Why take time out to refresh old sites?
…written by Alex and has 7 comments so far
Creating sites which survive the test of time can be a tricky affair. Firstly, you need to avoid the temptation to jump on the current design trend bandwagon, as despite pink graffiti looking ‘real dope’ today, it’s going to look ‘real crappy’ a year down the line. Then you have all your CSS, JS, and (x)HTML amongst others to consider – Web technologies can move at a frightening pace and there’s always something on the horizon to do the same job better, and use less code doing it.
I’d imagine most of you reading this have client sites that they’d love to be able to re-visit, ripping out box model hacks, adding a few bits of nice CSS3, replacing sIFR with Cufon (any thoughts?) or maybe even moving the whole site onto a development framework such as Codeigniter? The hurdle that you’ll inevitably face though is that if you’re not changing the design itself (which to your credit may have stood the test of time and still look great) it’s hard to convince the client that investing in everything bar the ‘tip of the iceberg’ is just as important as the design itself.
So what are the benefits to the client? Well, the big one is reduced time (and cost) for ongoing maintenance and development work. Some people will argue that reduced development time is a bad thing, as it means less hours invoiced and less money in the bank for iPods and Threadless tees. We’d then ask would you rather spend twice as long doing some pretty mundane updates to a site, or get them done nice and quickly (impressing the client with your responsiveness!) and then spend the time saved pitching some fantastic new ideas to them and working on those? We think it’s a no brainer, and our experience has indeed shown that exploring new ideas can often result in acquiring larger budgets down the line anyway.
Also, if you’re like me, then just knowing that a site isn`t using the latest jQuery point release or that your Google Analytics code is being repeated on every page rather than in a nice a global include will niggle you like you have mild OCD!
Thankfully, we’re fortunate to have clients who listen to our advice, and when we pitched a refresh of the Cafe Rouge site, which is close to celebrating it’s 4th Birthday, they were completely on board. The result is a site which runs faster, uses less bandwidth and is more usable and thus easier to navigate – vastly improving the visitor experience . Their ongoing development work has reduced and we’ve got some exciting new projects underway for them as a result. Now if that wasn`t a worthwhile investment I don’t know what is!
If you’re in a similar position, what are your experiences? Are refreshes something you actively pitch, or something which you’d like to address but haven`t quite worked out the best way to do it? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. In the meatime, I’m off to refresh myself with a pint. Good day to you all.
Dave Ellis Says:
There are plenty of occasions where I’d have loved to revisit a site. Not just to update code and/or design elements but because I think the site could be working harder from a business sense too. But justifying the costs to the client is always difficult – perhaps due to the current financial climate (or more likely my selling skills!).
I truly believe a site the evolves and develops over time almost always results in a better product.
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:30 pmIt’s an interesting post – and maybe I’ll be borrowing (ahem) a couple of your benefits to pitch the idea to existing clients in the future.
Alex Willcocks Says:
I definitely agree the potential benefits extend much further than simply code or design tweaks. There have been huge of advances in online usability studies which simply didn`t exist a few years ago and which can make a world of difference, along with other business considerations like you say.
The funny thing is that if a design was poor in the first place, the client would budget to redesign, but improvements on a well-designed existing site are much harder to justify, which is crazy as it’s these improvements which are worst spending the money on and will result in a greater ROI – a redesign is just a costly way of re-doing the same work, which gets you back to square one with a big hole on your pocket
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:42 pmDarren Says:
y’know – I have just looked at that site again – can’t beleive it is 4 years old – I still reckon is looks & performs pretty damn good for the brand. Also remembering the whole ‘we can’t use that light’ deal…
That and Bella got to be the bargain of the decade thinking of their longevity.
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:32 pmAlex Willcocks Says:
Ha! I still have sleepless nights over that light – turned out alright in the end though
Good to see you lurking around anyhow, I wasn`t sure anyone even read my ramblings to be honest! No doubt catch up soon, hopefully before Xmas.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:33 pmsimon Says:
Love your site
December 4th, 2009 at 9:41 pmLuc Says:
I’ve replaced sIFR with cufón on a couple of older sites, and it’s like night and day, the effort it takes to set it up. sIFR is like a bad dream, coming back to it – so many little fixes that cufón doesn’t need make it a bit of a no-brainer (legal grey-areas of font embedding aside).
December 16th, 2009 at 9:49 amAlex Says:
I definitely agree on the benefits of Cufon over SiFR Luc. The licensing issue is indeed a bit of a grey area though, especially with high traffic sites. But, for example on the Giraffe site we just launched, we actually purchased a specific Cufon specific license for the font – so we sleep a little better at nights knowing it’s all legit! Def worth looking into anyway.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:34 pm