What is a website?
We all know what a website is. Right? But if someone asked you to explain it, you might find yourself stumbling a bit.
Some concepts are so big and flexible that they're hard to pin down. Websites used to mean documents you could read. Then it meant pictures and comments and social media. Now it means almost anything — apps, stores, dashboards, tools.
So let's skip the history lesson. It won't make you any money.
What Matters for Your Business
Here's what matters for your business: A website is your little corner of the internet where you get to control the messaging.
Full stop. It's yours.
Your social media posts live on someone else's platform. Your ads run through someone else's system. But your website? That's your turf. You decide what it says, how it looks, and what people do when they get there.
The Problem
The problem? Without years of learning the technical stuff, you're stuck. You have a voice, a bullhorn, but you don't know how to work it.
So let's start with the basics.
When you go to a website, you need to know its "domain" — that's the address. You're reading this article on my domain: https://uplevers.com. Note the little s in there. It's kind of important, but it's also way technical. Basically, it means the communication between your computer and my systems is secure. It would be hard for a hacker to "listen in" on us. That's it. That's all you need to know about the s.
If you want a business website, you want a custom domain. Usually your business name or product name. You can buy domain names from sites like GoDaddy, Cloudflare Registrar, or Namecheap. You search for domains related to your business, pick one, enter your card, and now you're the proud owner of a shiny new domain.
Cool, go home — you have a site!
Or... not so much yet.
Building Your Site
Once you have a domain, you're going to need somewhere to point it. You'll see the term "DNS" come up a lot. This is the plumbing that tells a computer — or, 60% likely, a phone — where to find a website. But before you can tell the internet where your site lives, you have to build it.
Believe it or not, the entire internet runs on three basic technologies:
- HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) — a fancy way of saying "a language that displays information"
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) — a fancy way of saying "a way to tell the browser how to make things look"
- JavaScript — a fancy way of saying "make it interactive and do stuff"
That's it. Every website you've ever visited — Google, Amazon, your cousin's blog — is built on some combination of these three things.
All the fancy tools and frameworks you hear about? They're just ways to make these building blocks easier to work with. And here's the thing: these building blocks work great for small projects. But try doing something bigger, or working with a team, and they start falling apart quickly.
WYSIWYG Editors
To make websites easier for people to build, developers created "WYSIWYG" editors. That stands for "What You See Is What You Get." These are tools like Wix and Squarespace — drag these shapes, drop them here, and you've got a site.
These editors lower the barrier to entry. You don't need to learn HTML or CSS or JavaScript. You just point and click and something appears.
But there's a tradeoff.
The HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that these tools generate aren't as good. They're built by software designed to make things easy for non-technical users to get the look and feel right. That's not the same thing as making a site that's enjoyable for your customers.
In other words: website builders cater to YOU, not to your customers.
Content Management Systems
Another option you'll hear about is Content Management Systems, or CMS. These are systems that let you write blogs, organize posts — basically a system to manage your content. Sometimes names in tech actually make sense.
WordPress is the big one. These systems organize your content in a database and give you an intuitive interface — kind of like Microsoft Word — to write and publish.
If self-authoring your content is important to you, this is your solution. Go start a blog.
Here's my hot take: Most business owners want to shoot over some content ideas and have those fleshed out into blog entries and site pages. Most business owners do not particularly care to become great copywriters. They're too busy doing the business.
If you enjoy managing your own content, CMS is the way to go. If you want your content to convert to sales, uplevers.com excels at that.
The tradeoffs with CMS? Honestly, not that many. Modern engines do a great job of making these high-performing. There's a rich ecosystem of themes and plugins. You get a lot out of the box.
But here's my advice: Don't use this option unless you want to be — or want to hire — a content writer. Full stop.
I had a client with a blog that included a lot of his personal thoughts. Random musings, opinions on things outside his industry. I advised him to refocus on things his customers would actually care about. Remember: your business website is also your professional voice.
The Plastic Shovel Problem
Now that you have a grasp on the basics of what websites are and how they're built, we can get back to something from the last article: functional versus non-functional requirements.
Functional requirements are what the system does. A shovel has to dig. That's its function.
Non-functional requirements are how the system is. If the shovel is made of plastic, it might not work well on rock. That's a quality issue, not a function issue.
The tools you can make with WYSIWYG editors are just not as refined as what you can get with programming tools. The code they generate is bloated, slower, harder to customize.
So should you learn to code?
I will never say no to that. But... it might not be your best investment in the short term. Learning to code well enough to build a high-performing business site takes years. You have a business to run.
The result of using WYSIWYG tools is that you get something less well-crafted, but you can build it quickly and yourself. That's the tradeoff.
But with recent tech advancements, Uplevers makes this choice obsolete. We build systems for building business websites that have the speed, the flexibility, the customization you need — without you needing to learn to code.
But this isn't an ad. It's an informational piece. So back to that.
Your Options
So what are your options if you want a finely-crafted conversion tool? If you don't want a plastic shovel?
You can use us, obviously. But before Uplevers existed, there were two main paths:
Agencies — Software companies that specialize in ads, conversion optimization, and building custom sites. They know what they're doing, but they charge accordingly. We're talking thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
Freelancers — Fiverr, Upwork, that designer your friend knows. They'll build what you tell them to build. Which means you have to learn what to tell them. If you don't know what you need, you won't get what you need.
Still want the plastic shovel? Great. That's what the rest of this series is about.
Either you build this yourself and leverage your business's potential, or we build it for you. We build the up levers that scale your business.
Your choice. Both paths are valid.
What's Coming
In the next entries, we're going to get into the nuts and bolts. What kind of tech provides the features we're building? What do you actually need to capture leads, track where they came from, and follow up automatically?
We'll get specific — the tools, the tradeoffs, the things that matter and the things that don't.
Recap
- A website is your corner of the internet where you control the messaging
- Domains are addresses you buy — your business name dot com
- The internet runs on three things — HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- WYSIWYG editors make it easy to build, but the output isn't great for your customers
- CMS platforms are solid if you want to write your own content
- The tradeoff is always speed-to-build versus quality of the result
- Your options are DIY (plastic shovel), freelancers (you direct), agencies (expensive), or Uplevers
Next up: the tech that actually makes a business website work.
