For an increasing number of businesses, their website is their brand. They may deliver digital goods, they may provide services that are largely rendered online or they may rely on their website so heavily that people are accustomed to the website representing the business overall. This makes it very difficult to do radical website updates without defeating efforts at branding. Here are some things to think about if you’re planning to update your website to the point where most of the old elements of your website are going to be sent to the recycle bin.
Your Logo
Remember that a graphic designer can generally improve graphics without radically overhauling them. If your logo looks a little bit outdated, ask a graphic designer about what they could do to make it more modern. Graphic designers have access to different techniques for creating images that allow them to be resized nearly infinitely without the quality of the image degrading. Even doing this could make a huge improvement in your logo.
Changing your company logo is always a big consideration. After all, people do tend to associate businesses very strongly with the logos they see those businesses use. This is why it’s so difficult just to change it out right. If you plan to do this, ask your website designer for solutions. It will likely require that you do a lot of work at the company, as well, but it may be worth it if your logo just looks out of date.
Your Functions
Changing the functionalities on your website when you’re doing an update is always a big consideration. If your website allows people to do things that are extremely popular, you’re going to want to preserve those functions when you update. You may want to improve them, but you’ll want to talk to a programmer and designer about this so that you do it right.
Ideally, a redesign should make life easier for the people who want to use the functions on your website. A redesign should never make it confusing for people to figure out how to do the things that they are used to doing. Obviously, there are going to be people who are thrown off because the page simply looks a little bit different. Don’t try to avoid throwing them off at all. A more realistic goal would be to make the redesign so intuitive that people can instantly recognize how to do the things they’re used to doing while, at the same time, they can recognize the new features and what huge improvements they represent.
All Around the Web
If you are doing a radical update, you’re going to want to integrate social media functionalities into that update. You will also want to start using the social media capabilities right away. The best way to do this is to announce your website update over your social media networks and to make certain that any changes to your branding are indicated in those notices where you let people know about the update.
If your company runs blogs and other sites that are separate from your main website, be sure those updates carry over to those sites, as well. By doing so, you ensure that your branding remains consistent, even though it has changed. This might sound a little bit counterintuitive, but it lets people know that your company has made a change and that what they see changed on your website has been changed across all of your different company presences. This can help you preserve your brand, even though you may have made some rather radical changes to your main website.
