Website Design - The Little Orphan Website

Websites. We love to build them and then we forget them. They are often the orphan of our marketing family. More and more, I’m aware that businesses leave their website design untouched for years. Websites unattended become lonely, orphaned, wasting away on the internet—starving for attention and growing too weak to help with leads and sales. I’m only half-joking. The design and technology that drives web marketing changes so rapidly that we must revise our thinking. Web marketing must be planned and budgeted for as an ongoing part of our business. Here are four examples of why.

1. Flash^®. There was a time, less than 5 years ago, when web designers were building Flash^® websites and incorporating flash into elements of html websites. Flash^® was the hot technology for displaying movement and rotating photos, providing eye candy for website visitors. You had to have some flash! Then Apple, Inc., decided to go to war with Adobe and the result made Apple’s mobile devices incompatible with Flash^®. What was once the beauty of Flash^® became an empty box with an X. Website design had to change to allow for the rapid rise of Apple in the mobile world. Speaking of mobile use…
2. Mobile pages, Mobile websites, and Responsive design. With the small screens of phones and tablets becoming more popular, website design had to offer solutions. First was the mobile page. Web designers would create a single page with limited content (usually contact information) that would deploy when someone accessed the website from a mobile device. Then, as mobile users demanded more accessibility to full web functions (shopping, posting to blog comments, researching, etc.), developers were challenged again and responded with mobile apps and/or fully developed mobile websites—in addition to the “normal” website—giving users the option to view the full website or the mobile version. Then, as technologies advanced, web developers concocted the ultimate solution—responsive design. Responsive design allows for one website to be coded in such a way that it senses the device (specifically the display size) and automatically adjusts to best present content and graphics to that device. Confused yet? Here’s the kicker. All of this change has happened in the last 5-6 years.
3. Screen/Resolution Options. Have you noticed the changes in computer monitors over the last few years (months)? What was once a 13? green-on-green screen, monochromatic display is long gone (was that only 10 years ago?). We now have High Def screens of all shapes and sizes, waiting eagerly to display our little website design. The result is ever-escalating resolution options for viewing. Take a click over to your screen settings and look at the long list of options. That list is a historical timeline of the advancement of technology. What this means to you and all users is that the size of websites built 3-5 years ago only occupy a small portion of the available screen space. This makes it easy to spot “old” websites—old meaning 3-5 years old. Heaven help you if your website is older… it will be the one cowering on the left side, taking up only 1/5 of the display.
4. Web Browsers. As the folks at Microsoft, Google, and Apple continue to improve their browsers, your web access becomes better, and browsing options grow and change. Every time a new version of the browser gets its wings—a website dies. As browsers change, web development specifications change. Soon, the website that was built to run beautifully on Internet Explorer 7 looks like a street urchin mess on IE11.

Again, the ever changing systems we use to access websites means that websites have to change to keep up.

It's 2014. Do you know where your website is? Give a thought right now to your web marketing presence. Is your website wasting away, unable to function in the barrage of technological changes and advancements? Does that poor little orphaned website need your help? Is it time to show a little love?