Here at Raise Rivers we have made the very deliberate choice to work with and appeal to small businesses. This is a choice made from a philosophic and economic perspective. Our philosophy is shaped by personal experiences.

Some of my most vivid memories growing up take place in small shops that embodied their location's character. The special food combinations from the corner mart that weren't advertised, but everyone could order and spoke of. The different languages used for signage, the way they alternated in descending order based on location, the manner in which a language appeared to consume an entire section of a store. Then, there was the surprise and joy to hear that other families also visited what I perceived to be an esoteric place. The realization as I grew older that giving business to the flower shop on the main avenue seemed to be an integral part of living in the neighborhood. The realization when travelling that they don't all do it how they do it back home, and the appreciation for what you just realized you grew up with, grows itself. These experiences relate specifically to small, local businesses. By nature they have the gift of being able to have more character. The character of these small businesses very often define or reflect the character of their town, village, city. It defines or reflects the character of its customers, the people and the lives it touches.

Over the last two decades, there has been an obvious development in how commerce is conducted, the internet. It started off with web pages to display businesses online. Then, social media brought businesses and consumers closer thereby making businesses more accessible. These rapid and grand changes brought about new opportunities to those willing to develop the platforms for businesses to build an online presence. The big players are social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram etc.. More along the building websites side of things there are platforms like Go Daddy, Shopify, and Square Space which aim to make it easy for businesses to have a functioning website. 

The barrier to entry has been lowered in this regard, and in some ways that is a beautiful thing. However, there are downsides to the social platforms and the website building platforms. For the social platforms, the biggest drawbacks are the limitations in expression and choice, as well as the subjugation to the effectiveness of the platform's algorithm. What I mean by this is that it's a lot harder to stand out as a business when everyone has the same business format. You get your contact info, you can upload your logo as a profile picture, and you have your ratings. It covers most grounds, but that is the extent of it. It doesn't cover anything extra, it doesn't really allow for a business to stand out. Add to this the fact that there are countless businesses that exist, and simple social media pages cannot express the personality or quirks of a business. This leads to the effect of business blending together. Think of when you're online shopping and you get overwhelmed with the options - this is what happens with social media pages for businesses. This leads to people getting creative with the names of their business, tossing keywords in there like the city name, phrases like "near me" and "today". Which brings me to my second point, you are beholden to the algorithms and inner workings of these social media sites. This can be a brutal thing, as displayed by the need to use keywords in business names rather than an actual brand and business name. The algorithms for these social media platforms can shift in ways that the broader internet does not. The goals of these social media platforms will, and do, get in the way of businesses, as well as the ability of owners to run them. Their goal isn't to promote you, it's to use your traffic to keep people on their sites, so that they can sell ads to advertisers. Another critical point that they own your data. The accounts of those who visit the business page, where they click, what they interact with, that information is owned by and exploited by the social media platform.

The main downsides to the website builders like Go Daddy, Shopify, and Square Space also come in a pair. The illusion of a job done, and the vendor lock in that is exploited. When building a business there is a long checklist of items to complete so that the business is up to the modern standards and fits in with the rest. The business needs to have a physical location that can meet needs such as parking, foot traffic, a solid interior, and it needs to have advertising and communicate its products and services well. There's a lot that goes into it, and naturally building a website becomes another item in that checklist. These website builders do their best to offer a convenient solution and promote promises such as, "Build a website in as little as two hours.", "Get started at a low monthly rate and have a web presence in no time.". The emphasis of these messages is speed and completion at a low rate. For the most part and some better than others, these website builders deliver on those promises. The problem however, lies in the fact that they aren't solving the bigger problem at hand, and they're optimizing for the wrong factors. There are many reasons businesses benefit from a web presence such as legitimacy, reinforced branding, easier access to information, and customer communication. Having a website built without these benefits in mind does not allow for the maximization of these benefits. Minimally thinking about branding means the benefits in branding will more likely be minimal. The website builders solve the problem of having a website, and getting that item off your checklist. They don't solve the problem of "How do I best leverage the online presence of my business to get the maximum benefits from having one? ". It's rare that a business is solely built on principles of fast and easy. A restaurant probably wouldn't skimp out on decor, or ingredient quality. Even if a business does decide to go the fast and easy route for some factors, it's unlikely that they would apply the philosophy to all aspects of the business, they do need to stand out in some way after all. Now there is a proper set of businesses whose needs are truly met by website builders and that is completely fine. However it should be known that when it is decided to use a website builder, similar trade offs are being made as when the faster and cheaper solutions to other aspects of the business are selected.

This illusion of job done, item checked off the list is also harmful in the regard that it doesn't properly paint the picture of the maintenance required for a website. If a site builder is used directly by a business owner, then they are directly in charge of updating it and ensuring the information on it is accurate. This is an important job, but unfortunately because the website was so fast and affordable to build, it gives off the notion that it's not the case. Who will pay someone to watch their website for errors and out of date information when their website costs less than a few hours pay? Then naturally that responsibility falls on an employee with another job full of daily responsibility or worse on the business owner themselves who may always have more pressing issues. The consequence is an out of date website that isn't valued by the business and subsequently not valued by the customers. People take better care of the things they buy when they have to think about them, and when they invest time and money to build a custom website.

