Originally Posted on WSOL.com
Have you ever gone looking for a unicorn? They’re really hard to find now-a-days. Very reclusive. They don’t give interviews, and they never publish their addresses online. In fact, finding a unicorn is the closest thing to an impossible goal that there is.
For those of us in the web industry, a “unicorn” is that perfect website. You know the one I’m talking about—the one with the stunning design that makes everyone who sees it stop and marvel at the sheer brilliance of the mind that created such a wonderful thing. And the content! Words fail to describe the pure literary perfection. The message speaks to everyone in a way that is both deeply moving and compelling.
Yeah, I haven’t found that website either. But I keep looking. The problem is that everybody has different needs, interests, and goals. So while your website might be that perfect unicorn for one person, for someone else it might just be a donkey with a plunger stuck to its head.
Here I Come To Save The Day
It seems like everyone is looking for that magic silver bullet that will change the donkey into a beautiful unicorn. They are searching for the latest and greatest thing that will solve all of their website’s problems, all while helping their hair grow back, shine their shoes, and do the dishes. (Okay, maybe not that last one, but that would be so cool, wouldn’t it?)
The truth is that a silver bullet, magical or otherwise, is as much an impossible dream as catching that unicorn. Things come along all the time that do something really, really well, and then, for some reason, people try to get it do everything else. They try to make it into the silver bullet, promising wild claims about how great this new thing is, and how it will do anything and everything you could ever need or want. But it can’t.
There is no silver bullet. What you need instead is a whole box full of silver bullets.
Let Things do What They do Best
Over the last few years, several new technologies, like Responsive Web Design, jQuery, CSS, and Inbound Marketing —to name a few—have emerged that have fundamentally changed the web, helping clever designers, developers, and marketers build some truly incredible sites.
How do they do that? They take a little bit of time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each technology and use it to its fullest. Then they stop there. Could they make it do more? Sure. Would that be a good idea? Probably not. The cool thing is that so many of the things we use on the web play very well together. So don’t pick just one, thinking it will do everything. You have a box full of these options, allowing you to choose the ones you need, and use them well. Responsive web design is wonderful, but it won’t do a thing if you don’t have a good content strategy in place.
But will it Save the Unicorn?
Now that you have done all of that work, found your box of silver bullets, and gotten them all loaded up, will that plunger-encrusted donkey become a unicorn? I’m sorry to say, probably not. Having the perfect website for everyone is —and always will be— unattainable. So stop trying to achieve that unreachable goal of perfection, and focus on building a great website for the people you are trying to reach: your target audience. It might not be a unicorn, but it won’t be a donkey either.