If it is time to re-work your website, you need to take a good, close look at what you have currently then:

Get rid of stale and outdated items:

  • Check your site for broken links (do it on a regular basis, if possible)
  • Check your site for old dates and stale material like:
    • Old copyright dates.
    • “Coming soon” announcements, calendar listings, meeting or training notices, etc., that have come and gone.
    • Old materials, especially in your “tips” or “news” areas; delete or archive
    • Incorrect administrative and office listings (including addresses, phone numbers and e-mails) — check all listings for accuracy; consider posting a “last revised” date to keep you honest and let your users know how old the information is.
    • Any promises you haven’t kept? “Coming soon,” “Check back here,” “Under construction” — if they’ve been there for more than a few months, deliver, delete or — at least — explain.

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Doing some cleanup on the technical side will help in the long run:

  • Look at your directory structure:
    • Clean out directories — throw away old files, old scripts, unused sub-directories (backing up first if needed). Not only will this make your server happier — search engines won’t return old materials to users. While you’re in there,
    • Back up your site! And jot the date for your next regular backup on your calendar.
    • Reorganize if needed, according to user requests, new areas, number of documents, etc. A clean organization makes your site easier to work on and update, and easier to traverse for visitors who use URLs as navigation aids. Caution: A directory structure update can mean changing internal links; think through the implications of any change.
  • HTML documents: Really got the spirit? Go into the actual HTML documents to clean up your act — and perhaps establish new standards for future docs.
    • General HTML cleanup: If your pages have been through several hands and/or editors, you may have old scripts, editor-generated tags, and just plain messy code on your pages. These can cause trouble for future coders; if you know what you’re doing, a little cleanup can work wonders (be sure to back up!).
    • Comment tags: These little lines of codes don’t show up on the page but can be seen by anyone working on the code. Comment tags are helpful to you and to anyone else who works on the site. They can be as simple as:

<!-- Navbar starts here -->
or as detailed as:
<!-- If you add a news item here, don’t forget to update the archive -->

• Consider CSS: With more people using updated browsers, support for Cascading Style Sheets has spread. CSS can save you time and enhance layout capabilities. Check out one of the good tutorials on the web, or, if your editor supports them, read up on them in your user manual. Get your feet wet by using CSS in a directory for one section, like a special promotion, then extend it to other areas of your site.
• Meta tags and keywords, page titles: Do you have a site description and keywords on each page in the meta tags? Are they current? Do the keywords for each page reflect that page’s contents? Does each page have a short, descriptive title reflecting its content? Have you “published” your site — submitted it to the major search engines? All of these things will help your site in the search engine rankings. There are no quick ways to improve ranking, but a little intelligent effort pays off. Visit www.searchenginewatch.com for a comprehensive overview.
• Check search engine rankings: Many sites (including www.searchenginewatch.com, mentioned above) allow you to check search engine rankings, number of links to your site and other data. It’s worth a look, and may prompt some action.
• Publishing the old-fashioned way: Much if not most Internet traffic starts on paper, although including your website URL on all communications requires a culture change that can be difficult. Is the URL on letterhead? Newsletters? Business cards? Forms? Phone directories? Promotional materials? If not, print up some clear labels, take them around and wag your finger ...

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Cosmetic changes

Sometimes what’s needed is a little cosmetic change — as much for the weary webmaster as for the jaded visitor. HOWEVER — resist the urge to make sweeping graphical changes just because you’re bored, or because it’s easy and fun. Your users are probably not nearly as bored as you are — in fact, familiarity helps them find their way comfortably around the site — and big changes without careful planning have about the same affect as changing all stop signs from red to blue. That said, there are some fun things you can do to spruce up the look of your site...

