. When we train, our bodies gain muscle mass, but not just enough to perform the same exercise better later—rather, it goes beyond that! Trees strengthen their trunks at the points where they are most vulnerable in a storm—but with more than the strongest storm would have required. Trees thus benefit—up to a certain point—from events that are worse than any previous ones. Because while a storm-tested tree has reinforced the important spots in time, other trees fall over as soon as they are newly positioned in an exposed location.

From these examples, Taleb draws lessons for all kinds of systems—from personal fitness to financial markets to forms of government and workplaces. In this article, we want to shed light on the digital world—specifically websites and software. How can we make these areas more antifragile so that we not only remain stable during the next black swans but actually benefit from them?

The Least Common Denominator

Perhaps some of you remember the time of Flash websites in the late 2010s? Flash was a trendy new technology that allowed for the creation of websites that would have been unthinkable with other available technologies like HTML and CSS: animations, transitions, and interactive elements provided an unprecedented user experience. And quickly, anyone who did not incorporate at least some Flash on their website was considered outdated.

But almost as quickly as the phenomenon appeared, it was gone again. Flash was a proprietary technology from Adobe that made all website operators dependent on this one provider. While it was supported in many browsers, cross-platform, and provided a refreshing change at a time when developers struggled with the various requirements of different browsers (yes, we’re looking at you, Internet Explorer!), support gradually waned as more security vulnerabilities emerged in the technology. Additionally, new devices came onto the market, particularly the early iPhones, which did not render Flash content well. Thus, it was consistent that Adobe pulled the plug in 2017 and phased out Flash in 2020.

This meant that many operators had to redesign their websites almost completely. And what technologies did they use for this? Primarily HTML and CSS, both of which have existed practically since the dawn of the internet and have undergone many phases of backward compatibility.

Some were smarter and relied from the start on resilient technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, using Flash only where it was not mission-critical. Flash had its advantages—but building a complete web presence on a new, not globally supported technology was costly and educational for many.

What is the Flash of today? Well, from a usability perspective, there are always new technologies that promise to shake up the website and software market. But they are often associated with unnecessary dependencies or limited support. JavaScript, for example, is a robust technology for animations and similar tasks, but building entire websites dynamically as “Single Page Applications (SPA)” with React, Vue, or Angular does not seem sensible when considering that at least 10% of browsers do not support JavaScript, whether due to ad blockers, accessibility issues, or user choice. The same applies, albeit for different reasons, to website builders or proprietary offerings from individual software vendors.

It is not a bad thing to build websites and software on the least common denominator. On technologies that may not be “cutting edge,” but have been robust, reliable, and widely used for decades. Those who do not want to completely rebuild their digital solutions every two years or exclude important customer groups rely on proven standards. They use new technologies only where no unhealthy dependencies arise. This way, they are prepared for the future—regardless of what new gadgets and screens humanity invents; the likelihood is very high that they will not completely overturn the entire previous development of programming and design languages. And those who have a resilient website that is flexible enough to adapt to new technologies save real money and also consider the second point: room for trial and error.

Trial and Error

Consider this: what groundbreaking invention comes to mind that was based solely on theoretical groundwork and required neither an element of chance nor at least some practical tinkering?

Trying out new things and accepting small losses to realize potential large but previously undiscovered advantages is antifragile action in its purest form. Success is often not predictable. Most breakthroughs arise from small, seemingly insignificant changes. Here, communication with customers and the ability to effectively gather constructive feedback play a significant role. Not least, this is a huge advantage of online communities.

This freedom to trial and error must be affordable. And one needs structures that allow for tinkering and experimenting with what might work. In relation to the software and internet world, this means: Software solutions and websites must be flexible enough to incorporate new functions and elements without jeopardizing their functionality and usefulness. Often, even small changes can make a big difference. For example, we repeatedly experience that the click-through rate (the proportion of users who click on a specific link or ad relative to the total number of users who have seen that ad or link) can change massively with even the smallest adjustments. A single point in the right place can play a decisive role.

Is your website, or is the software you use, structured so that you can quickly and easily add new functions or adjust existing ones? Or are you trapped in a “stack” (a combination of technologies, frameworks, and tools used together to develop and deploy an application) that is so fragile and fixed that every change is a huge effort? How do you plan to benefit from unforeseen events?

Many Cards in Play

In German, there is a saying: “Putting all your eggs in one basket” refers to someone who completely depends on one thing at a certain point. He (or she) can only hope that this card will play out.

This is fragile action. Antifragile action, on the other hand, relies on redundancies and alternative plans. It takes nature as a model, which—so far as efficiency still allows—holds everything important in multiple copies. The creator had a reason for giving us two eyes, two lungs, two kidneys, two legs, two arms, two ears, etc.

In the digital world, extreme risks lie in putting all your eggs in one basket. However, this can be avoided through measures such as:

• Using technologies and software that work on multiple operating systems,
• Using technologies and software for which there are not just a few experts,
• Building multiple independent channels for sales and customer outreach,
• Modular software and website construction with interchangeable components (no unnecessary “break-all-plugins” or “locked-in” providers),
• Using redundant server systems with load balancing and failovers,
• Using geo-redundant offerings (e.g., multiple server locations in different places worldwide),
• Emergency plans, including analog alternatives where possible,
• Test environments for updates,
• Creating regular backups, and
• Meaningful documentation of projects for future developers…

The advantage of these redundancies is not only that your systems run more securely, but also that they are likely to continue running even when regional or international competitors face massive problems (e.g., due to a hacker attack on a central system, local events like the failure of a data center, or due to a programmer’s mistake.

Old is Gold

One final thought: Be generally cautious of new providers offering you a revolutionary product that breaks with everything that has come before. The likelihood is very high that this product, this technology, will soon no longer exist.

Nassim Taleb has developed a simple heuristic for this, which he recommends with a wink (and without claiming universal validity). He does something he usually warns against: he looks to the past to guess the future. Specifically, he suspects that a technology will exist in the future for about as long as it has already existed to date. Instead of inventing all sorts of fantastic and exotic technologies for a vision of the future, it is better to continue to assume what has proven itself and remove the novel from it. We will likely still be sitting on chairs and eating with forks in a hundred years, but it is probable that many of today’s trendy technologies will no longer exist. They will fade away, just like Flash, which flared up briefly and then disappeared.

In digitalization, many are tempted to completely break with the past and instead invent something innovative and new. This is neither wise nor antifragile. Let us keep what has proven itself. And let us use the groundbreaking innovations that our society produces wisely and moderately. For this is not old-fashioned, but reasonable. And it better prepares us for what we cannot yet foresee: unforeseen events.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

The chaos surrounding the introduction of the GDPR threatens to repeat itself: From June 2025, the rules of the BFSG regarding the accessibility of websites will apply, and many affected companies are still asleep – with potentially costly consequences. As an internet agency, we cannot provide legal advice – but we can shed light on what the new EU/German rules are about and how to practically prepare for the new legal situation in this article.

