Why code quality matters

I'll have been at Freshleaf for ten years next year. A whole decade with the same company. Not bad for someone with a limited attention span. But there's a few things about this company that are outstanding, and that I'm immensely proud of. I won't bang on about all of them - but one of those things is the quality of what we do.

We build websites. But unlike with cars and watches, quality is a factor that can be hard to perceive in websites. With consumer goods, most of us have got a pretty good eye for things that have been well made. Quality workmanship and quality materials are there to see.

With websites, it’s different. Almost anyone can build you a website. Platforms like WordPress put web publishing in the hands of the masses. And with a wealth of professionally-designed templates to choose from, you can make something look pretty slick without needing to be able to tell a database from hole in the ground. If it looks great, it's tough to see what difference quality of build will make.

So what is ‘quality’ when it comes to websites and web applications, and why does it matter?

Performance

The first yardstick is performance. Good quality websites will outperform poor quality ones. They are less error prone, and they’re more likely to rank well for search. All of which means that a high-quality website is better for your business than a “budget” one. It will provide a better experience for your visitors, which (via the halo effect) will give them a warm, fuzzy feeling about your organisation.

It will also be faster. And you might not think that’s a big deal now that no-one is on dial-up any more…. but you’d be wrong. We’re even less willing to wait for a site to load now than we’ve ever been. If it doesn't load now - and I mean right now, I'll just do something else. And that's on desktop. On mobile, connections can be slower, but we still expect sites to respond fast. Just because I'm browsing on my phone doesn't mean I'm willing to wait, dammit. And then there's Google to consider. Google cares about speed (a lot), so site speed directly affects your search rankings. Good, well optimised code = fast site, happy search engine. Poorly implemented, bloated code = high bounce rate and being largely ignored by the great search god Google.

Security

The other key thing about quality is that it affects security. We’ve all seen the news stories about high profile data leaks. Only a month or two ago, Equifax leaked the personal data of almost half the US population, along with credit card numbers of some 200,000 people. Around the same time BUPA suffered a data breach affecting 500,000 of its customers. And of course, we all tut, and say “How terrible! How could they allow this to happen?”, and then go about our business.

But if your website collects any kind of personal data – even if it's only email addresses - then you are the guardian of that data, in the eyes of the law. In the UK, current data protection legislation requires that “appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data”.

And there are penalties if you get it wrong - regardless of whether you’re a multi-national or an SME. Recently the Information Commissioners Office fined Berkshire-based Boomerang Video a whopping £60,000. Why? For a breach of data protection law after Boomerang suffered a cyber-attack back in 2014. The company is not a high-profile multi-million-pound organisation, yet it became a target for hackers. And having a poor-quality website didn’t just cost them in reputation, it also cost them hard cash.

Conclusion

I know that most people don't think twice about how well-built their website is. But make quality a priority when you commission your next website and it will perform better, be more economical to maintain, and won't embarrass you by leaking personal data all over the web. And to me, that stuff matters.