Design

Why Websites Aren’t “Done”

Imagine you just finished building a house. The walls have been painted, the cabinets carefully hung and stainless steel appliances installed. Now imagine after you tighten the last screw, hammer the last nail and lay the last piece of tile, someone walks in and says ‘now we need to redo the floorplan or change the […]

Why Websites Aren’t “Done” Originally written on March 26, 2013 and it will take about 2 minutes to read

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Imagine you just finished building a house. The walls have been painted, the cabinets carefully hung and stainless steel appliances installed. Now imagine after you tighten the last screw, hammer the last nail and lay the last piece of tile, someone walks in and says ‘now we need to redo the floorplan or change the paint color or swap out the cabinets’.

When you ‘finish’ a website this is kinda what it’s like. The site is built to best position the product/service appropriately in the mind of buyers. You’ve written copy you hope will convert. You’ve put all the finishing touches on it…but it’s not done.

There is no such thing as a static site for todays marketer. Pages are tested, poked, prodded and content continually added. Button text, position and color are changed, tested and analyzed and often end up different from where they started.

It’s tough to take well-honed design and copy and change it. As humans we like to see what we built, admire it and leave it alone. As a marketer your job is to watch, listen and learn from prospects and build the bridge from their problems to your solution; even if it means destroying what’s already built.

These changes could be as simple as refreshing images to better represent the product, subtracting fields from forms (say that 3 times fast), or testing 1 page layout against another or moving a button above the fold. It’s ok to change, it’s agile and better serves buyers and business goals.

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