What It’s About

In 2017, over 13.04 million people in Germany lived with a temporary or permanent impairment, 7.8 million of whom had a recognized severe disability – a trend that is increasing. This means that around 16 percent of the population encounter barriers in everyday life due to an impairment of their body structure or function, making it difficult for them to participate in social life (Source: Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs [German]). In most cases, these individuals acquire their disabilities later in life, for example, through illness, accidents, or aging.

To eliminate barriers for these individuals and to align corresponding regulations across the EU, the EU issued the “Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 17, 2019, on the Accessibility Requirements for Products and Services” in April 2019. This directive has been transposed into German law through the Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) [German]. This law empowers the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, in collaboration with other ministries, to issue a regulation that specifies the exact accessibility requirements for products and services (§3 Para. 2 BFSG). These ministries have since done so with the Regulation on the Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSGV) [German].

What is Regulated in BFSG and BFSGV?

Who exactly is affected by the BFSG and the BFSGV? And what is regulated there?

The BFSG fundamentally regulates that certain products and services will be subject to strict accessibility requirements in the future. These include products such as:

• Computers and their operating systems
• Smartphones
• ATMs
• Ticket and check-in machines
• E-book readers and
• Routers,

as well as services such as

• Telecommunications services
• E-books
• Messaging services
• Banking services
• Passenger transport and its digital solutions (such as ticket apps) and
• electronic commerce.

The last point may seem inconspicuous at first glance, but it hides the probably largest group of services. According to the definition in §2 No. 26 BFSG, these services include “services of telemedia that are offered via websites and applications on mobile devices and are provided electronically and at the individual request of a consumer with regard to the conclusion of a consumer contract“. In plain language: Almost all websites and apps aimed at concluding a contract with a consumer must meet the accessibility requirements of the BFSG.

This includes all B2C online shops, but also hotel websites, for example, where one can automatically reserve and/or book a room.

Exceptions exist only for micro-enterprises (with fewer than 10 employees or under 2 million euros in revenue, §2 No. 17 BFSG) and for disproportionate burdens (§17 Para. 1 BFSG).

What Needs to Be Done?

So what exactly do affected companies need to do and consider? It is not so easy to find out. The BFSGV states the following:

“In order for services to meet the requirements of § 3 paragraph 1 sentence 2 of the Accessibility Strengthening Act, (…) 3. Websites, including associated online applications and services offered on mobile devices, including mobile apps, must be designed in a consistent and appropriate manner to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust” (§12 BFSGV, emphasis added)

However, what this means was not initially regulated. §3 Para. 2 BFSGV merely refers to the fact that the Federal Agency for Accessibility regularly publishes a list of the most important standards to be observed, “from which the accessibility requirements (…) are detailed“. This has not yet happened. The Federal Agency for Accessibility currently only refers to the EU standard EN 301 549 > – as of 7 August 2024 still under revision – which sets standards for the areas of websites (Chapter 9) and software (Chapter 11).

EN 301 549 and the Success Criteria of WCAG

The EN 301 549 references a list of standards developed by the “World Wide Web Consortium” W3C, an organization for the development of web standards: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Their structure in the relevant Chapter 9 for websites corresponds to the four points I quoted above from §12 BFSGV. We will now take a closer look at them individually:

Perceivable

A website must first be perceivable in the respective mode of use (2-senses principle). This is technically ensured, among other things, by the following measures:

• Descriptive alternative texts for images and videos
• Subtitles for videos
• Semantically clear page and content structure
• Responsive display of content on all screens
• Avoidance of problematic color combinations (e.g., red-green)
• Sufficient contrast of text and non-text objects to the background
• Sufficient line spacing
• Zoomability of the website to at least 200%
• …

These points are often very precisely defined. For example, content is only considered responsive if it can still be displayed without issues at a screen width of 320 pixels and a height of 256 pixels. Sufficient contrast is only given at normal font size if it is in the ratio of 4.8:1. For large or bold text, a ratio of 3:1 is sufficient, the same as for non-text elements.

Operable

Success criteria for the operability of a website are also regulated in the WCAG and adopted in EN 301 549. Thus, the following measures ensure that people with disabilities can operate a website:

• Enabling keyboard control with a meaningful focus order
• Ability to stop, pause, and hide automatically playing content.
• Ability to adjust the playback speed of videos and audio content.
• Avoidance of flashing and rapidly changing content (due to epilepsy and similar conditions)
• Page titles and descriptions
• Provision of various navigation paths (e.g., via sitemaps or breadcrumbs)
• Meaningful labels for form fields
• …

In particular, you can easily test keyboard control yourself by pressing the Tab key in any browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc.). A focus field should become visible over a link that you can select with “Enter”. You should also be able to jump back and forth between the various links using Tab (or backward with Shift+Tab). A meaningful order should be found in doing this.

Understandable

The content and controls of a website must also be understandable. They are when, among other things, the following is taken into account:

• The language of a page and individual elements has been clearly specified in the code
• The navigation is coherent throughout the page
• Error messages and labels are clearly recognizable and understandable
• …

Robust

The last criterion for accessibility according to WCAG is robustness. It includes, among other things, the following success criteria:

• The website must be readable by various user agents (browsers, screen readers, etc.).
• Names, roles, and values of form elements, buttons, etc. must be clearly and coherently defined.
• Status messages (e.g., “Product has been added to the cart”) should be defined in such a way that screen readers and other assistive technologies can notice them even when they are not in focus.
• …

What Else to Consider

Beyond §12 BFSGV and the criteria of EN 301 549, the following points are particularly important:

• Websites must generally be developed to “be oriented towards the needs of people with disabilities and ensure interoperability with assistive technologies [such as screen readers, note]” (§13 BFSGV).
• In online shops, accessibility information must be provided for the respective products and for the website itself, as far as they are available from the manufacturer, importer, etc. (§19 No. 1 BFSGV). This means in practice that you will soon need to find a statement on accessibility in online shops just as you would a privacy statement.
• A website must have at least one mode of operation that allows use with no vision and one that does not require color distinction (§21 Para. 1 BFSGV).
• Controls on websites that trigger photosensitive seizures should be avoided (§21 Para. 6 BFSGV). Sliders and animations on websites can be particularly problematic here.
• Websites must be equipped with at least one mode of operation that “includes functions that facilitate and simplify use for people with cognitive impairments.” (§21 Para. 7 BFSGV). This can mean that navigation and the core content of the website should not be too complicated. Long, convoluted sentences, difficult-to-understand formulations, and the use of abbreviations and acronyms should be avoided as much as possible (so I have essentially done everything wrong with this text…).
• The privacy of users must also be maintained in the accessible functions of a website (e.g., during authentications), §21 Para. 8.

