Your new site looks beautiful – now what?

A new website is an exciting process for most companies as they often treat it as an opportunity to rebrand themselves. Even if the logo remains the same, a good website design can reposition a company in the market for the better. Appearance and branding are vital considerations.

A lot of time thought and energy is ploughed into a new design by both the company and contracted designers. The layout is fresh and the imagery complements the design. The spotlight graphics and key page banners set up to work in harmony.

The site is released to great fanfare and everyone is happy.

The site content is then largely forgotten about. All of a sudden a banner or spotlight needs to be updated to promote a new service: it gets flicked to Dave who has access to Paint and 5 minutes before a meeting to knock it together.

Over time designs become dated from lack of updates and/or new designs are done in-house by anyone who has a spare second. This generally results in is a site gradually degrading its appearance until the new content arguably makes it look worse than the original design.

It is understandable that all businesses are not web design firms, and nor should they be. But it is about branding and how you business presents itself, and so it is worth while valuing the updates to the site as much as the original design. It may be worth hiring an in-house designer, or asking the firm who made your site about low cost design retainers – it really does pay for itself.