According to San Francisco Bay Area
lore, there is never a moment when some part of the Golden Gate
Bridge is not undergoing a paint job. By the time the painters get
from one side to the other, the bridge needs painting again.
Your website works the same way: Once you finish it, technology has
improved, users have more bandwidth and higher expectations, and
then your needs have changed. And hey! - a week after the shiny new
site rolls off the lot, it's time for a redesign.
Many commercial websites were initially created through a kind of
vague spontaneous combustion. Somebody's nephew knew HTML and had a
summer to kill. The rest of a company's collateral materials -
brochures, CD-ROMs, business cards - may look slick, well
considered, and match (with a consistent look and feel, logo
treatment, tag lines, etc.), but the website appears totally
unrelated. As more and more folks use the Web to learn about your
company and products, the gray backgrounds, push-pin graphics, and
fat horizontal rules on that first-generation site can drive
business away.
Sometimes the site needs only a face lift. Slap up some new
graphics, toss in some sparkle, such as rollovers or animation, and
that's enough. But considering how fast things become outdated on
the Web, most of the time a site needs a complete structural
overhaul.
One of the beauties, and the curses, of a website is that it's
perpetually updatable. You can build it as you go, dropping in
content and adding sections as needed. Unfortunately, this can lead
to sprawling, non-functional sites. Not only must your site clear
these organizational hurdles, but to stay competitive, it needs to
keep up with the Joneses - which isn't easy, considering that the
very nature of the Web is always changing.
These days commerce sites are more than just static brochures
("Welcome to the website for [company name], makers of [company
product]. Interested in buying [company product]? Then please visit
our store, located at [company address].") Now sites are fully
functional businesses, communities, and resources in their own
right. To bridge the generational gap between your company's first
online efforts and the kind of site you now need to stay au courant,
you must reorganize and rethink everything.
But whether you need a simple cosmetic change or a
from-the-ground-up overhaul, a redesign offers our designers a
unique challenge. Generals always fight the previous war: despite
innovations in wonder guns or super jets, we still employ the
strategies used in the last conflict. BOTICS designers work in
reverse: We must anticipate the challenges of the next redesign as
they plan for this one. Almost-ready technology needs considering.
So do upcoming changes in a company, like new products, new
processes, and co-branding.
The key is to create a site that's as up-to-date as you can manage
and flexible enough to accommodate change. It's also important to
know when some feature or new direction is actually better left for
the next redesign. Striking a balance between what you need and what
you can feasibly do as you update your site is tricky business.
Fortunately, this process isn't uncharted territory. Some sites have
been through as many as five redesigns.
So with realistic goals, informed planning, input from BOTICS, and a
"little" work on your end, together we can redesign your website and
create the next generation of your online business. |
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