- About Page
- Most likely don’t need Cloudflare
- Actually making it accessible
- Don’t just have a phone number
- Don’t have to use Wordpress or Shopify or Wix
- Copyright or bottom of website
- Homepage can be whatever you want
- Don’t need analytics or other tracking
- Host site on Tor or I2P
- Link to sources or other websites
- Show you care about the environment
- Offer multiple languages
- Paywall or not
- Offer something without expectation
- Republish articles from others with permission
- What else?
- Additional links:
Many websites look very similar, it might be because it’s always been like that, the person creating the website isn’t creative, or you don’t want to change something which could cause the visitor to be confused and go to a different site. I want to challenge that and say there are some things that can be changed, and why it’s worth challenging.
About Page
There are so many articles and talks saying what to include on your about page. Most of them are focused on the website for a business, what I’m going to say applies no matter who the website is for.
No picture needed
You don’t need to include a picture, I can prove it, I’ve gotten business from this website without having a picture on my about page. Granted, I may have lost some potential business because I didn’t have, but you never know about the potential. Why might someone not want to put up a picture? They haven’t gotten an recent professional picture, they hate pictures being taken of them, they are worried about their image being stolen by AI and used in other ways, worried about discrimination, and there are many other reasons. You don’t even need to mention on the page why there isn’t a photo, most people won’t notice something is missing unless you point it out (it’s called inattentional blindness).
What should you include
With many opinions on what makes a great about page, it can be hard to decide what to include, and what not to. First, think about what the person reading must know, who is your target audience, what do you do, that sort of thing. Include what makes you different, why should they choose you over someone who does the same thing. You may think to include that on a services page, however it’s worth including again as some people may not have read those pages.
How should someone address you
Usually when you have a website you’ll want to say who you are, that way if someone contacts you they know how to properly address you, however it depends on who the website is “for”. By that I mean, if it’s a website meant for your professional self, then you’ll want to either use your real name or the name you prefer to go by. If you’re known as SEOSteve online, then you’ll want to make sure to include that early in your about page.
Most likely don’t need Cloudflare
Many websites are behind Cloudflare because someone either fears attacks that could bring down their site, believes Cloudflare will help protect it from those trying to hack into the website in order to deface it, or thinks that being behind that will help their website be quicker. While Cloudflare, or any similar company (such as Fastly or Gcore) do make their marketing sound like they can completely take care of all of that. That’s not completely the case, and actually being different, by not being behind them, can be a benefit in a way.
Cloudflare down?
What happens when Cloudflare has an issue or goes down? Your entire website can go down, don’t believe me, it’s happened multiple times and usually the press covers it as so many websites use Cloudflare. You can be different by not being behind any company like this, so that when they are down, your website is still up and working.
Cloudflare marketing isn’t fully accurate
No company, including Cloudflare, can 100% prevent someone from improperly accessing your website. Many websites also have some sort of similar protection behind it already, as website hosts have a sort of malware scanner or firewall. There are myths going out that Cloudflare can make a website quicker, while I can see it being quicker in some way, from the multiple tests I have done, Cloudflare makes a website take longer to fully load.
Why you may want to put your website behind Cloudflare
If the website is for a political party or movement that has adversaries, then I understand putting it behind Cloudflare, or a similar company, that way there is less worry about the website going down. For example, in hindsight, when I was doing work for the 2017 Women’s March Canada website, I should I have put the website behind Cloudflare and turned on their “I’m under attack” mode which may have reduce the possibility of the website going down during the weekend of the movement.
Actually making it accessible
Many companies care about the fancy design of a website, and they don’t take the time to make it accessible to everyone. You can stand out and be different by making it accessible. Adding one line to your website doesn’t make it accessible, in fact it makes it worst. Instead, spend the time or money to make it usable for a wider audience. What do I mean by this? Either you can take the time yourself (or someone at your company) to make it accessible, or you can pay someone to do it for you. If you wish to do it yourself, for starters I would suggest reading advice from the UK government, WebAIM, and W3C.
Accessibility isn’t 100% complete
While it’s being worked to be made accessible, there may be a thought about how to make it 100% accessible. In accessibility, there is no 100%, if someone says that they are lying to you. A website can be made more accessible, little by little, there will never come a time when you can step away and say it’s fully accessible.
Don’t just have a phone number
If you go to a contact page on a website you will most likely find a phone number, and maybe something else like a contact form. Be different and more accessible by including more.
What should you include, it depends on your business and what your ideal customers use. Do they prefer a direct email address, links to send a direct message on social media or a messaging service (like Signal or WhatsApp or WeChat, or perhaps something else.
Don’t have to use Wordpress or Shopify or Wix
Platforms or software like Wordpress, Shopify and Wix all give you a limited way to edit your site, which means almost all sites made using them look similar. If you want to be different, then either use something else that provides more editing opportunity, be willing to use features that may be under beta, or have the expertise to make it look different.