Now these issues are strong and the web site building companies are large. So what's the solution? Their solutions. If you want more themes, more layouts, more functionality and features, then you pay the higher tier subscription fees. The monthly cost is no longer so cheap. They hit you with multiple tier subscriptions that stick very useful features in separate tiers each one higher than the last. Within all tiers are features that you have no need or desire for but that you end up paying for anyway. If the price is too high and you try to look elsewhere for a solution, well you can't bring the design of your site anywhere else. The sites built on these platforms only exist on these platforms. When you build a website, you can't see the source code (the makeup) of the site. You can't simply take the code and host it elsewhere. Moving away becomes a bigger decision, it becomes a slow process. What was once a fast and affordable decision to make a site using a website builder becomes a significant operation cost and a slog to move away from or to upgrade. Not to mention that like the social platforms, you are beholden to the website builder's platform. If prices increase dramatically or certain features move within a tier, those are facts that would have to be weighed against the big amount of resources it takes to change a platform.

If it's not obvious by now, I find the characteristics and advantages of small businesses appealing. This influences my decision to focus my work on small businesses. I make websites and web applications.

The challenges small businesses face in the digital age are real, but they don’t have to navigate them alone. At Raise Rivers, we combine a deep appreciation for the character of small businesses with the expertise to help them thrive online. By working together, we can ensure that your business’s digital presence not only matches its unique qualities, but also amplifies them for long-term success. In a similar vein, I feel it is a bonus that the nature of this business ensures that success for one is success for both.

Let me be honest - , the title of this post is only half truthful, even as a question. There is an abundance of tools and frameworks that exist for web development, too many to truly know the pros and cons of each. At some point, the decision of which a framework and tools to use must be made. Several years ago, after dipping into  a variety of  frameworks, I decided that I would have to commit to one - so that I could fully grasp not just how to do things on the web, but how it all works and comes together. After much contemplation I picked Rails, in the years since I feel on many occasions the framework has and continues to pick me! 

The question of the title frames the decision as if we had a business idea and then chose the framework that best suited us. The reality of things is that because of our knowledge of Rails and the understanding of its strong suits, we saw this business venture as more viable. A good chunk of the value we offer relies on us properly leveraging the advantages that rails provides. So yes we had to decide and think whether Rails was right for the job, but we also thought about how it and other frameworks may shape the operations of the business and we really appreciated what Rails had to offer.

So what does Rails have to offer for us? and in turn to our clients?

Rails has a core of systems, and strongly defined conventions that are a key selling point in its proposition. Still, it remains quite flexible in terms of a framework. There are tons of gems(packages) provided by the open source community that are ready to be added typically at no financial cost. It is possible to leverage JavaScript packages as well  using Importmap. Rails can even be used as a backend while providing  an API if that is the architecture that is most suitable to the project such as those that have strong scaling concerns. Rails feels even more modular than it is as well, because it is so efficient to build in. The sensible defaults Rails provides are very inviting to the creation of projects for proof of concept. The effect this has is that we are quite often coming into contact with the build process of the entire application, and therefore more prone to questioning how to build an app from the ground up, not just within a more limited domain such as it may be in frameworks where the cost of initial development time is much higher. Ultimately what this means is that we can ask the big questions to our clients, and come up with a plan that will not only suit current business needs, but that takes into consideration the direction of where the business is headed. Then we build a website or app that reflects this. This long term approach is cost effective in the long run. Still this long term approach is not too rigid as this is Rails and we have a plethora of open source pathways in both the Ruby and JavaScript communities to meet evolving business needs. Rails enables our websites and web applications to evolve our client's business do. This also means lower maintenance and big change costs for us, which in turn means we are able to tackle bigger problems for our clients.

As mentioned before, Rails has a strong set of sensible defaults which means that the most common case is covered most well and efficiently. Just like how most businesses share a common core with other businesses in that they all need a set of principles, accounting, contracts, goods or services, customer service, and a suitable financial model; web sites and applications also share a large chunk of their structure. What makes a business unique is what matters most as it is what sells. What makes a client's business unique? What makes them sell?  Rails gets us to the point of asking these questions faster, by not bogging us down with a lot of the initial structure. To build on to the metaphor, Rails sets up our accounting, contract, and customer service infrastructure so that we can focus on the business principles, and services or goods. Were you to start a business today, you would look to others to try and emulate what structures they have in place such as the aforementioned accounting, legal, customer service processes. However you may find that you don't need a particular department like customer service, because maybe your business doesn't revolve around a product for which your customers need support for. The Rails team has lead the development of Rails through a 20 year span where a lot of architectural change to the industry occurred. Yet they had the where with all to question whether the new industry standards were truly necessary and have in the last 5 years made Rails development in such a manner where Rails doesn't assume you need a customer service process or department, but the ability for it to be added is there if needed. In other words they have resisted trends, and have resisted increasing the base complexity of a project unnecessarily. What this means is that we can build a websites and web applications for clients who's needs range from simple, to complex business solutions. We are not trapped at a higher level of complexity where we cannot provide business to clients with simpler initial needs. The base complexity overhead is manageable, and grows only when we want it to, because our client's business requires it. This ability to take on complexity at smaller increments makes our development more nimble, and therefore allows our clients to make nimble business decisions as well.