Embrace the Short-Term Plan: A Strategic Website Refresh can Have as Much Impact as a Site Revamp
After the year we’ve all had, taking on a website revamp is not something that every company has the stomach or budget to do. Yet, limping along with a website that is not strategically aligned with your business objectives, is performing poorly, is out of date or lackluster is likely sabotaging your organization’s success. Instead of adding bandaids to your site to try to make it a little better here and there, consider undertaking a strategic website refresh.
Here’s the process we utilize for our clients to elevate (without completely overhauling) their websites in the most strategic and efficient manner:
Step #1: Define Your Top 5 Goals
Before you start changing things on your site, it’s critical to get clear on what you’re trying to achieve. Is it communicating more distinctive messaging? Generating more incoming leads? Updating your product and service offerings? Adding case studies? All of the above? Start with identifying your top 5 goals.
Step #2: Create a Wish List & Understand What is Feasible with Your Site
Some sites are easier to update than others. Once you have your goals, create a wish list of how you would like to bring them to life on your site. Maybe it’s retooling the billboard on your home page, refreshing imagery throughout the site, adding a video, creating new pages of content, implementing new forms, etc. Run your wish list by an experienced web developer who can get into the backend of your website and tell you what is realistic and what is not.
Step #3: Map Out a Concrete Plan
Next up is mapping out a concrete plan for your site updates. We typically wireframe these for our clients. These are blueprint-like drawings that show all of the changes intended to be made to the site. They’re great for getting internal buy-in before getting content and graphics created.
Step #4: Create the Necessary Content & Graphics
Once your plan is ready to roll, it’s time to write the content, find photos, and create any necessary graphics and videos. This is typically a multi-faceted project unto itself, but once all of the assets are approved, the wireframes and content are then packaged up and provided to the developer to implement on the site.
Step #5: Implement. Test. Deploy. Promote.
There are always some rounds of back and forth with the web developer when they implement the designs in order to make sure everything is perfect and rendering well on all devices. It’s important to test the site as if it is brand new to make sure everything is working well. Once it’s good to go, it’s deployed and can be promoted in all the various ways included in your marketing plan.
We recently completed a website refresh for our client Raffa Investment Advisers, which included new creative as well as updated content throughout the site. Check out the before and after of the homepage billboard:
Before:
After:
Click to visit their site, where you’ll see all four new billboards that scroll on the homepage.
