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Knowing When Your Website Needs To Re-Designed

Regular re-designing of websites is necessary because of the speed at which the Internet evolves. Technology and website users expectations can change monthly, so you can never view your website as being a finished product.

The effects of having a poor or out-dated website can not be understated. A website is often the first point of contact between yourself and prospective customers and, as such, making the right impression is critical. If you make a bad impression with your website, then you can be sure that their business will not be coming your way. So, how do you know if your website is doing what it is meant to be doing?

Writing a simple checklist is the best place to start. Write down everything that your current website should be doing. Then, ask some customers or friends to take your list and try out your website. Ask them which of the points on your list your website achieves. Tell them to be frank and honest with you, as you will gain nothing from the exercise is they want to avoid offending you. Tell them that it is not personal, but that you want to make your website and your business as good as you possibly can.

Next create a list of of what your web site does not do, either because of outdated design, or capabilities it does not have. List all of the features or capabilities that you would like the website to have. Then, create one sentence which describes the primary purpose of your website and one secondary purpose. Everything on your list should support your primary and secondary purpose.

Often making just a few changes or adding one or two capabilities to your website at a time is the best approach to take, rather than spending lots of time and money on a complete overhaul that takes 6 months to implement. The reason being that it is then easier to track the effectiveness of the changes made, and that existing users of your site will not be overwhelmed and confused when they next visit your website.

It is important to establish an exact budget, or a budget range for your website re-design. It is good practice to get several bids or proposals for the project before accepting one. Let website design companies know up front that you can spend around a certain amount, and the sorts of changes that you are looking to make, and then ask them to give you their best price.

Learn more from a web consultant at http://www.kinneymedia.com, a company that specializes in website design in fairfield county ct

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 2:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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