Why your website’s technology matters (but not how you might think).

Today I’m going to explain how to identify which technologies to use when building new software.

Choosing the right technologies can have a massive impact on how your business runs. And how profitable it is.

Most people hold the opinion that you can use any technology to build any product.

The problem comes when they try to put that into practice.

When actually built and delivered, that rarely holds true.

Products need additions and maintenance in reasonable timeframes and budgets.

They also need to achieve their desired solution in the best way for the team.

Most people say the technology you use to build software doesn’t matter. They’re wrong.

I want to help you understand where this statement comes from.

Choosing the right technology makes all the difference to your business. To do that we need to answer a few questions.

• Why does your technology matter?

• Who does this decision impact?

• Why is getting it wrong so expensive?

• How to make better software decisions going forward

So let’s get started

Why does your technology matter?

The technology you choose impacts every decision for how your business runs.

Maybe you're building your own software. Maybe you're choosing platforms you use daily like slack, teams and notion.

Even if you have a physical business, you need to consider technology choices. Payment terminals for shops. Self order machines at fast food chains. Even warehouses and farming (which are becoming increasingly automated).

Technology is everywhere.

So the decisions you make impact your team and your customers.

Who’s impacted by your technology?

Your technology choices will impact everyone that interacts with your company.

The teams below aren’t the only ones that’ll be affected. But they’ll be affected most often.

Developers

The team who will actually be building with your chosen technology daily

They need to be able to quickly catch & fix bugs and add new features in a robust way

And your technology should support that

If you have your own team of developers already, you will want to pick technologies that they already understand or match closely with their current skillset.

If you’re outsourcing software development, it matters less but you want to make sure that the technology chosen is used widely enough that other teams/developers could also pick it up

Product

If developers are working at a slower rate that means new features are going to take longer.

New features releasing slower can make it more difficult to keep up with the competition.

It can also make it harder to sell your product (if that’s what you’re trying to do) as you have less new, exciting things to talk about.

That in turn can mean that your valued customers get frustrated with slow progress.

Over time that leads to churn.

Hiring managers

Some technologies are a lot easier to hire for than others.

Statista shows that JavaScript has a 63% knowledge rate among developers. Other languages like Dart (Flutter), Ruby or even PHP are significantly lower. It will be easier to find candidates for more popular technologies. You’ll also have more choice of who to hire due to more competition.

This lack of supply for certain languages will often mean higher prices for similar work.

So regardless of if you’re hiring internally or outsourcing it’s much safer to go for more popular options.

Why is getting technical decisions wrong so expensive?

The short answer is because once you make a decisions, they become very difficult to change.

It takes a lot more time and effort to retrain a team than it does to introduce something new.

To move data and processes from one tool to another.

And if you don’t fix it, everything we listed above compounds.

• If you can’t hire developers, you’ll struggle to make changes to your software

• If development is slow, you can’t add new features

• If you can’t add new features, your team works less effectively

• If your team is less effective, your competition has chance to get ahead

• And that gap between you and your competition means you lose customers

Example: Blackwood

We were working with Blackwood to re-imagine their internal Applicant Tracking & CRM Software.

Their old application used an outdated programming language (Objective C). That made it really hard to update. With a small team of developers, they really struggled to continue to update it. Their only option was a complete rebuild.

They spent a lot of resources training new team members how to use this software. But it was hard to understand meaning they took a long time before they became effective.

How can we make better technical decisions?

Focus on what matters to your team

Maybe you need the ability to scale quickly? Need a mobile app and a website? Maybe you need to publish tens or hundreds of articles a day so want the CMS with the best user experience?

Your team will all have different goals and use cases for the technologies you use.

So it’s important to include a stakeholder from each affected team during decision-making.

Including different team in the process helps you better compare different solutions. You'll learn the costs and benefits, leading you to make the best decision.

And ignore what doesn’t actually matter

I see a lot of people fighting over smaller frameworks and platforms.

React vs Vue

Tailwind vs Vanilla CSS.

Wordpress vs any other CMS.

People can be very opinionated about their chosen tools.

But often these opinions are emotional. They don't consider what’s best for your team.

So it's important to stick to the facts. Pick options that are easiest to hire for. That best match your teams current skills. And provide the most benefit for the most people.