People don’t care what technology your site is built on

Almost a year ago I replaced Wordpress as the backend of my website and moved it all to a modern headless stack using Sanity CMS and Next.js. I was hoping it would improve my site speed–which it has. But not really enough that I would recommend it over a well oiled Wordpress site.

For me originally Wordpress was a bit daggy, a bit old hat and I wanted to go with something cool and modern and JavaScript-y! I think it is really cool and maybe a few tech nerds do but ultimately nobody cares.

I like Sanity CMS, I like how flexible it is, I like how it talks to Next.js—but I’m a nerd. I like separating my content from the website. There are problems with database driven CMSs (non-headless?) that really bug me.

However, I’d argue I’ve gone backwards in the ease of my editing experience for the sake of a cool tech-stack and some technology benefits. It works for me, but not everyone.

Along a similar vein, the search on Coles Online (a big Australian supermarket) is frustratingly bad. It displays totally irrelevant items for most of your searches. It makes online grocery shopping take far too long.

I’m sure there is something really techy and expensive driving the Coles Online search, but it’s not doing a good job and it reflects poorly on the brand.

Users only care about the experience the technology provides them. This is then reflected on your brand than it is the tech stack.

Your technology decisions need to be about the primary end user—be that a user on the site or an editor adding content. Here is a twist though—If it is something that will require developers to work on regularly then they also need to be considered as an end user.

If your cool or expensive stack means a tradeoff in either of these areas you’ve probably made the wrong decision.