Summary and Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, it is typical for EU legislation that even a year before the entry into force of a norm (with the corresponding threats of sanctions, which can range up to fines of €100,000 and the shutdown of a website), the practical measures for implementing this norm are still “in progress.” But we at least have guidelines on how an accessible website should be designed – and these are actually nothing new. What is new is primarily the legal bindingness for private actors.

As extensive as the measures may seem – if accessibility has already been considered in the design and development of a website or software, it is not a significant additional effort. That may look different if one has to retroactively make an already completed online shop accessible. But there is still plenty of time for that – and I can only advise affected companies not to delay this topic for too long. Unlike during the introduction of the GDPR, there are significantly fewer experts available to advise on accessibility and implement necessary measures.

Even for those who are not affected by the BFSG, engaging with the topic is worthwhile. Google, for example, consistently ranks accessible websites higher in its search results than others. And as I mentioned at the beginning: This topic concerns around 16% of the population, including a growing number of older people with significant purchasing power. The incentives are ample – take action!

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

What began on July 19, 2024 in Australia, spread with the rising morning sun across the globe, taking millions of Windows computers with it: the largest IT failure of all time. What were the causes of this global outage, and what lessons must we learn?

An Overview

It is a daily ritual in offices around the world: Arrive, turn on the coffee machine, sit down, and then: boot up the computer. But on Friday, July 19, this routine was abruptly interrupted by something known in the industry as “BSOD,” or “Blue Screen of Death.” Nothing worked on Windows computers worldwide, in hospitals, airports, government offices, schools, and industry. The computers could not boot up.

What had happened? The clues quickly began to accumulate. Apparently, the symptoms were related to the latest update of a security software, the so-called “Falcon” platform from the Texas-based company Crowdstrike. This software is used by companies to detect and eliminate malware and suspicious activities caused by it – essentially a type of advanced antivirus software.

This software is also available for Mac and Linux PCs, but in this case, only Windows systems were affected. And it was quickly clear: the damage was in the billions, and the aftermath of the debacle would occupy companies and the public for years to come. Technically though, a workaround was found relatively quickly to address the immediate problem of the blue-screening PCs. This required starting the affected PC in safe mode and then deleting a specific file from the faulty Falcon update. But in practice, this was tricky.

Thus began for many IT administrators what they refer to as “sneaker administration.” They had to triage due to capacity reasons – who do we save first? Who needs it most urgently? And which customers do we put on the back burner? They then had to physically go to each affected computer and carry out the procedure. This was a mammoth task in complex organizations like a hospital or an airport, with hundreds or thousands of workstations, terminals, and machines. Hours passed, flights were canceled, life-saving surgeries were postponed, production lines were halted, and customers were left waiting. It wasn’t until Saturday that most affected businesses could report progress – at least for the most critical computers. However, even a week after the incident, hundreds of thousands of less critical PCs were still affected by the problem.

What Exactly Caused the Error?

That a simple update of security software could trigger such a devastating chain reaction is due to specific characteristics of the Windows operating system. Every home user knows that antivirus programs and similar software only work if they have comprehensive permissions within the operating system. To detect and neutralize threats deep within the system, Norton, Avira, and others need to be able to intervene deeply in the system. This is especially true for high-end security solutions like the Falcon Suite.

This so-called “Endpoint Detection and Response” (EDR) from Crowdstrike requires what are known as “kernel-mode rights” during operation. A kernel is like the CEO of a computer. It ensures that programs and hardware work well and efficiently together. There are several security zones in a computer, similar to large public events. Not everyone has the right to access every zone. Software at the kernel level (i.e., in “kernel mode”) has all conceivable rights on a PC.

Windows granted these rights to third parties in 2009 following a lawsuit by the EU Commission over anti-competitive practices. Thus, it happens that under Windows, some security-critical software is equipped with kernel rights. If there is a “worm” in this software, whether due to an attack or a simple coding error, what happened now can occur: the computer detects an error at the level of its core functions and becomes blocked.

Monocultures?

Errors happen to everyone at some point. In a way, it is perhaps the small mistakes that make this world human and lovable. Personally, I find that the subtle crackle of a vinyl record enriches the listening experience more than the crystal-clear sound of Spotify. And that their – physically conditioned – slight graininess makes analog photos more vivid than the glossy images from the latest iPhone.

But it becomes critical when a simple error causes more global chaos than any known hacker attack. Then one must ask the question: is the global IT order to blame? After all, Windows has a global market share of about 70-80% in the desktop and laptop computer sector. And the company Crowdstrike, with its Falcon Suite as its flagship, is widely used in the largest companies in the world. Are monocultures to blame for the debacle?

Well, I’m not so sure. Microsoft clearly leads as an operating system for desktops and laptops – in mobile devices and IoT, they play no role (iOS is from Apple, and Android is a Linux system), and the server landscape that keeps the 21st century running is dominated by Linux systems. Therefore, a true monopoly cannot be directly established.

And the error was indeed with Crowdstrike, not with Windows. However, Crowdstrike, despite its market power, is by no means a monopolist. Competitors like SentinelOne, Cisco, Broadcom, Mandiant, WithSecure, and even Windows itself offer alternatives to Falcon, and these are also used. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a similar error could have affected other operating systems as well as other software.

All of this should not downplay the influence of players like Microsoft and Crowdstrike, whose name tragically fits here. When the software that is supposed to ensure the security of a system has an error, it can quickly lead to disaster.

What Can Companies Do to Prepare Themselves?

So how can companies protect themselves from debacles like this? How should they align their IT to be as resilient as possible during such a crisis? How can we make our companies’ IT so antifragile that we might even benefit from such events (just think of airlines: some flew, some did not…).

There is actually no simple solution here. One could switch operating systems, and indeed, different systems have individual advantages and disadvantages. Our clients know, for example, that we are big fans of Linux. But Crowdstrike itself has also previously provided updates that blocked Linux systems. The response was predictably lower, but the problem for the affected companies was similar.

Building parallel structures is rarely sensible, especially in the area of security software. Just as home users cannot install Kaspersky and Norton simultaneously, this is also very limited in more professional settings because these programs would otherwise interfere with each other. And maintaining multiple computers with different operating systems for the same tasks is not only expensive but also organizationally complex and only safer if the admins can keep all these systems compatible and up to date – a mammoth task.

Some fundamental measures could be taken by companies depending on their size and use case. These include:

• Establishing analog and/or digital redundancies to continue core business operations in emergency mode.
• Developing and communicating robust emergency procedures.
• Avoiding centralized solutions like the big cloud providers where sensible and possible. Using solutions with lower market penetration.
• Where possible, applying updates only recursively, i.e., staggered, and testing the impacts.

