4 Reasons Conventional Website Redesign Services Don’t Work
Many organizations hope website redesign services will solve all their current problems, but the result of a site redesign is often short-lived. Technology evolves and your digital presence is quickly out of step again.
Endless website redesigns create the feeling of running on a hamster wheel. Even as you expend tremendous energy trying to move forward, you always seem to end up in the same place.
After more than 15 years of developing effective websites, the COLAB team has found a way to stop the hamster wheel and help our partners take bold steps along the digital path. Enter the WebOps framework. WebOps uses incremental improvement to support every aspect of the business.
Website redesign services vs. incremental improvement
Incremental improvement is a method of creating a powerful digital presence to achieve a competitive advantage. Unlike radical innovation, which calls for changing an entire structure or paradigm, the incremental approach makes small but savvy changes to create maximum effectiveness from minimum resources.
Here’s another way of looking at incremental improvement. You don’t train for a marathon all at once and wake up one day to run 26 miles. Instead, you start by running a mile, then building up the number of miles during each run. You improve your performance incrementally over time by following a clear path, remaining diligent, staying in touch with yourself, and carefully optimizing your performance.
Websites benefit from incremental improvement in the same way. They should always be getting better, one step at a time, which is the key to stopping the hamster wheel and making measurable progress along the path to your goals. This is the basis of the WebOps framework.
What is WebOps and how does it help?
WebOps (website operations) is a framework for designing and optimizing a website to constantly evolve to meet the entire organization’s needs. WebOps helps a company escape the endless cycle of redesign because it reimagines a digital presence as a lasting, evolving product instead of a one-off project. This is a radical departure from conventional website redesign services and focuses projects on long-term success rather than stopping at an arbitrary finish line.
Effective WebOps implementation empowers your team to focus on the organization’s most important and meaningful work by providing tools and processes that create measurable marketing value. It eliminates the need for costly redesigns because it allows your team to continuously adapt your site to maximize its utility for your organization.
WebOps is composed of 3 key components to having a website with sustainable value: vision, platform, and process.
Vision helps you picture an optimal future where your website fuels success in customer service, HR, IT, marketing, sales, and more. It is a clear picture of what you want to achieve and the steps you need to take to get there. Vision serves as your roadmap to achieve the future success for your organization.
The platform is the foundation that encompasses the tools, infrastructure, architecture, design, and best practices you use to develop and maintain your digital footprint.
The process is your organization’s efficient method for executing iterations and fine-tuning your website to ensure it always delivers optimal results.
4 reasons conventional website redesign services won’t work for you
It can be frustrating to feel like your organization is constantly redesigning its website without any real long-lasting results. Here are the most common causes.
Reason #1: Rebuilding
With most website redesign services, you’re constantly starting over with website rebuilds from scratch when it becomes painfully obvious the site isn’t meeting your organization’s needs. These constant resets of plans, budgets, and priorities create the hamster wheel effect of running in place, rather than moving forward.
How often should you redesign your website? When working with a WebOps process in place, this question becomes irrelevant. It’s no longer necessary to wholesale redesign your website because it’s now more like an evolving organism, adapting to meet your needs.
For example, consider a new product or service that has recently been approved for development. As the organization allots resources like newly-hired employees, office space to support them, and the budget for the product launch, less attention is focused on the website during this phase. As the launch approaches, product promotion and incorporation into the site are prioritized, then it becomes glaringly obvious that a site redesign is urgently needed.
WebOps prevents this last-minute need for a full-scale website revamp because it’s built with extensibility in mind and you’ll be having ongoing conversations with the team about upcoming initiatives, goals, launches, and more. Your site works efficiently throughout the new product design and preparation phase, so the launch can happen on time with just a few tweaks to the website.
In this way, WebOps proactively supports the new product introduction process and rounds out the user journey. This encourages your organization to be as creative and innovative as possible. Your website is never an afterthought because the incremental approach of WebOps ensures you can always add capabilities for new promotional campaigns, sales initiatives, user-focused features, and more.
Reason #2: Continuity
How is your employee retention rate? According to Marketing Week, the average CMO tenure is just over 3 years, with more junior marketing employees moving even more frequently. Marketing team or digital agency turnover could be impeding your digital progress. It’s called a continuity issue, also known as a sentiment-based or reactive approach.
As the model shows, your website will deteriorate over time because your approach to digital development is reactive. When you’re always fixated on solving immediate problems and fulfilling random requests, there’s no bandwidth available for strategic, proactive, incremental innovation.
Reason #3: Complexity
Opportunity is a double-edged sword. When your organization has increasing business opportunities and your business strategy is becoming more complex, there’s always a risk of getting bogged down by indecision or lack of planning.
It’s said that “a goal without a plan is just a wish.” All too often a lack of planning is really a lack of time to plan. The longer you delay the pursuit of a goal, the less likely it is to ever happen.
WebOps serves as a reminder that you can’t do everything all at once, and success is found in building a strategic plan of thoughtful prioritization. Address related issues at the same time with a well-planned website to support your priorities along the way. You’ll be amazed at the complex strategies you can implement over time.
COLAB often reminds our partners that the vision/planning phases of web design are vital because you must examine the 50,000-foot view before executing at the 500-foot level. Working with a strong, clear vision in mind avoids cobbling things together in the moment while neglecting a large technical debt to inevitably address later.
Reason #4: Vision
It takes vision to see what’s possible in a website refresh and what it takes to get there. A lack of vision can exist for many reasons, including de-prioritizing the website due to other pressing issues, not having the right leadership in place, experiencing tight budgetary constraints, or suffering a temporary blow to company morale.
Ditch website redesign services
All of these issues can be overcome when an organization has an overarching vision of what’s possible if. What would happen if you open the door to explore, build stakeholder buy-in, and see the new opportunities that could arise? How would a well-designed, functional digital presence benefit your brand and your bottom line?
A qualified web design partner encourages you to step away from the hamster wheel and embark on a new, more productive journey. COLAB works collaboratively with you to turn your vision into reality. The vision itself is also revisited and evolves over time as you continue to push toward the finish line.
Contact us to discuss website redesign services and finally break the endless cycle of website redesigns.
