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Building websites can be really frustrating
because the process can feel like it goes on forever sometimes isn't it.
That back and forth with the client, the design iterations, the ie testing
all of those things can take for ever
and so by the time your website is actually live
it can begin to feel a little bit out of date already.
Then you add into the mix, clients that don't get
that they need to maintain and update their website on an ongoing basis
and within a few months, it's beggining to feel a little bit embarassing.
A couple of years down the line and it's so embarrassing that the client gets it now
and isn't referring customers to it.
What a disaster!
You built this website and already it's not being used to its full potential
and that's the frustrating thing with web Design.
It's so often that sites we built don't reach their full potential.
Sure a lot of clients now grasp that they have to make basic
maintenance on their sites, they will do those little bits of updates that they need to.
But they don't really recognize that a website needs to be maintained and evolved over time.
It's not just about updating some typos, it's about really making fundamental improvements to the website over time.
Of course as web designers we are in a bit difficult position here, it's hard for us to talk in terms of site evolution
and constant updating because it just makes us sound like we are money grabbing
it makes us sound like our only aim is to get more money out of the clients.
And of course we know that that's not true but we need to start convincing clients, we need to present out arguments
in such a way that they get that a website need to be evolved over time.
Now I've been tackling this problem for a few years now and there are kind of five approaches that I use
to get across to a client that they need to be evolving a website rather than just building it and leaving it.
So what I wanna share with you are those five approaches.
The first one is the garden analogy. Now this is not my idea it's Seth Godin's
he came up with this he said, a lot of people see their website as a building
With the building you plan it, you build it, you done. Sure there is a little bit of maintenance to do
but basically you're done once you built it.
But in actual fact he argues, that a website is really like a garden. It needs pruning, it needs nurturing, it needs caring for
so that it grows and evolves and changes over time. And the longer a garden is there and established, the better it becomes.
A well established garden is so much better than the one just planted.
And that is so true with the web. Especially pruning. The are number of clients that keep adding more and more content
to their website and then never prune back, they never tidy up their garden. So it's hardly surprising that so many websites
are like overgrowing gardens.
The second approach that I use is the false economy argument and this one works on the boom and bust of redesign cycles.
You know what I mean. A website is launched it's lovely, it's spangly it's great, everybody think it's wonderful
and then overtime it becomes out of date, the design is dated the technology is no longer appropriate,
there are better way of doing things, the content isn't maintained, content isn't removed and the website slowly decays
to the point where people are too embarrassed to point customers at it.
So it's no longer of any use whatsoever, you are not getting anything out of that website. Eventually senior managment
realize that there's a problem, they throw their toys out the pram and it's redesigned.
And it's spangly and it's new and it's lovely and then the process repeats itself.
Now this is a false economy, this kind of boom bust of redesigns, for two reasons. First of all your website is only effective
for a small length of the time that it's alive.
When it's first launched it's great, it's wonderful, it's effective but very quickly it's no longer effective.
And so you are not getting value for money there.
Secondly every time you do a redesign, almost always they are throwing everything out and starting again.
The good the bad it's all thrown on the heap, cast aside.
And that is another false economy. Very rarely do websites need an entire new redesing
Very rarely do they need entire replacing. Normally can be built upon and improved if that is done
as an ongoing project. If a website has been left for two or three years yeah of course you gonna have to throw everything out
and start again. But most of the time you shouldn't need to do that if you are evolving it gradually over time.
So that's the second arguement
Third item, is the SEO carrot. The great thing with websites that are maintained, and evolved and impoved over time
is that they keep changing, is that they have new content, that they have restructured and Google loves that.
Google comes to websites that are changed more often and Google will rank website with new content better than other
sites and of course clients get that. They love that, they wanna be number one on Google and this is a way of achieving that.
So talk about the SEO carrot and it will make a huge difference.
My next one I have grandly entitled the path to user enlightenment and the truth is than no matter how much
usability you do, usability testing you do within the design process, your website is never gonna be really right, you are not
gonna be sure whether it's right, you not gonna know how to improve it until it goes live.
When it goes live, then you can start watching real users interacting with your website in real time and you can see
how the website really works. You never gonna be able to get all of that just from testing in the development stage.
So as a website goes live, in that period of time after the website goes live we learn more and more about usage
we become more and more enlightened about what users need, yet there is no money there to do anything about it.
Because all the money spent on the development cycle and not post launch. It tails off dramatically at post launch.
So there's a problem there. You need ongoing investment in order to keep that cycle, to keep learning from users
and improving the site. The final consideration the final thing you can use to convince clients that they need ongoing invesment
in their site is the phase two list.
You know how clients always scope creep. They always add to the scope of project
and it's not surprising I can understand it. They are not involved with the web all the time and so they don't necessarily
think of all the things that need to be done on a website, or the stuff that you could do. So they have ideas as the project
goes along. Now as web designers we hate that because we provided a fix price and we don't want the scope to creep.
But here's a trick that I use and it's brilliant. Encourage that.
In fact I come up with a thing that is outside of scope before the client does. I preempt them. I come up with some great idea
of what I'd love to do on the website as outside of scope and I say: "Hey we really ought to do this it'd be great let's put it on a
phase two wishlist". And then when they come with an idea you go: "Yeah let's put it in the wishlist" and you start building up
this wishlist of additional ideas. Now the reason that's so great is because it get the client thinking about that phase two.
That next step what we gonna do when we launch. And it also deals with the scope pre problem at the same time
so two birds with one stone there. So there you go, that's my list of five approaches for getting clients thinking about
their websites as being something that evolves and changes over time. It's the garden analogy, the false economy argument
the SEO carrot, the path to user enlightenment and the phase two wishlist, hopefully, that will help.