But especially the last point leads well into the main issue in this case.

What Must Software Developers Do to Avoid Such Errors?

The error was less in the system. It was also difficult for users to avoid. But Crowdstrike as the main culprit and Microsoft as the affected platform could have and should have done more:

• Updates should be rolled out recursively, no matter how small they are. It should not take the whole world burning down before the error is noticed. It is common practice for good reason to first update a portion of users and then see if everything works. This seems to have been overlooked here.
• Before rolling out an update, it should be tested automatically and manually on all relevant systems to fix any coding errors in time (e.g., through fault injection, stability tests, stress tests, fuzzing, or interface checks). It seems that Crowdstrike inadequately addressed this – the change seemed too small.
• Possible rollback procedures should also be established and tested, allowing a faulty update to be reverted. A rollback did not work in this case because the computer could not boot up after the update. But such situations are avoidable.

Crowdstrike itself promises improvement. But the damage has already been done – especially to their customers.

The Real Solution: Skin in the Game

Currently, companies like Crowdstrike have little incentive, aside from the risk to their own reputation, to establish such a rigid testing regime. Except for open-source applications, developers rarely have an outside party looking over their shoulders to point out potential dangers (this, by the way, is an important reason for the security of open-source like Gnu/Linux).

Structures should be created where companies truly have “skin in the game.” Where they (and their decision-makers) must be directly and personally liable for any damages incurred by the software they sold. This would not prevent errors – but it has the potential to prevent them from spreading as globally and devastatingly as was the case this month.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

Especially in times of tight budgets, many people ask themselves: Do I really need a web designer for my website? Or is a budget-friendly website builder sufficient? We want to take a closer look at this question here.

One sees the offers time and again: website builders or services that promise to create a website quickly, uncomplicatedly, and affordably. These offers sound tempting in times when life and business are becoming increasingly expensive. And the question is justified: What are the exact advantages of professional web designers? Can a lot of money be saved with a builder?

We want to address this question in three points. First, we want to look at what specific offers are available. Because there are indeed important differences. In a second step, we want to examine the advantages of these offers and why it can sometimes be sensible to use them. But of course, we wouldn’t be web designers if we didn’t find our profession meaningful. Therefore, in a third step, we want to look at the advantages a web designer brings to you that a builder does not yet reach. Then you can decide for yourself what suits you and your situation best.

What Alternatives are There to the Web Designer?

There are numerous different alternatives to the traditional web designer, and we want to shed some light on them here:

1. The Classic Website Builder

Many providers, especially telecommunications companies and smaller startups, still have the classic website builder in their portfolio. This is an online interface that allows the user, to a greater or lesser extent, to build their own website using visual elements. This is an advantage over an external web designer in that you can do everything yourself and are not dependent on the expertise of others. However, this advantage can also be a disadvantage: you have to do everything yourself.

• Classic website builders have a learning curve because the interface is not always intuitive.
• You invest your own time in creating your website.
• You inevitably have to familiarize yourself with the subject matter to build a website.

2. The Website Service

There are providers who enhance the website builder with a human operator. In practice, this works in such a way that you, as a customer, have a detailed analysis conversation with the provider so that they know which direction to take. Subsequently, an employee of the provider uses a classic website builder to build your website there. Some providers also write suitable texts for you, some even include suitable images right away.

• Your own familiarization with the website builder is not necessary here.
• However, the help of the provider is necessary for creating and modifying the website.
• These offers are often significantly more expensive than classic website builders.

The boundaries to traditional web design are blurred here. Because even though mature content management systems like WordPress are not classic website builders, they are now so user-friendly that even web design laymen can operate them. And so it happens that every graphic designer and even some students, retirees, etc., can start a small “web agency” and offer websites – often very cheaply. However, in general, the same advantages and disadvantages apply as with website builders because the principle of creating a website runs quite similarly.

3. The AI Website Builder

With the spread of AI, new business models are also emerging. Some providers already offer packages where an AI creates the complete website for you. In practice, the process can look different. From a complete website creation after entering a single command to a mixture of AI and classic website builder, everything is possible. The latter solution seems most sensible to me because the content created by the AI can be changed more easily than if you have to adjust the command and have the website recreated. Personally, I think we shouldn’t fool ourselves. AI will soon replace the traditional programmer, and, to a certain extent, other skills of a web designer as well. But after the initial hype a few months ago, it is becoming increasingly clear:

• Even AI requires experienced operators, for otherwise, nothing meaningful comes out of it.
• So far, AI products are often predictable, boring, and not very individual.
• In marketing, where highlighting individual “selling points” is of particular importance, AI still has disadvantages.

The Advantages of Website Builders

Website builders have several advantages. The most noticeable is, of course, the price, which is often unbeatably cheap – although you have to be a bit cautious here because even small amounts quickly add up if you have to pay them monthly. But there are also other, perhaps less noticeable advantages:

• You can often create a website faster than with a web designer.
• You often don’t have to bring your own texts or images. While web agencies also offer to create texts and select suitable media, this often comes at an additional cost. Many website builders include this service.
• Website builders do not require programming knowledge.

Why Choose a Web Designer Then?

Websites from builders are cheaper, easier, often even at the push of a button – so what advantages could a traditional web designer have?

Well, there are some. First, it may be important to remember that cheap and fast are not necessarily characteristics of quality. At the same time, it is also not automatically a sign of quality if something is particularly expensive. Good web designers usually find ways to create a professional website that fits the customer’s budget without compromising on quality.

We have already seen in another article what makes a successful website at its core: focusing on the needs of the customers. This includes many aspects:

• Load time
• Accessibility
• Customer-centric texts and content
• Customer-centric structure of the website
• Data protection
• Security
• Sustainability

Of course, it cannot be said across the board that website builder websites lag behind a website from a web designer in all these points. But in many of these points, compromises are made to keep the builder offer so affordable. Customers usually have no influence on which cookies are set by builders – which has implications for the GDPR compliance of the website. Customers often also lack the experience to assess whether a website is truly customer-centric and search engine optimized. And while the accessibility of websites from builders has improved significantly in recent years, the same cannot always be said for the load time.

Overall, builder-generated websites lag behind websites from web designers in many of these points. But what also comes into play are factors that may be of interest to you as a website owner:

• Independence: Websites from good web designers are designed so that you as a customer are not tied to the agency but could always commission another agency to maintain and revise the website – without the need for them to familiarize themselves first. This is not the case with builder websites. You are bound to the provider and possibly other third-party providers for better or for worse.
• Scalability: Builder websites can only to a limited extent be scaled or adapted to changed requirements. This limitation can be of great importance, especially for startups and in fast-paced industries.
• Time: With traditional website builders, you still have to do it yourself. A web designer saves you this time of familiarization with the tools.
• Image: Builder websites are often recognizable as such – either by the domain or by a note in the footer of the page. This often casts doubt on the professionalism of the company and can damage the image.
• Individuality: With a builder, you get a website from a builder – and it looks like one. Most builder websites look very similar visually, which is due to the technical constraints. You only get a truly individual website from a web designer.

