“Take that sentence…bump it up. Now move the second paragraph beside the third. Okay. That looks right.”

Strange how the placing of a paragraph or a semicolon can change the way a website feels, isn’t it? Or how about the font size on a button or the colour of a call to action? They’re all important. And they’re all part of the detailed work that goes into creating a truly great website.

Sure, you can build a website without them; but is that really a website you can be proud of? We don’t think so. That’s why for us, the difference is in the details.

Details are not new. They are synonymous with high quality, and many a business has been founded on them. But details are difficult to maintain. They require focus, decisiveness and concentration.

Steve Jobs was notoriously obsessive about details—to the point where he put thought into the internal layout of Apple’s processors and microchips. Jobs was also a notorious task-master. He believed in his details, right or wrong, and he stuck to them. But with that obsessive personality came a legendary reputation for quality that would eventually build Apple into the most valuable company in the world.

At Metal Potato, we’re not quite there yet. But we do take pride in the details of our own world: how a website shifts and moves when scaled, what images appear where and how, what copy goes where and how it flows, how social media is integrated. These details are our microchips. They are the reason we got into website design—to build quality websites built by a team that prides itself on the “deets”.

We consider ourselves a bit more friendly than Jobs. At least, we’re not likely to fire our employees over the colour of an icon or found a competing company out of spite (Metal Potato: NeXT anyone?).

But whenever we start building a new website, we do think about Jobs. And we think about the details. They are the difference that sets us apart.