Time for a makeover?

Now might be a good time to think about redesigning your company's Web site.

There’s nothing harder than saying goodbye to an old friend. Take your Web site for example. You put it up a few years ago when the dot-com boom was at its peak. Sure, it wasn’t pretty, but it got you into the online world. The site is still functioning, but you’re starting to wonder if it’s time to move on and develop something new. How do you know when it’s time to redesign your Web site?

“If your Web site is more than two years old, chances are it is time for some changes,” says Mary Elges, a Web designer with Pinnacle Decision Systems, a computer consulting and software development company based in Middletown, Conn. “The Web has grown up so much in the last couple of years with faster connection speeds, new development technologies and browser enhancements that many of the older, static or frame-developed Web sites now look outdated. One of the biggest rules of business is, you should be doing all you can to separate yourself from the pack. Those businesses with Web sites that are more than two years old are falling behind their competition.”

A Web presence is a must for businesses. Where else can you market your company so cost-effectively? The trick is to make your Web site easy to find and navigate. While some sites baffle their visitors with confusing graphics and sound, others are too conservative, offering up just text and no interactivity. Sites that fall too far on either side of the extreme are prime candidates for a redesign. But even if your site isn’t an example of extremes, Elges says it’s still a good time to review and make sure you’re doing the right things.

“In just the last couple of years we’ve started to see some standardization on the Web,” says Elges. “There are certain key things your site should have in order to meet these standards.”

Clean look and feel: “When the Internet first started, it was geared more toward technical people and many of the Web sites reflected that,” says Elges. “Today, the standard requires Web sites to have a clean, understandable and consistent look and feel. Companies must make sure their Web site looks more professional and less ‘techy.’”

Updated content: “Every business should update its Web site content at least quarterly if not more often,” says Elges. “One of the worst mistakes to make is to allow your site to be static. When someone in your target market visits your site and sees that the information remains unchanged, chances are they will not come back a third or fourth time. To create a professional Web site, you need to show your visitors what you are doing today.”

Simple navigation: “Imagine you are lost in a town that isn’t listed on your map. Chances are you won’t be buying another map from that company or recommending its maps to friends. The same holds true for Web sites. If you make your navigation difficult to follow, visitors will not only get frustrated and have problems finding information on your site, they won’t return,” says Elges. “Over the last few years, online users have become accustomed to a certain style of Web navigation and site structure that avoids confusion and allows them to easily take full advantage of the information on a site. Gone are the days when visitors will put up with clever navigation. Site navigation needs to be held to a consistent standard so online visitors will not get confused and go elsewhere with a click of the mouse.

Not just text: “When the Web first started, people were just linking documents together and the pages were very simple. Today’s standard requires you to have a hook to keep visitors entertained and coming back for more,” says Elges. “This can be accomplished by incorporating some of the newer technologies into your Web site such as Macromedia Flash, rotating graphics, news feeds and other innovative ideas so that each time a visitor comes to the site they are getting what they need and the site never gets stale.

“Companies can also incorporate their databases into their Web sites so that visitors can do online ordering, membership enrollment, log in to membership areas, participate in online auctions, look up maps, make travel reservations or do inventory searches.”

Make it interactive: “The days of static Web sites are over,” says Elges. “While some companies may be fearful of the maintenance required for an interactive site, there are ways to provide some interactivity with little maintenance. This can be as simple as creating a member portion of the Web site for newsletters and forums or creating a database for visitors to log personal information.”

Optimize for search engines: “One of the most important parts of the Web site is the part that isn’t visible. It’s the coding for search engines so they know to list your site,” says Elges. “Most Web sites aren’t properly coded, so the search engine spiders never find the site, and neither do visitors. It is important to pay attention to the coding when sites are redesigned, especially page titles, Meta tags, html text and keyword use within the body of the page.”

Now if you’ve read these basic standards and realize you need to redesign your site, Elges says the redesign shouldn’t be a matter of just fixing the problems. She says companies need to approach the site redesign just as they would approach the redesign of their other marketing materials, with strategic planning.

Budget: “Before starting the redesign, you need to figure out how much money you want to spend. This will determine the final makeup of your site,” says Elges. “If you want something complex with many pages, your budget will go up. If you want a large amount of interactivity, the budget will go up.

“Databases and custom graphics will also cost more, though I recommend custom graphics as a good way to make your site unique.”

Who is the audience? “Knowing who your Web site targets will change the way your site looks and the technologies you use to develop the Web site,” says Elges. “For example, if your company provides information to a broad audience such as Microsoft’s MSN.com, you will have to consider that your site needs to be developed to look and function consistently in all of the major browsers and be fast enough to be downloaded by the slowest of modems in a reasonable amount of time. But if you are a business-to-business company, chances are your visitors are working with a broadband connection so you can make your site more graphically intense, you only have to worry about 3.0+ browser versions and the download time is less of a factor, although still important.”

Who is maintaining it? “One of the big factors to consider when redesigning is balancing complexity with maintenance. If you hire someone to design your site, you need to make sure you, or someone else, can maintain it,” says Elges. “We’ve designed sites for companies that let them maintain their content by using databases, Web-based forms and other tools, but this is something that needs to be determined prior to starting the site construction. Content management is one of the buzzwords surrounding Web site design these days, because maintenance is so important.”

The last thing that Elges recommends is taking the time to choose the right person or company to do the redesign project.

“I really don’t recommend in-house Web site design,” she says. “Since today’s standard Web site is far beyond just brochureware and static displays, you really need a professional to make sure that it’s designed and coded for optimum performance. Once you’ve had a chance to answer the basic questions of budget, target and maintenance, and you have an idea of what you want, you will be able to start getting quotes from IT development companies. I recommend finding a company that has both a designer and a team of IT developers. These companies specialize in Web site architecture, navigation, browser compatibility issues, graphics and new media technologies, plus they can do any back-end programming or legacy system integration you may need.

“Once you have found some candidates, have them walk you through a basic layout and see which company best meets your needs.”

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2002 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2002.

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