There’s your website. To you it looks great, you can’t imagine anyone not liking it. All of the features you feel that a user could want are there; the navigation, the logo, the specials, etc.
Then you get feedback from one or two people that it looks a bit 1999-ish. Is that a problem? More often than not, yes.

As different techniques are applied to different website, users experience them and begin to accept those newer features as ‘the norm’, if your site doesn’t keep pace, then it may be seen to be antiquated. Now, this doesn’t mean that your site isn’t usable, that’s something for you to examine using your analytics, or through usability testing, but it can lead to a general uneasiness of the user, that the site isn’t where it should be.

Let’s take a look at the evolution of a site. Below is the Burger King site from January 1999, as you can see, it doesn’t suffer from a common problem of that time – Frames – but it did have a splash screen.

Looking at the same site today, you can see that the navigation has vanished (it’s dynamic when you mouse over the ‘Explore BK’ text), and the center of the site is interactive, with the user able to rotate the image to see the special features. Look-wise, there’s a nice gradient in the background, which just gives the site more of a 3-D feel to it.

It’s quite clear to see the difference between the 2 sites, and to see which offers a user the more ‘modern’, expected experience. So if your competition has the 2008 site, and yours looks like the 1999 one, you’re going to start off at a disadvantage when you try to get those customers to walk through your site, let alone getting them to order / donate. Updating the look and feel of your site on a regular basis can aid in both retaining and attracting new customers, as long as it’s more than just a ‘fresh coat of paint’, and there’s content and functionality behind it.

If your site is stuck in 1999, 2002 or 2005, then we can guide you on the way to where you need to be today. Typically our process involves the following:

1. Analytics Audit – What’s working for you now? Where are the roadblocks? Are you tracking the right metrics?
2. Search Audit – Where it the site now as far as the Search Engines are concerned? Where could it be? What are your competitors doing? Where are your ‘golden’ opportunities?
3. Infrastructure Selection – What platform(s) should the site use? What 3rd party applications / tools need to be integrated? What architecture needs to be in place to support the goals?
4. Site Build – The final step is to design and build the site, including the look and feel, as well as appropriate content for your site to succeed.
5. Site Audit – Is the new site functioning as expected? What tweaks need to be made to get customers through the appropriate funnels to your conversion event?

Filed under: Design & Development on Friday, April 18th, 2008 by Simon Heseltine | No Comments
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