And finally, let’s address a misconception: Websites from web designers can also be operated and adjusted by you as a customer. You are not dependent on us as web designers for every change of texts, images, or other content. We are very happy to introduce you to the operation of the CMS, be it WordPress, Drupal, or another!

Conclusion

In our consultations, we do not generally advise our customers against website builders because these offers undeniably have their advantages. Especially in prototyping, when you only need a short-lived new website quickly, such builders are very useful.

For a professional website that should be individual, high-quality, and durable, website builders are not recommended. In this case, it is worthwhile to hire a web designer..

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

The Bavarian start-up Nisti 3D from Berg near Munich specializes in 3D-printed promotional gifts made of titanium. They use a process that is also used in medical technology and aerospace. We are proud that we were chosen as a partner to create the new website for them.

The USP of NISTI 3D

The name of the company “NISTI 3D” goes back to its founder Niklas Stiasny. After studying business administration and industrial engineering, Mr. Stiasny works full-time as an application engineer for industrial metal 3D printing systems. He brings this expertise into his new company. He advises and supplies corporate customers who value high-quality and individual promotional gifts that radiate technological progress and innovative value. His bionically shaped products are only possible through the novel LPBF process, where ever new thin layers of titanium powder are melted together by laser to form stable lightweight objects.

At the same time, NISTI 3D advertises that it combines economy, ecology, and social aspects in a special way. The products come from a cost-effective, local, and low-waste production. Additionally, the company donates a portion of the proceeds to Child Protection Munich.

The New Website

You will find the new Website here: https://www.nisti-3d-druck.de [German].

A completely new, small, but fine website was requested based on existing texts and color specifications from an external designer.

It is intended to generate enthusiasm for the topic of metal 3D printing and at the same time invite visitors to get to know the innovative products of the company. Interested parties should also receive information about the company, the printing process, and the offerings.

The shapes and visual language were partly predetermined by the logo and the externally developed color concept. We did not write the texts ourselves, but were invited to provide feedback and incorporate our ideas.

To save costs, one of our WordPress basic themes was used, which we developed specifically for such cases. This theme stands out for its ability to be quickly adapted to an individual design without being overloaded, slow, or difficult to maintain due to countless fixed design options in advance.

Special Features of the New Website

• Responsive design that looks optimal on all screen sizes.
• A website structure and organization optimized for customer interests.
• Customization in colors, fonts, and design to match the given corporate identity.
• Appropriate image and video material, some provided by the client, some from trusted stock sites.
• Rapid loading times thanks to minimal code requirements, even though we have a video in the homepage banner.
• Good readability and accessibility for people with disabilities. Optimized for screen readers.
• On-page SEO basic optimization, even though no SEO package was booked.
• Low-maintenance design with a few plugins; no unnecessary external dependencies.
• Environmentally friendly: Optimized data sizes & local hosting powered by 100% hydroelectricity.

Our Service

Founders have hundreds of things to consider simultaneously. Here, we can be of special help. By making the technical connections understandable, providing independent strategic advice, and showing pragmatic, scalable solutions, we help founders present themselves professionally and successfully on the internet from the start. At the same time, our approach helps our clients avoid annoying mistakes and pitfalls that could lead to high costs and frustration later on. The consistently positive feedback from our customers confirms our approach.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

As the saying goes: “Buy cheap, buy twice.” There’s some truth to that. When it comes to your own website, a seemingly good deal can lead to high costs in the long run. In this article, we will take a closer look at what these costs might be.

Costs & Benefits

First, let me briefly explain what I mean by costs. Initially, one might think of the money specifically paid for an acquisition – in our case, the amount paid for the creation and operation of a website. It becomes more difficult with costs that are not directly quantifiable, such as the time spent on changing content. Additionally, costs can arise indirectly through a website, for example, legal fees incurred due to using an unlicensed image. The hardest costs to recognise are those that arise from a lack of revenue. These hurt the least in the short term, as often one doesn’t even realise what they’re missing. But this type of cost is all the more insidious, as they are often noticed too late, potentially putting entire companies in jeopardy.

However – and I must also mention this: a website does not have to be expensive to avoid costly follow-up expenses. But you must know where you can save – and where you cannot. Otherwise, you are proverbially saving at the wrong end.

Fewer Customers

Those who haven’t experienced it don’t know what they’re missing. Here, a slightly adapted story of one of our clients:

Imagine you are a tradesperson, and new, qualified enquiries for your services come in daily through your website. Specific enquiries like: “We are currently renovating our holiday home and still need a …. . We are available for a site visit at any time. Please send us a specific offer. Sincerely, Mr. Müller”. And now imagine you are in the same industry and have a website, but no enquiries come in. Would you miss something? Maybe not. Maybe you are still busy at the moment.

But what will happen when tradesperson 1 and tradesperson 2 are in direct competition in the same region? Tradesperson 1 regularly gets new enquiries, could possibly even hire more employees and grow. Or raise prices. In any case, they would have the opportunity to build a reputation through good service, which in turn, even through word-of-mouth recommendations, leads to new orders. And that holds true, even if they couldn’t take on every job due to capacity reasons. Tradesperson 2, on the other hand, will eventually wonder why customers are gradually disappearing. They might not immediately think of their website as part of the problem, as they don’t know what it’s like to have a successful website. But they will feel that the wind is getting harsher.

Building a customer base is a lengthy process. And it costs a lot to accelerate this process when you’re already in the ditch. Let’s take a closer look at two specific costs that can result from this:

Expensive Marketing

One way to compensate for a poorly performing website is to invest more in other marketing channels:

• The website ranks poorly on Google? Let’s use AdWords!
• Recognition in the region is shrinking? Let’s advertise in the newspaper!
• We don’t reach our target audience? Let’s advertise on Instagram!

Particularly expensive is this form of marketing with a poor website. Because if the website doesn’t meet users’ expectations, they will leave quickly. A high percentage of the marketing budget in other channels can be wasted effectively if users, brought to the website through expensive advertising measures, quickly leave due to a poor user experience.

This is a vicious circle. You would be amazed at how rarely entrepreneurs are aware of this vicious circle – and how much money is spent on practically pointless campaigns.

