You’ve had the same Web page since 1996, and it has always served you well. There’s a link for folks to send you an email and a little animated gif of a bunny rabbit at the bottom. Everything works fine. So why should you change it? I’m glad you asked.
1. Get with the times.
For most people, “Web 2.0” doesn’t mean anything. It’s just one of those tech-geek buzzwords like “P2P” or “Open Source” that make the average Web user glaze over. But just because the term itself is meaningless, doesn’t mean that you can’t take some of the common Web 2.0 concepts and apply them to your site. By doing a couple of simple things, you can update your Web presence to let your visitors know that you are keeping up with the times.
For example, instead of having a link to your email address, try adding a contact form so visitors can send messages to you directly from your site. Instead of that animated gif, add a little Flash animation to your header or create some onmouseover effects for your navigation buttons. Simple touches like these will let your users know that you aren’t stuck in the ’90s.
2. Rename, rebrand, relaunch.
This is what I’m working on over at my personal Web site. It used to be exclusively about my music, but I’m changing it to reflect my complete Web presence, including portfolio, blogs, and my music.
If you want to change the direction of your Web site, don’t just change a few paragraphs on the front page or the header graphic. Make the changes complete from top to bottom. If you want your site to say something different than before, you need to distance yourself from your old message as much as possible.
3. Optimize for search engines and your users.
Chances are, if your Web site is more than two years old, you should probably rewrite everything. One of the tenets of the Web 2.0 movement is that style should be separate from markup. So, when you view source and see tables within tables and a bunch of tags, time for a redesign.
Unfortunately, this type of redesign isn’t as easy as the other two. The first two reasons are like slapping a new coat of paint on a house, while this reason is like gutting and rebuilding the sucker. But that’s the bad news.
The good news in this situation is that once you’ve done this makeover, future redesigns will be new coats of paint. Div-based sites are quicker to load for your users and more easily parsed by search engines than the old nested table layouts. And with your style separate from your content, you can easily change one line of code on your stylesheet to change something across your whole site. It’s very convenient.
I have old shirts that I’ve worn to pieces. I kept my first car for 10 years. I use the same pen everyday at work. I’m a creature of habit, and I like continuity in my life. But sometimes, as the commercial said, change is good. Good luck!
