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Website repair or website redesign – it's time to decide

October 14, 2008 · 2 comments

At any given moment I have a pretty long list of website repairs needed on my own site. There’s always something to do, and I’m lucky (a) because my site is built on WordPress, which is a very easy to manage website platform, (b) because I know how to make changes to my website myself and (c) because I don’t charge myself to work on my site.

Of course you’re probably not as lucky and there will come a time when you need to stop spending money on website repairs and invest in a brand spanking new website. Now you may think this sounds odd coming from someone who repairs websites for a living, but it’s really just good business sense.

So when should you opt not to repair a website and hire someone to redesign it instead?

1. When your business goals have changed

If you find that your website isn’t in tune with your business, either because your branding has had an overhaul, your market has changed or your business objectives have shifted, it’s probably time to redesign your site and bring it back in line with your business.

2. When your website repair quote is higher than the cost of a new site

If your website manager rubs his hands with glee every time you phone him and he comes to visit you in his new Porsche it’s probably time to re-invest your web site repair budget in a new site design. Adding/editing content on a small business website shouldn’t be a full-time job for anyone, and if you’ve spent the money hiring someone who knows what they’re doing, your search engine optimization should be pretty much taken care of from day 1.

3. When nothing you try seems to be working

If you’ve spent money on countless content changes and search engine optimization, or your site runs every bit of Web technology known to man and you’re still nowhere to be found on Google, there’s either something fundamentally wrong with your website or something seriously wrong with your marketing plan. Take action and spend a bit of money to change the way you market your business online.

4. When your website looks like it was designed in 1997

If you want to chase people away from your website, make sure it looks (and works) like it was designed before the turn of the century. In the grand scheme of things a website is a cheap marketing tool. Invest your website repair budget in a redesign every couple of years and you’ll probably increase the number of visitors, sales leads and customers your website attracts.

What should you do next?

If you have doubts about whether to re-design or repair your website, send me an email or contact me on Skype with the details of your site address and what you want to achieve online. If you can give me some information about what you’re currently achieving that will help too. I’ll take a quick look and give you my opinion based purely on the facts. I look forward to hearing from you.

Website management mistakes re-visited

July 7, 2008

Eleven years ago, usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote an article outlining the top 10 web management mistakes businesses make. Jump forward to 2008 and not much has changed. Of the original 10 points, I preach these 7 every day:

1. Why do you have a website?

Building a website just because everyone else has one is not a good enough reason. As a business owner, you need to know exactly what you want to achieve with your website. If you can’t formulate a vision for your own site, how do you expect your designer, and more importantly, your customer to figure it out?

Most companies should start their web design project by finding out ways in which they can provide true customer value on their site. Give users benefits from spending time on your site, allow them to do business with you, and their money will follow. – Jakob Nielsen

2. Who are you designing for?

You may get a kick out of adding your mission statement, a photo of your management team and a history of your company right up their on your home page, but your visitors won’t.

I’ve mentioned this time and again: Customers don’t care about your company. All they want is a product/service/idea that will help fix their problem. Always remember that you are not the target audience for your website.

3. Pick website managers to take your website forward, and stick with them.

Every time you chop and change between designers or website managers, your visitors will know the difference. Consistent design and content management elements are crucial.

Web designers are a fickle bunch, so each time you change service providers, you’ll hear a different story. Whether you’re hiring a website manager on retainer or to manage your website full-time (hint-hint), setting out rules and guidelines at the beginning will ensure the longevity of your website and stop you from pulling your hair out.

4. Always budget for website maintenance

As a rule of thumb, the annual maintenance budget for a website should be about the same as the initial cost of building the site. – Jakob Nielsen

With the ever decreasing cost of designing a website, spending the same again each year on website maintenance is now a bear minimum. Building a site without maintaining it is a waste of your money and a waste of your customers’ time.

Furthermore, the Web changes constantly. To keep up with the change in design trends and online marketing ideas, Nielsen recommends a re-design of a website at least once a year.

With this in mind, you can see how partnering with a reliable website manager to provide ongoing website maintenance and site re-design solutions will benefit your business.

5. The Web is different from other media

Re-purposing your offline content for use on your website is a bad practice. The Web is different from print or any other medium. Web content needs to be created to achieve specific results, and a re-worked brochure will generally fail to get this point across.

6. Manage your links for improved results

Hyperlinks are the force behind the Internet, and the sole reason the Web became commercially viable. You don’t need to send visitors to your home page. In fact, you don’t even need a home page.

Landing pages and advertising are the heart of an online marketing campaign. Using online advertising coupled to specific offers on different landing pages is an effective way to generate multiple streams of online income, sales leads and any other planned outcome you can think of.

The more links you build, the more results you can expect. Tell any SEO professional that link building isn’t important to your online marketing campaign and he’ll still be laughing a month from now.

7. Embrace the Web now before it’s too late

Many small business owners hesitate to spend the lion’s share of their marketing budget online. If you’re one of them, you need to change your attitude. There is no more efficient marketing media available. Ignore the Web if you want, but you’ll suffer for your ignorance.

Next steps

I visit hundreds of websites every week, and I see evidence of these problems all the time. In my experience as a designer, a website manager and a corporate marketing manager, both designers and decision makers are to blame for not moving a businesses forward online. Every stakeholder in every web project needs to spend more time thinking about a website’s future before they build it.

If you’d like help taking your website forward, I’m for hire. If you’re not sure yet how your website could be helping grow your business, ask me for a website audit. I’d be only too happy to give you my opinion.

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