enVirtua.com

Recently we have been speaking to more and more people, looking at and discussing their websites. What has become apparent is many many organisations have stagnant websites, by which we mean that they have no development plan for the site.

A website is not a monument to what you have achieved during the development of the website. In fact, at enVirtua we firmly believe that the “one off”, “design and forget” approach is not the ideal approach. Your website should evolve along with your business, you should be adding content regularly, adding new features to make the site more usable with each iteration of the website.

This is not to say that the site you have with 5 simple pages and not interactivity is entirely bad. In fact, it is entirely reasonable to say that a simple five page layout that does what your customers needs, is a million times better than a site with amazing flash animations and all the bells and whistles, that does not deliver something useful to your clients or prospective clients.

Do you want your website to be a simple site that gives contact details and that is all? Terrific, then create a simple business card like website, put all your contact details up there. Don’t waste your and your site visitors time with flash introduction animations, the latest whizzy menuing system etc. Just make it plain and simple.

BUT… schedule to come back and revise the site in 6 weeks. Come back with fresh eyes and see if the details you are giving are easy to follow. You would be amazed at the number of sites that have incorrect email addresses or phone numbers. Make sure the address is current, perhaps add a link to Google Maps. For the personal touch you might consider writing your own directions and taking a camera out and taking shots of the route to make it easier for your visitors.

On the otherhand, you might want to consider adding functionality to the site to assist you customers.

By this I mean find a single simple transaction that customers make with your business, then see how you might be able to integrate this into your website. This might be as simple as adding a contact us form. More interesting might be adding an inidication on your website to show when you are in the office and able to take phonecalls. Better yet, allow your customers to schedule meetings with you online.

Another iteration might be to adjust your contact form to direct contact requests intelligently based on the content of the request. For example, if the visitor used a product name in the message, direct the request to the specific product manager. Perhaps, create a system that allows the your customers to place orders and track the progress accurately from order to delivery.

The point is not to never consider your site “finished” and to have an iterative development plan.

The recommendation would be to create a site, then dream up a feature that would increase the value it brings to your clients; then implement it. After which, take a break, review and repeat; finding something new to add (or remove) to make the site match your clients better and better each time.

Obviously, we would like to discuss this with you. Please contact us on 020 7193 8987 to discuss how you might start a development plan for your site.