Loss of Trust

Another cost factor, rarely immediately noticed, is this: A bad website can also lead to a loss of trust among visitors. Trust is a crucial factor in online business, and if a company’s website doesn’t seem trustworthy, potential customers will hesitate to make purchases or enter their personal data. An unprofessional website that doesn’t meet current security standards or whose design and content are outdated can raise doubts about the company’s credibility.

The loss of trust can have several consequences:

• the company attracts the wrong customers (e.g., a clientele books at a hotel who don’t fit in there and therefore constantly cause friction)
• the company is forced to sell its products or services at a lower value to achieve any sales at all
• the company finds it harder to impress potential lenders
• the company loses its “standing” in the local business world
• the company receives less trust and credibility during bad PR

This all means not only lower revenues but can also damage the brand’s value in the long term. Customers who have had bad experiences with a website are less likely to return or recommend the company.

Fewer Applicants

A point I already mentioned in a previous blog article: We live in a candidate’s market. Companies must increasingly strive to attract enough capable applicants. Here, a bad website can have devastating consequences.

For many applicants, a company’s website is the first point of contact to learn about the company and its culture. If the website is outdated, unprofessional, or difficult to navigate, it can give the impression that the company is not modern and progressive.

An inadequate careers page that is not clearly structured or lacks important information will deter qualified applicants. This makes it harder to recruit talent and can lead to a long-term shortage of qualified personnel. And these are costs that are not immediately visible.

Adjustment & Expansion Costs

While the previous cost points are rather indirect or hidden, it is obvious here: If costs arise to later adjust the functionality or appearance of the website, then these costs are higher the worse the website was developed in the first place.

We often receive requests from companies that had a website made “very cheaply” by someone at some point and now need adjustments for this website. That can’t be so hard, can it? Unfortunately, it often is. Because not every website is built as modular and flexible as a Lego set, which can simply be expanded and adjusted as desired. Sometimes websites are more like a Playmobil set. This is not meant as a criticism against Playmobil, but it is significantly harder to convert a car into a flying car with Playmobil than it is with Lego.

If the website is not designed for scalability and flexibility from the start, future adjustments and expansions can be costly. This is especially true for companies that are growing and want to expand their online presence. Additional features such as e-commerce modules, user logins, or integrations with other systems can require significant investments if the existing website is not prepared for it.

Often, even small changes to a website become so expensive that it is almost cheaper to start from scratch. And this is unfortunately not an exaggeration. How much could website owners save if they paid attention to a few important points in advance! But unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen because it needs to be quick and cheap. These additional costs that arise later could be avoided if the website were professionally and future-proofed from the start.

Legal Issues (GDPR Warnings, Cease-and-Desist Orders, Competition Lawsuits)

A point that increasingly causes costs, which could actually be avoided, is everything related to legal matters. Especially since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), companies are required to comply with strict data protection regulations. A website that does not meet these requirements can quickly lead to legal problems. Warnings, cease-and-desist orders, and even lawsuits can be the result.

A common problem is an inadequate privacy policy or the lack of consent mechanisms for cookies and other tracking tools. Such violations can lead to high fines and often require the help of lawyers, which incurs additional costs. Additionally, competition violations, such as misleading advertising or unfair business practices on the website, can lead to expensive legal disputes. Or the use of images that have not been licensed.

We do not offer legal advice to our clients. But we are knowledgeable, know where the risks lie, and offer tailored services either ourselves or through our partners, such as a flexible licensing model for all types of media. This ensures you are legally on the safe side and save costs where others have to pay expensive tuition fees.

Costs Due to Security Issues

A final cost factor I would like to mention here, which is obvious to many, is the costs that arise when a website installation is insecure. A poorly secured website is vulnerable to cyber attacks such as hacking, phishing, or malware infections. Such attacks can not only cripple the website but also lead to data losses and thefts. Restoring the website and lost data can incur significant costs.

In addition, a security incident can massively undermine customer trust and lead to long-term revenue losses. In some cases, companies may also be legally obliged to inform affected customers and take measures to prevent future incidents, resulting in additional costs.

Conclusion

The hidden costs of a poor website are diverse and can have significant implications for a company’s success. From fewer customers and applicants to higher marketing expenses and legal and security-related issues – the consequences of an inadequate website can be far-reaching and costly. Therefore, companies should invest in a professional and user-friendly website to avoid these hidden costs and be successful in the long term. A good website is not just a cost factor but an investment in the future of the company.

Because if you buy cheap, you buy twice.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

In our last blog article, we considered what distinguishes a successful website from a less successful one. Today, we want to focus on those who create a website: the web designers. What makes a good web designer? Spoiler: It’s not so much about technical questions.

Who is a web designer?

Some of our colleagues approach this question with a certain arrogance. For them, web designers are only those who have professionally learned and practice this profession full-time. Similar to many apprenticeships, they look down on any layperson who attempts this art.

For this article, we want to broaden the term “web designer” a bit. For us, a web designer is anyone who creates a website – whether good or bad. Because fundamentally, even laypeople can now create very good websites with the right tools. But not everyone who considers themselves a good web designer actually is one. Here, we want to focus on four points that distinguish a good web designer.

Putting the Visitor in Focus

In general, a master is recognized by his work. This is also true in web design. A good web designer is recognized by creating good websites.

We have already discussed the most important factor for a good website in the blog article The One Factor That Sets Successful Websites Apart. In short: Your website is good when you succeed in meeting the needs of your prospects with your offer and thereby winning them as customers.

So, a good web designer first and foremost delves deeply into the needs, expectations, and behaviors of website visitors. Only in this way can he create an intuitive, user-friendly, and appealing interface that provides visitors with added value and encourages them to take action: to make a purchase, subscribe to a newsletter or podcast, book a room, etc.

Many web designers – even many professionals! – disregard this very basic point and create websites only focusing on their clients. Of course, it is important that the client and their brand are ideally represented through the website (see below). But the goal of a website should not only be to positively showcase a company, association, or whoever. If it is not purely informative, the goal of a website should always be “conversion”: turning visitors into prospects and prospects into customers – or members, visitors, guests, etc.

Keeping Search Engines in Mind

By consistently focusing on the needs of visitors, a web designer is already on the right track to also consider the second central point: the placement of the website in search engine results. Because the best website is not very useful if no one finds it.

To perform well on Google & Co., many things need to be considered – both technical and content-related. Search engines always strive to present their visitors with the most relevant and best search results for their needs (they have understood the first point!). And in their eyes, search results are relevant and good if they:

• have relevant, up-to-date, and well-prepared content that matches the search query,
• have been rated as relevant and worth reading by others (e.g., through links or reviews),
• are optimized for mobile devices and generally accessible,
• load quickly and
• are securely configured (e.g., with SSL encryption).

There are many other factors that play a role for search engines. And these factors, or their weighting, also change regularly. Search engine optimization is an art – and an ongoing process.