  • Add a little movement: But just a little! Most everyone has gotten over the novelty of continuous and/or random animation — they really can be distracting! — but a little finite animation can add interest and focus attention on a special area. For instance:
    • Mouseovers: If your navigation graphics lend themselves to mouseovers, or rollovers, they can lend subtle pizzazz, and some editors make them easy. Just remember that this could entail a global change to the code on every page.
    • Targeted animation: A small gif animation that only loops a couple of times can be fun and useful (for example, a conference logo that fades into view, or type that appears over a small photo). Just make sure that it’s small and that it leads the user’s eye where you want it to go.
  • Add interest by changing nonstandard items: Is there an area on your site — in general, on your home page or on your main sub-pages — that you can change without confusing your users? Maybe you have a central photo, or photo collage; a “news” or “what’s new” area, or a calendar box. If so, you can update your look there without compromising navigation. If not, you may want to consider adding such an area. How to keep it fresh? Here are a few ideas:
    • Change up your photos: Line up several photos that work in the same space and switch them out — by hand, or with a script that works on a regular timetable or every time someone visits the site.
    • Add visual interest: Use small graphics — gifs or thumbnail photo jpgs — to accompany regular announcements and items on the site.
    • Pull timely material to the front: Do you have regular campaigns, special promotions, timely offerings, opportunities or deadlines that your users would appreciate? Pull them to the front page or main sub-pages — and don’t forget to take them off when they get old.
    • Is there a seasonal slant to what you do? If so, it’s an easy way to keep you site fresh — and you can create seasonal graphics ahead of time.
    • Tap into applicable material on related web sites — just make sure the site you link to or pull in is squeaky clean!
    • Showcase people or projects: Profile employees or volunteers or their work. Remember to get photo releases and be sensitive to the way many folks feel about appearing on the Internet.
    • Ask your visitors what they think via short surveys, quizzes, or topical questions, and remember to report back on the results.
    • Offer sign-up for notification of significant changes to the site, conferences, events, etc.
  • Don’t forget to write: Good content makes a good web site. Unfortunately, as we all know, it’s also time-consuming to produce. Plans for updating your site’s content might bleed over into the “major undertakings” category, but will be well worth your while.
    • Scan your site for good web writing: We all know the basics by now: Keep sections short; use lots of good, descriptive subheads; use bullets, lists and formatting to make pages easy to scan. But in the rush of getting materials to the web we may find ourselves posting documents as-is just to make the information available. Now’s the time to give your site a hard look and rewrite and format areas that need it.
    • FAQs, Help and How-to: Do you have these sections already? If so, how long has it been since an update? If not, collect your webmaster e-mail and talk to your line folks about the questions they get, and start developing them. And speaking of e-mail...
    • Standard mail responses: Chances are you get lots of repeat requests. If you haven’t developed template answers and resource lists for your webmaster e-mail, now’s the time. If your mail volume is very high, you may want to investigate some of the automated tools available for handling it.
    • New/expanded content areas: Collect your website committee, step back and take a hard look at your site content. Are there areas that look thin, that you’ve been meaning to add or flesh out?
    • Consider an e-newsletter if you have changing information to offer your visitors. This can be a big commitment but, handled correctly, can be a great community builder for your site.

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Major redesign

Whether a site redesign entails a graphical redesign, or (less glamorous but more important) a fresh look at the site’s information architecture, there’s much more involved than we can do justice to here. However, it’s an important topic for consideration. Most web experts say that an active site should be revamped every two or three years to accommodate user patterns and desires, new technology, and new offerings and directions in the organization.
It is indeed a major undertaking. But it’s also lots of fun, extremely satisfying, and can make a big difference both to your users and to your web team. For any of you who are ready to tackle the big picture, we’ll go over the most basic steps here:

Site redesign

  • Discovery
    • Gathering all internal materials and resources
    • Focus groups, survey, informal user information gathering (this can be done from your current site as well as in other ways)
  • Brainstorming
    • Creative brief
  • Technical considerations:
    • Server
    • Need for enterprise applications (content management applications, calendaring, mail routing, etc.)
  • Graphic comps, storyboarding if necessary
  • Planning content
  • Building graphics
  • Writing and editing content
  • Building pages
  • Beta testing (as possible)
  • Site launch
  • Follow-up

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Staying current

Finally, don’t forget to build in a little time to stoke your own enthusiasm. We keep our heads down and work so hard that we miss the excitement of new developments in this frenetic field. Pick a few ways to stay current, then — and here’s the hard part — put them on your calendar and make time! Some fast and easy ways to keep a fresh Internet outlook:

  • Sign up for a good newsletter. There are lots out there, on virtually every topic, and while you enjoy the content you can mine the design and writing for your own efforts.
  • Do a few minutes of cruising every day. Go to other states and see what your colleagues are doing. Go to sites in fields related to your own. Go to wildly different, unrelated sites — just to get the ideas flowing!
  • Be an active Internet user. Check out the webbie nominees — see what’s hot, look for trends — and vote for your favorites in the People’s Choice section. Notice when a favorite site is holding a forum and plan to participate. Visit www.flash.com to check out Macromedia’s latest tomfoolery. Check out some new music. Try using the Internet for some of your work and leisure pursuits — planning travel, banking, researching an article, finding a recipe — and remember what you liked and didn’t like.
  • Keep your skills fresh with training — and if your budget won’t stretch for traditional training, there are some pretty good online resources that are cheap or free.
  • Read — online and on paper — popular industry rags like Fast Company, the Standard and Wired, and the books of some of the respected industry authors.
  • And take advantages of great opportunities like this one to get together with knowledgeable colleagues — one of the richest resources you have!

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