When you launch a new website, you should feel like Henry Frankenstein bringing his creature to life. Not because a website is many pieces that become one whole, completed puzzle, but because it is a living, breathing thing.
Unfortunately, many new and would-be website owners view it more like a brochure. Like it needs to be design and content locked before it is sent to be printed and mailed.
This perception of the static web is wrong-headed thinking; a website is an active tool, not passive. In other words, the beauty of the world wide web is that you can change it on the fly.
A Flawed Philosophy
If you feel that you need to finish your website before it is launched, you will likely fail to update your website as often as you should. Of course, it needs to be free of usability issues, unpolished design, and grammatical errors, but is it truly ever finished?
I would argue no. Your business should continually be growing, moving, and changing, and your website needs to reflect that. You have to keep the car running.
Can you imagine if we treated retail stores this way? Face all the products to look perfect, position our wayfinding signs, illuminate the big logo out front, and never update a single thing. Sorry customers, you can look, but you can’t buy, and in a year from now we will have the same exact products. Would you want to come back to West Elm or J. Crew if you knew it would be the same season after season?
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Bring your energy to your website. It is a reflection of your business ethos.
Some Tips to Help
- View your website as a living, breathing entity, not a static tool.
- Update your website seasonally at a minimum.
- Create blog/post content to keep it moving forward.
- Test and measure your website and update it to meet your user’s needs.
- When something new happens in your business, please bring it to the website!
- It is never “finished.”
Your website is alive; start treating it that way!
