Over the last two decades, the website has moved from the shadows to the center of marketing activity for firms of all sizes. Sure social media is important, print still has a role and in some industries radio and even television are still supporting players. All of those media outlets however, work best when they drive traffic back to your website.

So the pressure is on. Your website is front and center in your marketing, so it must be the very best representation of your company at every point in time. You are probably thinking, of course she will say that, she sells web design. Nothing would make her happier than for me to throw out my old design every two years. That’s not the case. That approach is expensive, and will leave your website out of date most of the time. A much better approach, called “growth driven design”, sets up methodology of continually improving your website, a few pages at a time.

The benefits of “growth driven design”:

• Search engines see small changes, new landing pages and additional content on existing pages as new information. That steady flow will help improve your search position.
• Easy to add new products, services and employees making your website the most complete source of information for your customers and staff.
• Customers have reasons to come back to your site again and again because there is always something new.
• Cost – while there is an investment to build a solid foundation, once that is in place you can begin to set up a quarterly or better yet monthly budget for your website. You can establish a plan and begin making changes a few at a time at a rate you can afford.

Start today

If your website is less than three years old, you probably have a good foundation on which to build. Now’s a great time to take inventory of what you have and start mapping out a schedule for small improvements.

If your site is more than three years old, it is likely it is not optimized to meet current web search standards. We’ve seen significant changes in web design since you last updated your site and your out of date design is not getting any better the longer you wait. It’s time for an action plan to get your website moved to a flexible platform to allow you to compete going forward.