I just read a great post called Why Redesign Your Website? by HubSpot which is a SEO marketing Company that is pretty darn on target. I really liked what they said. One of the main points is that sure you have to have a well done site that is polished and put together, but…. the point is getting more visitors and leads, SO you do a redesign if you are not on a CMS platform, not because you are bored with the design or because your CEO wants it to be blue not red.
The HubSpot post quotes marketing guru, Seth Godin as saying,
“I’m going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? …Your car isn’t unique, and your house might not be either”.
The founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweig once said to me ( I love that he actually, in person, said this to me)
“I wonder why any developer would build a theme from scratch for a client when there are over 5000 themes to customize and save them time and money”
The HubSpot post also touts creating great content as a hugley important activity and this content drives people to your site. Especially if it is a CMS site. Which brings me to another one of their points, That you should absolutely include a blog, RSS and landing pages.
They say,
Any website built today should include these basics. They are not expensive, and they work. A blog is a great way to create content on an ongoing basis, and to start to converse with your customers and prospects. RSS allows some content from your website to be automatically pushed out to other websites and people, increasing the reach of your content.
So don’t take my word for it. Take the words of Matt and Seth and HubSpot to heart when you find yourself spending too much time with what the banner should look like. Yes, it should look sharp, but it really matters more that you get it out there and you have the right technology, the right navigation, and a way to start and keep adding really great content.
I am talking to a woman today who had her site redesigned over a year ago and it still has not gone live because she was paralyzed over the design the technology choices and her wording. I agree, for someone new to all of this it can be daunting. And there is a lot of competing information out there. There is a lot of OLD school information out there. Like selling people SEO services around key words and metatags, or people still building static, non-owner friendly sites that the site owner has to pay the developer every time they want it updated! At New Tricks, we really try and make it easy for you but it is nice to see organizations like HubSpot and people like Seth Godin confirming the path the New Tricks is guiding our clients down. Yes, of course I believe in good design, but it is important not to let your obsession on perfection stop you from doing it now.