A good web designer understands the importance of SEO and has the necessary experience to optimize the website both in terms of content and technically and to prevent costly mistakes.

Brand Ambassador

The first two of our points are very focused on the visitor of a website. However, this does not mean that a web designer should not also keep the client’s brand in mind.

A successful brand is much more than just the external appearance (logo, colors, fonts, etc.). The core of a brand is always the intersection between:

1. what the world and one’s own target audience most urgently need with
2. one’s own values and
3. one’s own abilities.

Bringing out this brand and supporting it in every possible way through the website is an art that distinguishes a good web designer. It starts with the structure of the website and goes through the design to the implementation.

Sustainability

Did you know that poorly programmed websites consume a huge amount of electricity and computing power? A banner video in high resolution may look fancy (once it eventually loads), but it contributes to the insatiable resource consumption of our modern world.

But even for those who are not so interested in environmental protection and resource consumption, sustainability usually becomes interesting when it comes to their own wallet. And here, there are countless pitfalls that inexperienced web designers can fall into:

1. They may use a website builder that looks very cheap and easy at first glance – but turns out to be much more expensive than expected over the lifetime of a website. And the tricky thing about website builders is that you are bound to the provider for better or for worse unless you want to rebuild the entire website.
2. The same applies to supposedly free systems like WordPress or Contao, which are then extended by third-party themes and plugins. Here, you really need to know what you’re doing. Because setting up these constructs is usually relatively quick and cheap. But beware if you later want to add a specific function. Or if the provider no longer provides security updates for the plugin. Or if prices rise. Or if the EU issues a new data protection directive. Or, or… It is not uncommon for third-party solutions to be so deeply embedded in the system that you have no choice but to start over. And that becomes expensive in the long run.
3. Inexperienced web designers often lack the background knowledge to securely set up a server or hosting and configure a website in compliance with data protection regulations. Then, at some point, a competitor’s warning letter arrives. Or a hacker looks around and steals important data. Or the server crashes and the website was not backed up. All of this has happened before – and is very annoying (and expensive) when it happens.

A good web designer has the knowledge and experience to create a website that can be operated securely, in compliance with legal requirements, sustainably, and without unnecessary dependencies. They not only feel responsible for creating a website but also for its continued existence – and of course, they do not shy away if damage occurs despite all security measures.

Soft Skills

In this article, we have already covered the most important factors that make up good (web) design. Because design is much more than just appearance. Nevertheless, a good web designer should naturally also have an eye for colors, shapes, fonts, and layout. Often, you can’t exactly pinpoint why a design appears “harmonious,” and of course, there is a subjective factor in everything. But on a good website, function and form seamlessly fit together, support each other, do not impose themselves, but are also not completely arbitrary. Customers notice and appreciate all of this, at least subconsciously. Visitors quickly become repeat customers.

And last but not least, a point that is personally important to us: As web designers, we always try to identify with our clients. We literally have a stake in the success of our clients. For us, web design is more than just a job. It brings us joy to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes (and their target audience’s) find the best solution for each of them individually. So, no website is like any other, and we always learn something new. A web designer who does not approach each new project with a certain curiosity, humility, and enthusiasm cannot be a good web designer.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

Why do some websites succeed on the internet while others do not? Your competitor reaches the target audience measurably more successfully than you, but you’re not sure what they’re doing differently?

In this article, we take a look at a frequently overlooked factor that makes the difference between success and frustration in a website project.

What is Success on the Internet?

When we examine why some websites on the internet are significantly more successful than others, we first need to consider what success actually means. Many fall into the first thinking trap here.

Success on the internet is only partially related to your reach, that is, how many people perceive your offering. You achieve success when your offering is accepted by as many people as possible.

This difference may seem small but is of utmost relevance in practice. Imagine you have a small retail store offering custom clothing. Now, you realize there are six groups of people:

1. Those who have no idea that you and your store exist.
2. Those who know your store but have no interest in it.
3. Those who know your store, are interested, but just stop at the storefront.
4. Those who know your store, are interested, enter it, browse around, and maybe even try on the clothes.
5. Those who have made a purchase at your store.
6. And repeat customers who have made purchases and keep coming back.

Which of these groups contribute to your success?

It’s like a funnel. The selection gets narrower towards the bottom. And the amount of water flowing through the funnel is not only determined by its width at the top but mainly by its diameter at the bottom.

In other words, your store will only be successful if you can attract – and retain – as many customers as possible. The number of prospects is only indirectly relevant.

Success with a website is not solely about reaching many potential customers. Success is achieved when you can consistently increase the number of your actual customers.

What Distinguishes Prospects from Customers

Once we understand the difference between prospects and customers, the next logical question is: What sets prospects apart from customers? How does someone become a prospect, and how do prospects become customers?

To illustrate, think again about our clothing example. What might prompt you to look at a clothing store’s storefront, maybe even enter it or try on the clothes?

The reasons can be diverse and individual:

• You find the store appealing.
• You are waiting for someone and have time to spare.
• You are naturally curious.
• You like the colorful decorations in the storefront.
• The clothing reminds you of your beloved grandmother.
• A friend has raved about the store.
• …

But are these the reasons that ultimately lead you to make a purchase? Perhaps. However, one thing ensures that you actually make a purchase in the end: The clothing fulfills a need you have – at a price you find acceptable.

Looking at the purchase from the perspective of underlying needs, the following scenarios may arise:

• You have a need for the good feeling of having done something for your community. Here, you buy clothing because it brings you joy to support a likable store.
• Or you have a need for regional and individual fashion – and the creative clothing aligns perfectly with this need.
• Or you have a need to give someone a personalized gift – and you suspect that the clothing would bring joy to the recipient because it fulfills a need for them too.

A Needs-Oriented Website

Success on the internet, like in real life, is achieved when your offering meets the needs of your prospects, turning them into customers.

In theory, this sounds simple, but in practice, it’s an art mastered by few. The urge to showcase oneself, the allure of apparent validation through ever-increasing reach, and the superficial understanding of the real needs of your target audience are significant challenges.

Do you know exactly who your target audience is? Can you pinpoint their interests, hopes, wishes, and concerns? How do your customers live? What products surround them? What political or ideological beliefs drive them? This requires detective work. Are your customers predominantly male or female? Are there age-related focal points? Why have you been successful with your existing customer base – and what needs underlie this success?

The more precisely you can answer these and similar questions, the more accurately you will be able to consistently align your offering with the wishes and needs of your target audience – thus widening the bottom diameter of the funnel. Because in the end, your success on the internet is not about what goes in at the top but about what comes out at the bottom.

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.

For more and more companies – including here in Upper Bavaria and the Rupertiwinkel region – having their own website no longer seems to be a matter of course. We are increasingly confronted with the question of whether a website is even necessary in the age of social media.

