A website for a business is a funny thing. You work incredibly hard to put it together. You struggle over every sentence…every thumbnail. Then, as your business grows, you keep adding. You want to show off each and every advancement. You want to share every piece of content. Or, it’s a site you developed and haven’t touched in years!
This all works wonderfully for a while. Then one day your streamlined, up to date website looks outdated, and like a digital Frankenstein of parts placed upon parts. A change needs to happen.
Sometimes this realization comes at a most inopportune time. That was the case here at Chemistry. Our biggest client had its entire budget vetoed by the Governor of Missouri. That means a) we have an urgent need to direct a lot of people to our website immediately, and, b) we are not sitting on a lot of spare spending money.
So, what do you do?
Find your theme.
Depending on the age of your site, the theme or template you are working with alone may contribute to how “old” it looks. In our case, the original had a 2015-ish, local TV news sort of feel to it. This is something that, when we originally developed the site, was fresh and up to date. Styles change. It’s just like your parachute pants from the 80’s.
Simplify.
If your site has been around for a while, you probably kept adding branches, adding copy, and adding media. The first step here is to cut through all of this and identify what you truly need. That means the video project that was your absolute favorite back in 2016 may just have to go. The same goes for focus areas that might have been a large part of your business a few years back, but have been moved down the priority list as your business has evolved.
Speaking of focus…
Now is the time to really take a look in the mirror as to what your business is about today. What are the things you do best? What are the things that are most lucrative? What are the things you simply enjoy doing? These are the topics you need to identify and move to front and center positions on your site. It may also be time to start from scratch on your descriptions of your services. This will provide you an opportunity to further simplify your overall site and message, and zoom in more clearly on what you are trying to convey.
The devil is in the details.
Part of the way you are going to make this change without breaking the bank on a web designer who does look, copy, and back-end execution is by being able to spell out exactly what you want, page by page, and hand it to a developer who is skilled in the technical end of creating a website, but does not specialize in writing copy or doing graphic design. Does this sound tedious? Yes. Is it tedious? It is even worse than it sounds!
This was a big challenge for our team, because what one person thought was implied, another believed needed to be spelled out. (The second person was usually right!) Then, with everyone trying to pitch in, we ended up with multiple documents all attempting to explain the same task. The good news is that everyone was rowing in roughly the same direction, so a few meetings allowed us to streamline some of this and make it legible for our developer. This is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle.
You can always add more later.
In our case, there was a definite time component. We wanted to get the new site up and running as quickly as possible. To execute something like this in a relatively short period of time, you have to accept that you won’t have everything in place on the day you launch. Be nimble. Remember that editing later is always an option. Can’t find the perfect photo for a page? Use a really good one, and replace it later when you find one that’s better. Not sure you are crazy about some of the copy on the third link in from the home page? Go with what you have and start working on re-writes after the initial launch.
Home is where the heart is.
Always remember the home page, the landing page, is the front door to your entire business. If you do one thing in this process, make sure you are happy with that page. That is the first impression, and may be the only page some people look at on your site. (Hopefully they love that so much, they simply hit the “contact us” link!) Putting your best foot forward here and working back into the site as you edit is the way to go.
In the end, it will never be perfect.
If you are a “Type A,” as most business owners are, you will always find another thing. That little detail that drives you nuts. That tiny imperfection that’s like a rock in your shoe. That will always be the case with a website. If there is a moral to this story, it is that you should keep editing. It will always be a work in progress. Funny, that makes it a microcosm of every business I’ve ever run across.
Anyway, this was the process for the “re-tool” of our website. We hope you love it. CLICK HERE to view more about Chemistry PR & Multimedia.