Copyright or bottom of website
On the bottom of many websites it says a year and all rights reserved, did you know that legally in many countries, you don’t have to do that since as soon as you publish it, the copyright is applied. When you are ready for the world to see what you’ve done, you can be as creative (or not) as you want indicating who owns the copyright.
Include the current year
Whether or not you intend to be creative, one way to be different is to include the current year, that is if you put a year in the bottom. As I’ve seen many websites have the year be something that was many years ago, and to me this shows that you don’t care, and the website most likely hasn’t been updated since then. For some businesses, their website isn’t the most important thing on their todo list, however I believe it’s becoming one more thing businesses should care about, as people like me research online before contacting a business.
Be as creative as you wish here
Now, how do you be creative in this area? You may wish to integrate something that includes your area of expertise, for example the website of a lawyer could say, this website is copyright of (company name), you don’t want to steal content from a lawyer as we know how to throw the book at you and ensure you end up paying for it. Why be creative like this? Because it shows people you are human and have a sense of humour.
Homepage can be whatever you want
Based on my experience and past analytics, the homepage is usually the first page that someone visits on a website. This is based on many different reasons, and that is the first experience someone has regarding you. Homepages tend to include information about you, your product or services, and links to other pages. However, it doesn’t have to be that way, you can be distinct by doing something else.
Take Kev Quirk’s website, taking a look at the homepage of his site in November 2023, you’ll see a list of his most recent blog posts. Like many other people, he’s changed it overtime, your homepage can be something like that if you believe it will create a better impression of you.
Those reading may think that this section should have been the first in this post, as I mentioned the homepage is often the first thing many people visit. However, I included it here to be different.
Don’t need analytics or other tracking
Many websites rely on analytics or some sort of other tracking to know where you go on the website, and what is most read. While there are benefits to this, I would advise against having too much tracking as that can result in fines or lawsuit against companies for sending data to another company. One instance is when those who were shopping online for health insurance in California had their information sent to LinkedIn.
You may not be wanting information related to health insurance, however you may be asking for information that some people consider private or confidential. By having trackers, you’re saying that you care more about getting more customers than a current customer’s information.
In being different, you don’t have to do this, you can choose to not have any analytics, and instead either rely on social media / messages, or post whatever you feel is best suited.
Host site on Tor or I2P
If someone could get fired, killed or worst for visiting your website, you’ll want to set up more ways that someone can visit your site. While what I mentioned are the extremes, there have been memo’s sent out to US government employees reminding them not to read certain articles.
Granted, you as a website owner don’t want to cause someone to get killed, having your website available through Tor or I2P can also allow those who may normally block your site or article to see what you have to say.
How you set this up varies based on multiple different factors, if you don’t know, then talk to those who manage your website or do some research to see what the best way is for your needs.
What inspired me to write this section? Not only does ProPublica have a Tor site, the personal website of Ben Tasker is also available over Tor and I2P.
Link to sources or other websites
Unless you gathered the knowledge first-hand, I highly encourage you to include a link to where you first found it. This can help you come across as trust-worthy, it shows that you aren’t just making it all up, and it’s also one way to thank those who originally published it.
Some say that you shouldn’t include links to websites by others as that will worsen your SEO and create places where potential customers can go instead. However, in more recent articles, including links to others can actually help your website rank in SEO. And if a potential customer decides to go elsewhere then there are most likely reasons why they are going elsewhere that aren’t because you linked to another website.
I’ve also come across other interesting articles while researching and writing that either may not fit into what I’m writing, or there are multiple articles that I want to mention. Instead of choosing just one, I include them in an additional links section that is found at the very bottom. That’s a different way of doing it as well.
Show you care about the environment
To run a website you need somewhere that it’s physically located, if someone says it’s in the cloud, what they really mean is just it’s someone else’s computer. All these locations use lots of energy and water. To set yourself (and many companies) apart, they offer environmentally friendly locations.
Not just offsets or certificates
Please don’t pay the ones that don’t tell you how they are environmentally friendly, or the ones that say they buy carbon offsets or certificates as they don’t really help. In my experience, the ones that really care about the environment don’t have as powerful marketing, which means most likely you’ll hear about the good ones through word of mouth or tons of research.
Electricity is also environmental
Another way to care about the environment is to consider how much electricity is used from the person who is trying to visit your website, all the way to where your site is physically located, and back. Granted, there’s only one thing you can control along all of this, and how’s fast or slow your website takes. One way to make it faster is by reducing what’s on the site, do you need all those fancy animations? Sometimes this is also referenced to as low-bandwidth mode. One website which I think does a great job of showing what can be done with very little, and how environmentally friendly you can actually be, is the Low-tech magazine which is also solar-powered.
