The rules of the road regarding website updates have evolved. Paying serious attention to your site every two to three years no longer cuts it.
When a website’s an important part of an organization’s operations, it should be updated and monitored constantly. Your organization should gather feedback – both passively with forms on the site and actively by talking to users – about how the site can be improved.
Continuous improvements are ideal for users and the organization because it keeps costs down. A series of small projects is often budgetarily preferable to one lump sum project. This is also good for SEO (Google doesn’t like when all your pages break, necessitating a lot of redirect mapping for a total re-launch). If something about the site’s performance tanks, you can isolate the specific change that caused it. Continuous improvement requires continual resourcing.
Sometimes, a full redesign becomes necessary, including when:
- Continuous improvement hasn’t happened, and you arrive at a point when you need to address many problems at once. An example of this would be a site that has fallen out of date and needs a head-to-toe review.
- There are aspects of the site’s construction or platforming that make it impossible to solve problems. An example would be a site that’s built on a platform that doesn’t allow for mobile responsiveness.
- A major rebrand can sometimes merit a total refresh, although you can get away with restyling and changing key page content.
- Something about the site’s information architecture/navigation no longer makes sense and pages need to be significantly reorganized.
West Press’ talented staff is here to help you each step of the way — from graphic design to printing to mailing services to large format to website development. Contact West Press or your Account Executive at 520-624-4939 today.