If you’re like us, there are no shortage of ideas for ways to improve your own website. These ideas often come rolling in from across your organization—sometimes even right after a new site launch(!). It can be tough to decide the fastest, most sustainable, and most cost-effective option for changes. How do you know when a complete overhaul is appropriate versus incremental changes? What questions should you be asking? We’re here to help.
Three Questions To Ask
Here’s what we think is most important to consider. If you answer “yes” to any of these, it may be time to overhaul.
1. Is our design out of sync with our brand?
If the aesthetic of your website no longer lines up with the elements of your visual identity, a complete overhaul may be in order. Evaluate more than just your colors, logo, and typefaces—though these are good places to start. We recommend taking a UI inventory and considering whether or not line-weights, corner styles, etc. support or fight your overall visual identity system.
2. Is our code a mess?
Here’s a tough one, but in our book, maybe the most important. Take a look at your code (or ask us to help!) from two angles:
Modern standards: Are your layouts put together using old (deprecated) techniques? New browsers can often handle the old code, but chances are your pages aren’t loading as fast as they could.
Organization and formatting: How consistent is your code style? If you’ve worked with a number of web developers without code style guides in place, small changes might require dangerous hacks and are taking longer than they should.
3. Has our Content Management System stopped meeting our needs?
This is a huge topic that deserves its own blog post! Here are a few considerations: Do everyday updates require code knowledge by those that don’t have it? Does our CMS integrate with the outside systems we need it to? Is the interface of our CMS a delight to use, or is it such a pain that contributors are holding back?
Fin
There isn’t a formula to tell you for sure when a complete site overhaul is better than incremental feature upgrades. But, we’re here to evaluate your situation and help guide you down the right path. Get in touch!