We’ve been hard at work building websites lately. Web development is one of the things Hooker and Company does best. We love building up websites that are beautiful and fun to navigate. Most of all, we love the transformative effect a new website can have on your business. Since your online presence is such a critical component to your business, we thought we’d take a moment to celebrate this process, what it means to launch a brand new site. And why, even though you may already have a website, your business could get a super boost with an upgrade.
Websites don’t go bad, do they?
If you’re like a lot of people, you’re probably wondering why a business would want to update their website. Or why, even, they would want to update it frequently. After all, it’s not like a website is the bottle of questionable ranch dressing creeping around the back of your fridge. It is hard to imagine a website going bad over time just because.
Websites are made of binary code – ones and zeroes – not organic material. We like to think once a website is built, it should require minimal updates and we will be able to add to it with impunity until the end of time. But websites do go stale. Neglect your website for even a couple of months and it could go the way of Space Jam.
What factors are aging websites?
There’s many factors that’ll turn a website old and creaky. Your site’s navigation could deteriorate due to link rot – links that break over time and bog down your website with dead-end 404 errors. Also, there’s been some big developments in web design recently. Upgrades that are changing the way visitors interact with websites.
There are technological factors such as the rise of voice search. In 2020, it is estimated 30% of web sessions will be done without a screen! Also, there are also cultural factors that are influencing websites to change. There has been a growing shift toward making websites more accessible with new features to meet ADA compliance. And users are increasingly demanding ethical design with openness and honesty in the websites they visit. Once widely-used techniques to obtain a visitor’s personal information, or require unnecessary memberships that are difficult to cancel are now seen as taboo, and a barrier to conversions.
Not long ago, design used to be the most important feature of a website. But according to Google Trends, SEO has far surpassed design and is now the most important element for a website. The rise of SEO is due to recent changes in how search engines index and rank web content.
What are the hesitations to building a new website?
Many businesses who aren’t aware of how websites truly age might be hesitant to update their website. This is probably exacerbated by the misconception that most businesses update their websites to stay current with fashion trends. If that were the case, then a reluctance to dive into a new site would be understandable. But, while web aesthetics are important to consider (It’s nice to have a snappy looking website that‘s aligned with current trends and even colors.), a website should never be rebuilt simply because of fashion.
Coco Chanel said it best: “Fashion changes, but style endures.” Fashion is fickle. It isn’t enough to say your website should be fashionable since trying to meet a user’s desire for a different, modern experience is like hitting a moving target. Style, however endures. Build a website for style – for the things that will always endure – and that website will stand the test of time.
Building websites to stand the test of time.
The only constant is change. When designing a new website, it is important to consider the things that will always endure – the need for:
- A call to action
- Useability
- Functionality
- Ecommerce
- Target audience and purpose
Maybe the best built websites are designed to handle constant change. Search engine algorithms, technologies, networks, operating systems, browsers, and new devices may not change as whimsically as do trends in fashion, but they do change. All those changes affect your website. Left unchecked over time, your website could begin to look more and more like that questionable tub of ranch dressing in the back of your fridge.
We are a boutique St. Paul web design company building beautiful things to last
We recently built Chanhassen Dinner Theater’s website. We built Chanhassen a website that is mobile compatible, has more customizable capabilities than a Swiss army knife. It’s user friendly, dynamic, scalable and, we don’t mind saying, easy on the eyes. Chanhassen’s Ecommerce platform is top notch, and Chanhassen can easily update and manage their own pages. And their guests will be able to easily find the information they’re looking for. In short, we built their site to stand the test of time and the changes that may come.
Years from now, when visitors navigate Chanhassen’s site, they will enjoy clicking through the easy-to-navigate, fast-loading pages as the site politely guides visitors to take action. In the case of Chanhassen Dinner Theater, that means selling more tickets for the hottest musicals and comedy in the Twin Cities.
Author: Nate Barber
