All of us have a website. Yet, I bet you’re not using your site to its full potential.

All of your prospects and existing customers are visiting your website. That website is the primary destination for new prospects and existing customers interested in your business. 

Yet, very few company websites are truly positioned at the center of their business operations or even at the center of sales and marketing operations.

This misalignment begins with the Day 2 Problem. 

Immediately after the launch of a new website obsolescence sets in. Even though your website is designed, developed, and launched pixel perfect and to specifications, its three to six months out of sync with your business. 

Even in the best of circumstances, all those discovery and requirement sessions captured your business perfectly…months ago. 

The reality is that your business is dynamic and fluid. However, websites are assumed to be relevant and evergreen despite static.  

This logical fallacy leads to the problem with most websites. 

Because our websites are not ongoing, iterative design and development projects they become less effective over time. As a result, we begin to work around them instead of using them as an essential tool. 

As we endure the frustration of hacking our website to work for the business, we begin to avoid and ignore our websites. This leads to the typical half-life of a company website (2-3 years), a point a which it has deteriorated to a point of irrelevance. A state where the website is no-longer contributing to the business.

This begins the challenging process of advocating and fighting for a new website budget. Typically, this fight is for a very sizable variance because it’s now necessary to completely blow up and redesign the website, not simply iterate it.

Razing and rebuilding websites is an arcane approach to software development. All commercial software is incrementally iterated and improved. Over the last couple of decades, this has become the standard because software is mission-critical to businesses’ and consumers’ daily workflow.

Why then do we redesign websites from the ground up? This practice is obviously strategically and financially inefficient. 

So, here are some strategic questions to consider to get more from your website.

• Are you evolving your strategic and tactical thinking around your website?
• Do you think about your website first when launching new business initiatives?
• Do you review consumer behavior and feedback from your website to innovate? 
• Do you think of your website as a product, instead of a marketing brochure?
• Are you restructuring your team and processes to support iterative design, development, and use of your website?
• Are you restructuring your investment in your website to be smaller monthly or quarterly investments instead of large capital allocations every couple of years? 

Blowing up websites every couple of years simply doesn’t make any sense. Our markets, consumers, and business partners are centered around a dynamic web. It’s time to ensure your website is a part of this dynamic.

Kaleidico is redesigning our web design and development engagements to serve organizations that depend on their websites as an essential part of their business operations. Learn more about what this looks like or schedule a discovery call to see if it’s a fit for your business strategy.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash