There is a typical life cycle for most business web sites. In the beginning of the design process, many web site owners become caught up with “bells and whistles” that seem to appeal to their projected target audience. Things like flash movies, java applications, animations, and blinking text that will surely get their site noticed.
However, in the adrenaline rush of “creativity” of their site design, web site owners typically forget that they are designing their site for one reason: their target audience. These people will likely find that flash movie irritating and that blinking text to be slightly obnoxious after viewing it multiple times. Even worse, your audience might not be able to find your site in the search engines because of these “necessary” bells and whistles. These are the attributes of a web site that can sometimes get in the way of important content and can confuse browsers and even drive away sales.
Here is the life cycle of web design that sites typically undergo:
• Stage 1 - Style is Everything!
• Stage 2 - Designing for Online Functionality
• Stage 3 - Designing for Them
• Stage 4 - Redesign Time
• Stage 5 - Conclusion
Stage 1- Style is Everything!
The first stage in web design is the part in which the owner typically really wants to be actively involved. It’s in this stage that people usually try to pack their sites with all of the newest online bells and whistles. Entire sites might be flash coding and video, or there may be some beautiful JavaScript mouse-over effects or drop-down menus in the design. It’s always a fancy design, but the message is clear — style is everything!
Stage 2 - Designing for Online Functionality
In Stage 2, the reality of an ineffective web design begins to be clear. This usually comes about three months after the initial launch. Often times these fancy design sites are rejected by many of the major directories and not indexed by the major search engines. In turn, they do not get the traffic or sales that were projected based on the various types of marketing strategies used.
Typically, this is when companies decide that they will try to hire a professional online marketer to promote the site. Splash page companies, in some way, shape or form, often rear their ugly heads in this stage. Unfortunately, many web sites fall into the trap of believing that a splash page is the answer to their online problems. Creating a simple homepage loaded with keywords which links directly to the existing web site will solve the issues of their online functionality. Companies go this route because the beautifully designed site couldn’t possibly be the problem with low site traffic and low functionality. The existing site is not ranking in search engines and the company cannot understand why they have no web presence when they have a web page floating out there in cyberspace. The simple truth is often this — they simply did not design and write an effective web site.
Stage 3 - Designing for Them
By Stage 3, after spending an outrageous amount of money on fancy web site designs and various marketing strategies, web site owners generally realize that they did not design an effective web site for the audience that they’re trying to reach. Often times this realization comes only after a great amount of lost potential profits and potential clients that are missed because of an inept site.
At this point, owners typically will bring in a third party web design expert to analyze potential problems and present various possible solutions. They’ll also often turn to search engine marketing experts to help make their site search-engine friendly so that their site ranks well naturally. If only they had known that if they did this in the early design phase, they could have saved themselves thousands of dollars in online marketing costs in promoting a defunct site.
Stage 4 – Redesign Time
After careful analysis from multiple outside sources, web site owners finally decide that scratching the old fancy site in order to launch a redesigned functional site is their only option to a successful web presence. A site that is planned, designed, and coded for user friendliness and search engine visibility generally gets the most traffic and resulting business because it was designed to do exactly that – be functional.
Conclusion
If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably found yourself in one of these stages of developing a web presence. Do yourself and your target audience a favor, and get the right information from the beginning to make your site simple, functional, and creative without throwing everything and the kitchen sink into your design. Your new clients, and more importantly, your bank account, will thank you.
Simply Creative Web Design specializes in designing simple, creative, and unique sites for our clients that are functional and user friendly. We also write our sites from scratch, ensuring that they are search engine friendly from the minute that they are published. If you find your company anywhere in the life cycle of web design, we can help!