Happy Website Builder

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About Happy Website Builder

I decided to start Happy Website Builder after seeing a statistic in my TAFE web development course about how 53% of users abandon a website that takes between 1 and 3 seconds to load, and how the probability of bounce increases by 90% between 1 and 5 seconds.

Graph depicting load time and bounce rate statistics from Google Analytics. The data shows the correlation between website load times and bounce rates, indicating the impact of load speed on user engagement.

I came to realise how important it was to learn how to custom build websites optimised for performance while also having the creative freedom to design unique website layouts.

Cute cartoon character wearing a green shirt, jeans, and brown sneakers, looking at their watch with a grumpy and impatient expression.

From my perspective, the statistics reflect a 53% loss in potential customers and clients when waiting for the website to load, with 90% bounce rate after the website has loaded.

This amounts to a substantial loss in profit.

Bounce rate is when a user visits a website, then leaves without enaging with the site content. It's like a customer stepping into a store, looking around, and leaving without engaging further.

I believe that bounce rate is caused by poor website design. For example, according to Stanford University, 94% of first impressions are design-related. This means a poorly designed website can turn potential customers away before they even explore your products or services.

Also, users take merely 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) to form an opinion about your website. That's the blink of an eye to make a lasting impression with your website design, and 88% of users are less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience.

By looking at these studies, I believe that not only is it important for a website to load fast, it also needs to have an engaging custom built website design.

In my approach to web development, I use Vanilla HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flexbox, and Grid as the core foundation of my approach to ensure optimised performance, and user engagement. In today's fast-paced digital landscape, prioritising performance, and website design is undoubtedly crucial, given the direct impact it has on user experience.

What is Vanilla?

Image of a web developer sitting on a chair at a desk, coding on their laptop in a vanilla coloured room. The coder is wearing a red hoodie. The scene is mostly vanilla in color, with the coder in front of a window. Outside the window is a blue river, blue sky, and vanilla-colored town, trees, and clouds.

"Vanilla", it simply means that I don't work with clunky content management systems like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace, or heavyweight JavaScript frameworks like React.js, Angular, and Vue.js.

Happy cartoon character running with a big smile on their face, holding a box labeled 'ideas'. Inside the box are colorful ideas, and there are lightbulbs around the scene.

This choice is intentional because it allows me to avoid overhead that impacts performance, while having total creative control over the website design without having to rely on libraries, dependencies, and plugins, or pre-built template solutions, external components that introduce unnecessary complexities, potential points of failure, and creative limitations.

My custom-built websites are more than just digital experiences; they are streamlined, efficient, and built with purpose in mind.

What is Flexbox & Grid?

The combination of Flexbox, and Grid allows me to construct website layouts entirely with code, providing a custom-built solution. This approach allows clients to break free from the creative limitations imposed by templates commonly associated with Content Management Systems (CMS).

My custom built websites ensure the final design aligns with your unique vision and brand identity.

My approach is simple.

I write in code to build website blueprints in HTML, then with creative feedom, I shape the website with style and colour using CSS.

The build process of my custom-built websites is flexible, and allows for changes, and adjustments that align with the dynamic nature of inspiration, where creative decisions naturally shape the website design throught the creative process.

I use Vanilla JavaScript over JavaScript frameworks like React.js to prioritise performance, and lightweight efficiency. Vanilla JavaScript allows me to create dynamic functionality, and interactivity without the overhead that often comes with frameworks. This approach creates faster loading times as there is no need for the browser to download anything in the background before loading the website.

With my custom-built website, there's no need for CMS payment plans, subscription plans or constantly shifting the budget to accommodate plan upgrades to access more features.

By steering clear of Content Management Systems like WordPress, Elementor, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, or Drupal and focusing on a custom built solution, I eliminate unnecessary overhead, background downloads, updates, bloated libraries, frameworks, dependencies, excessive plugins, widgets, subscription fees, hidden costs, complicated content management systems, inflexible design choices, generic user experience, security concerns, limited scalability, dependency on third-party services with ongoing maintenance, and update costs for the client.

Watercolor image of a woman superimposed in multicolored clouds, holding out her hand with a lightbulb. Doves are flying towards the lightbulb that the woman is holding.

I also create my own custom CSS animations with the purpose of elevating the user experience, ensuring accessibility, while avoiding the common pitfalls associated with animations in template-based websites.

Bored cartoon character walking down an empty Autumn street with closed small businesses. The character, wearing a brown jacket, white shirt, jeans, and brown shoes, looks at their phone. A tipped-over bin is on the street, and Autumn leaves are blowing in the wind.

Navigating a website should be easy, but animations in template-based sites often frustrate rather than benefit the user experience. From intrusive pop-ups to distracting moving elements to stuck navigation bars, delays in content loading, nauseating parallax effect, incomplete menu animations and a lack of button hover feedback contributes to the user being frustrated.

Happy cartoon character wearing a blue unbuttoned shirt, white t-shirt, orange-brown pants, and brown shoes, crossing a busy street, looking at their phone in delight. A crowd of people walks in the background, set against a Japanese city backdrop with a beautiful sunset.

I intentionally avoid the common interruptions and delays that plague template-based websites. My goal is to avoid subjecting users to flashy effects that serve no real purpose. Instead, I use animations to enhance functionality and user engagement while considering accessibility needs to ensure a smooth, engaging, and frustration-free online journey.

Superhero resembling Superman with a red cape blowing behind him. He wears round retro glasses, and 'SEO' is written on his chest. Flying up into the sky with a radiant sun shining behind, he looks happy. Short hair and a 5 o'clock shadow beard.

When it comes to SEO, I've consciously chosen to prioritize word-of-mouth marketing over traditional SEO campaigns that often focus on generic keywords. Studies show that word-of-mouth recommendations significantly influence consumer decisions, fostering trust and credibility.

Many SEO marketing campaigns adopt a strategy of deconstructing websites to incorporate more content, aiming for higher rankings through an abundance of keywords. However, this often results in a bloated website, filled with extraneous information merely to secure a top-five ranking. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that users will click on the link, let alone wait for the website to load.

Avant-garde inspired image of a ghostly hand holding a mobile device, tapping on the screen. The rest of the scene is in darkness, conveying mystery. The only light in the scene emanates from the mobile screen.

With the popularity of apps and the associated high costs of development and maintenance, I've opted to provide a more accessible solution – the Progressive Web App (PWA). This innovative approach allows users to experience the benefits of an app without the need for an App Store. PWAs offer speed, practicality, and functionality, without the financial burden of ongoing fees.

In the expansive world of web development, there are many different choices, but the undeniable findings from user experience studies make one thing clear – users demand swift loading times, an intuitive navigation system, and well-designed, balanced layouts with minimal distractions, seeking nothing less than an optimal online experience.

Happy Website Builder is committed to fulfilling this demand, because if I can't figure out how to build a website that loads within a second, then who am I helping?