Two well known people in the web development world have been going back and forth about dark mode toggles, the little button that lets a visitor switch a site between a light background and a dark one. Lea Verou, writing guidance for developers, says two options (light and dark) are enough. Bram Van Damme argues there should be three, adding an option that means "just follow whatever my phone or computer is already set to."
For most businesses in North Phoenix, this changes nothing today. If your site does not have a dark mode toggle, you do not need to add one because two developers are arguing about it. And if it does have one, nobody is going to leave your site because it offers two choices rather than three.
But the argument is worth noticing for a different reason. Van Damme's point is that when someone flips a switch on your site, that choice sticks. Verou's counter is that a person clicking a dark mode button is usually just saying "this is too bright right now," not setting a permanent rule. Both of them are really arguing about the same thing: what does the visitor actually mean when they click, and does your site behave the way they expected afterwards?
That question applies to nearly every control on your site. When someone dismisses your cookie banner, does it stay dismissed? When they close your newsletter popup, does it come back on the next page? When they pick a location or a service from a dropdown, does the site remember? These are the small moments where a site either feels considerate or feels like it is not paying attention. A dark mode toggle is just the version of that problem people are willing to write blog posts about.
One practical note: if your site respects the visitor's device setting, some of your customers are already seeing a dark version of your site without ever clicking anything. It is worth checking that your logo, your photos and your contact form are all readable that way.
What to do: nothing urgent. Next time you speak to whoever maintains your site, ask them to open it with dark mode switched on at the device level and show you what it looks like. Five minutes, and you will know whether there is anything to fix.
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