Offer multiple languages
Do your potential customers speak multiple languages, or live in a community where English isn’t always the first language? Consider having multiple languages on your website, so everyone can understand it.
There are multiple ways to potentially do this, from including the other language on the same page (usually beneath or beside), having a subdomain just for the other languages, offering the option on what language to have the website in from the beginning, to having an entire separate website with just that language. Which way you offer depends on multiple things, and it may require working with multiple people within your company (or externally) to look into what way works best for you.
Paywall or not
Some people (or companies) can’t afford to decide if they want to have a paywall or not, I want to acknowledge that first, many don’t have a financial choice.
If you have a choice, I see more websites (at the time of writing) putting their own writing behind a paywall and you can be different by not doing that (letting everyone read fully without paying anything). This allows those who can’t afford every subscription to be able to read your content.
Normally I would put maybe one or two links within a section like this, however I feel it’s important to realize how more accurate and true stories are going behind paywalls, which means those who can’t pay, will end up reading misinformation or those who have large amount of external funding.
The Ethics of News Paywalls by Kat Williams and Scott R. Stroud
The Paywall Dilemma by Ernie Smith
Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls by Richard Stengel
Offer something without expectation
Many websites offer something to get people on their email newsletter list, usually a free ebook or something like that. Once on their email list, there’s the expectation that you will make them money somehow, because they will mention ways to pay them many times. Even just being reminded of the company through their emails can subconscious convince you to pay them, this is sometimes known as top-of-mind awareness.
How can you be different? Don’t require them to sign up for your newsletter. Yes, you can require an email address in order to send them the link. However, you stand out by not automatically having them on your email newsletter list.
One reason to do this is because it costs you money to have an email newsletter. Some companies require you to pay them per subscriber, while others for each email sent. By not automatically signing up, you save money by only paying for those who truly want it. Why email someone who is just going to delete it?
Republish articles from others with permission
If you have a blog then I know the feeling of it being hard sometimes to decide what to publish. If you’re having trouble, but enjoy reading articles from others, you might be able to reprint their article on your website. Granted, as long as you get the right permission. There are some websites that offer it for free, and others you might not realize you can do it from.
One example being The Markup, which has a republish button at the bottom of a majority of their articles which tells you how to republish it. Two stories I think are good that you could republish are What It’s Like Living With Limited Access to Internet in the Black Rural South and Be Wary of Email (Like Our Readers).
Another example that doesn’t explicitly say you can republish are sites that put their posts under Creative Commons license. Cory Doctorow has his posts on Pluralistic under a Creative Commons license. Cory includes what exact license he has chosen in the colophon of each post. Many authors also make it easier by mentioning the license that it’s under at the bottom of every page.
What else?
You can go to any website and get inspiration for what you may want to add or be different before you add it to your site. I considered putting a statistics page on my website because I saw it on sizeof(cat).
You don’t have to make your website 100% different from everyone else, it’s OK to have some things that are the same, which makes it easier for someone to get around, or for them to contact you.
I know the difficulty of finding something you think might work, sleeping on it, then realizing it won’t work for you. Or researching how to make it work, and it just doesn’t work with your current setup, or you don’t have the time to properly maintain it.
Could you implement all of these ideas and still have a website that isn’t truly different because you’ve just copied ideas from multiple websites, sure. You can also create what you might think are your own ideas and realize that someone else already has that on their website, again sure. You don’t need to have a truly unique and different website, sometimes the best ideas are ones that others are already using, and you tweak to fit you. One example is this website, one idea I believe I took from another website was having a table of contents in blog posts.
To close, I think a website needs to have things that make it different, other than your voice, or having your name on it. Let’s take ideas, see if they work, be willing to accept if they do or don’t, work to create a website that feels like you and allows you to be at least slightly different.
Additional links:
Why You Hate Having Your Picture Taken and What to Do About It by Richard Waine
The science behind why we hate having our photo taken by Sarah Wills
Is 100% Perfect Website Accessibility Impossible? by Kris Rivenburgh
Don’t Read This If You Have a Security Clearance by Thomas Rid
Why Robert K. Knake Has Nothing to Say About the NSA Leak
Why some sites don’t link to sources or other sites by me
Netflix and Meta’s Carbon Credits Snared in Dispute with Maasai Herders by Caroline Kimeu (paywall, fully available through archive.today)
8 Causes of Slow Website Loading (And How To Fix Them) by Karolina Szczur
The Attraction of a Lead Magnet by Rob Hoeijmakers
Why 404 Media Needs Your Email Address
Should you Sleep on it? The Effects of Overnight Sleep on Subjective Preference-based Choice by Uma R. Karmarkar, Baba Shiv, and Rebecca M. C. Spencer (paid journal, available through Sci-Hub, Anna’s Archive, or Library Genesis for free by searching the title or DOI number under scientific articles)
SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it’s also hostile to mountain people
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