Since it’s January and our New Year’s Resolutions are still at the top of our minds, I wanted to share four ways you can refresh your website with a new look. These are sometimes overlooked and it’s important to keep them in mind!
1) Replace some basic imagery on key pages such as your homepage or landing pages.
Frequency: 1-3 months (depending on the content of your site)
2) Refresh the look of your header and footer.
Frequency: 1-2 years
These two options are the simplest changes you can make that are relatively easy and cost-effective. It’s something you can do while you plan and produce more substantive change. Also, this will immediately convey a new look to your viewers.
Two more options that are more time intensive and more costly but may make more sense long term include:
3) Graphic Refresh
If you find the existing functionality on your site meets your business needs, you’d be a good candidate for this option. You would maintain your CMS, but overhaul the front end templates and graphics. Our award-winning graphics team mocks up the latest and greatest in best practices during this process.
Frequency: Roughly every couple years or if technology/business needs change
4) Redesign
This is ultimately the best approach if you want to do a complete overhaul of your site. It involves upgrading your CMS to give you improved functionality in the back end as well as overhauling the front end templates and graphics.
Frequency: Roughly every 2-3 years or if technology/business needs change
Frequency is a benchmark, consult with your Account Manager on what they’d recommend for your specific site.
Spring cleaning
We all have our minds fixated on warm summer days to get us through the doldrums of winter, but don’t forget about the spring! If you want to look ahead to spring cleaning, here are a few things you can perform easily and quickly:
1) Review and refresh content on your website, starting with the pages that get the highest traffic and views. The pages with the most traffic are the ones your users see the most. You don’t want to change too much, but make sure the content is still pertinent and up to date.
2) Review and refresh the content on your website that doesn’t see a lot traffic using Google Analytics. These pages aren’t working to your advantage so you’ll want to consider re-tooling them or removing them altogether if no longer relevant.
3) Remove any unnecessary links that could be bloating your pages.
If you find you are overwhelmed with what best practices are or even coming up with ideas of things to enhance, we can help point you in the right direction. The key is to keep your website up to date and fresh in order to keep users coming back to your site as well as attracting new visitors!