We believe: absolutely! Every company that takes itself seriously should invest in a professional web presence. Perhaps even more so today than ever before. Find out why we think so here.

Considerations

In order to clarify the question of this article, there are a few things to consider first.

First of all: What is a website anyway? When we think about websites here, we have in mind an individually designed online presence that can be found at a dedicated internet address (such as www.netjutant.com). Nothing more, nothing less. This can range from a web business card, where the most important company information is displayed on one page, to a multilingual online shop. However, what does not fall under this definition is a simple redirection from an internet address to a public social media profile such as a Facebook page or a LinkedIn profile.

The website doesn’t have to be large or elaborate, it doesn’t necessarily have to be created by a web agency or a web designer. However, it should be professionally done, because otherwise you may achieve the opposite of what you could achieve.

A second point that is important for our following considerations is this: Many companies underestimate how long it can take to establish a presence on the internet. Because it’s not the case that as soon as you launch a website, you are immediately listed on Google or found by customers or applicants. It may have been easier in the past. Today, it often takes months for Google to index a new website. This is due to metrics such as “Domain Trust,” through which Google evaluates how trustworthy and relevant a company (or its website) is. The age of the domain and the consistency of the website also play a role here. And for a good ranking, a lot of additional effort is required, from seeking external links to the site (backlinks) to regularly updating the content.

All of this doesn’t have to happen immediately for every website. Many companies, especially in the artisanal sector, currently have such full order books that they don’t need a perfectly optimized website. But everyone should keep in mind that optimization takes time. It is especially important for our first argument.

Argument 1: The Winds Can Change

It’s nice to see that after Covid, many companies are back to a point where they are getting more orders than they can handle. Surprisingly often, this comes with the argument: “I have so many customers, why do I need a website?” In our view, this is short-sighted.

Because history shows: the wind can change.

In good economic times, it can happen that suddenly a new competitor appears in the neighborhood, who operates very skillfully on the internet and gradually – perhaps initially unnoticed – draws customers away. The fatal aspect of this scenario is that this process often occurs so insidiously.

Did you know? We offer our customers a competitive analysis, regularly if desired. This is like a radar that observes the online activities of the competition and detects risks before they become too dangerous. Contact us!

But the market environment in general can also become rougher. In tough economic times, cost pressures intensify, and every customer gained helps. However, nowadays most customers increasingly gather information via the internet.

In both scenarios, we then receive almost panicked inquiries: something needs to be done, and quickly. It couldn’t have been foreseen that customers would suddenly stop coming. However, acting quickly is only possible by placing expensive ads, which can be an additional burden in economically challenging times – and their short-term effect is not a long-term solution. Often, they also fizzle out because there is no professional website backing them up.

Our advice here: A – even small but cleverly designed – website today is an investment that can pay off as soon as tomorrow. It should be possible to expand it quickly and sensibly when necessary. But Google has already taken notice, the trustworthiness of the internet address is increasing – so you’re not starting from scratch.

Argument 2: Brand, Brand, Brand

What many large companies already recognize is gradually gaining ground among most small businesses: Sustainable and successful business also means building strong brands.

• Through brands, a company conveys stories, and stories sell products.
• A company defines itself and positions itself in the market through its own brand.
• Brands make companies and products recognizable.
• Strong brands build customer trust and loyalty.
• Strong brands become attractive to applicants.

Social media presence alone is not enough to sustainably build a brand:

• The layout and tone of the content are dictated by the platform.
• Colors and graphic elements have limited visibility.
• Communication is fragmented across different platforms, lacking cohesion.
• Most platforms use a continuous chronological sorting of content, which is often not optimal for structured presentations.

What is clear: A website does not necessarily replace social media presence. But it is a meaningful – and we believe, necessary – complement to such presence. On a dedicated website, the individual brand shines through, allowing content to convey cohesive stories. And lastly: On the company’s own homepage, the company has full control. There is no third-party algorithm determining when certain content is displayed or promoted.

Argument 3: Skills Shortage?

The statement “Our website is currently not really a priority…” combined with the statement “…but we struggle to find good personnel” unfolds a particular irony.

Naturally, many factors play a role in the current skills shortage in the German job market. But think back to your own career: If it has already taken place in the internet age, the likelihood is very high (close to 100%) that you have Googled companies that have posted job advertisements and then evaluated their websites. Whether consciously or subconsciously, this visit influenced your decision on whether and how to apply to that company.

Through a website, as an applicant, you can gain a good impression of how a company operates, what the corporate culture is like, what the central markets and areas of responsibility are, what values a company represents, and more.

Be aware that as a company, you always make an impact – often a negative one as well. Psychological and subconscious factors play a role here, just as much as consciously perceivable inconsistencies in communication.

A well-thought-out website that emphasizes the core of a company’s brand can have a huge impact on the quantity and type of applications a company receives. For this – we reiterate – a massive corporate presence is not necessary. But one should know what they are doing when creating a website.

A website can also help in another aspect of the skills shortage: in the efficiency of workflows for existing staff. It is unfortunate that, for example, a medical practice finds it increasingly difficult to find new medical assistants. But wouldn’t it be wise to lighten the workload for existing staff where it makes sense? For instance, a small form on the website through which patients can request new prescriptions can replace dozens of phone calls or in-person conversations – and it may be easier for patients as well.

Such individual solutions cannot be implemented on your social media platforms.

Argument 4: A Central Source of Truth

Companies need a central communication channel…

• …where customers always find the latest offers.
• …where interested applicants find relevant information.
• …where the press finds background information about the company.
• …through which even employees can always be kept up to date.
• …where feedback and (confidential) inquiries can be directed to the company.

Some of these points may be suitable for social media channels, but not all.

Personal interaction with customers and other target groups is rarely replaceable. However, a website is like a 24/7 sales representative, providing information tailored to needs and forwarding feedback. It comprehensively represents the company, ideally always up to date, and serves as the central source of truth.

How do you communicate when things go wrong? When misinformation about you circulates (or even spam is sent in your name)? Do you have contingency plans and procedures for such cases? And most importantly: do you have the appropriate platform to implement these plans?

Conclusion

I hope we have convinced you that you need a website. The arguments mentioned will remain valid in the distant future and apply to companies of all sizes.

Of course, this does not mean that you need a massive web presence immediately. Nor does it mean that you must necessarily have your website created by us, although we would naturally be delighted if you did. Why it is still a good idea to invest in professional help – or at least consultation beforehand – is outlined in this article.

Best of luck with your endeavors!

Peter Schnoor has been working as a web designer and web developer for over 20 years. As the founder of Netjutant, he helps clients communicate more authentically and successfully online. To balance his screen work, he enjoys nature in his home region of Upper Bavaria.