Why Clean Code is Important to Your Website

When most of us view a website, we aren’t thinking about what goes on behind the scenes. Our goal is to find the information we need, and we like it when a website looks nice and runs well. We may not realize it, but there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that gets the website to the point where it can be used.

The foundation of the website is its code, and the cleaner the code is, the better the website will be. When getting a website built, you should make sure that the code is as clean as possible, otherwise this could harm your website in the long term. Here’s a look at why clean code is better: 

Run Better and Faster

It is true that the cleaner the code is, the better your website will run. When people visit your website, they want it to run efficiently. Pages should load as fast as possible. If the site is slow or if pages seem to break at random, this will frustrate users. When visitors have a poor experience on your website, they are far more likely to click away. 

From a digital marketing perspective, slow site speed creates a high bounce rate, prevents your website from getting the traffic it should, and could even negatively impact search engine optimization. To give your site its best chance to succeed, code should be clean.

Clean Websites Likely Won’t Break

It’s true that websites that have messy code seem to go down a lot more often than websites that have clean code in the backend. Granted, clean code isn’t a guarantee it will never break at all, but it certainly does help. If a website has messy code, the website functionality could be seriously diminished. 

What happens if your website is always down? You could lose visitors, which will likely result in a loss of sales. In order for your business to grow, your website needs to work. 

Easier to Update

Websites that run on clean code are much easier to update. If you need to make changes of any kind, such as adding content, creating software updates, or even redesigning some of the website all benefit from having clean code. Messy code is often difficult to follow, and if you can’t follow what is going on, it makes the process of updating a lot more difficult. Not only that, but the cleaner the code is, the easier it will be to execute a software update. If there is anything confusing or inelegant about the code, it makes the website far more likely to break when you’re trying to make changes. 

Although clean code is important, not every developer does it. If you find a developer that can’t guarantee clean code, it’s not worth working with them. You want to find a developer that is concerned not only with the outward appearance of your website, but also the way the code looks on the inside.