The warning signs are there but it is easy to ignore or delay the inevitable – your website has to be renewed or as I prefer to use – revitalized. It doesn’t matter whether you have a small business website or a large corporate one, there is a fundamental inertia to redesigning the website. The tasks looms large, it will take time, money and energy to get to the end result, and it always seems easier to let the web developer ( in house or contracted) manage the existing website and improve on it as things change. The unfortunate result if this is let go for too long is strategic drift, this is when your website has been modified and built on until it takes its own direction or purpose that is diverges from the corporate goals. As a result customers and potential customers may become confused and your bottom line is impacted. As with all internet measurements, it will take awhile for the patterns to become evident and by that time business has been lost.
In our business of developing website strategies, we have encountered time and again the phrase “my web developers do that” and upon further probing it turns out that either they don’t actually do strategy or don’t do it very well, mostly through not having the right input.
This is where you can save a lot of time and money and grief – being prepared to meet with your web developers. Although it seems insurmountable, getting the process started in an organized and planned manner will make you think why didn’t I do this earlier.
I will expand on this in my next blog.
