You may be thinking that your organization’s website is a few years old and it’s probably time to plan and budget for a whole new website, but what if we told you that maybe you don’t need a whole redesign?

Wait. What? Yes, we are in the business of developing websites but we are also in the business of solving problems, so hear us out on this one. You may have good bones in place with your current website that you can build on it as opposed to tearing it down and starting from scratch. Iterating on the existing website can help you achieve your business goals more efficiently and potentially saves on cost.

Benefits of Improving Your Existing Website vs. a Total Redesign
Less Risk
Sinking a chunk of money in a whole new website creates risk especially if you are changing vendors or building on a new platform. This is a risk that could potentially be minimized but improving what you already have.

Less Time
Timetables can vary on website redesigns but larger-scale websites can take up to six months for a redevelopment effort. The model of iterating on an existing website is a quicker process that may reap equal rewards in the shorter term.

Less Work
Think about all of those pages of content and all those images that may need to be migrated to a new platform or archived and images that need to be resized to fit a new design or pages that need to be restructured to fit a new theme — all of that is work that you or your developer has to take on. Keeping things as is and improving on it takes everyone less time which means…

Less Money
Investing in improving parts of a website that produce metrics and creates conversions saves money across the board and may ultimately grow your bottom line.

Side note - if your website is on a legacy platform andhasn’t been upgraded in the last three years, skip right ahead to a full redesign but you can avoid costly redesigns in the future by keeping your website up-to-date.

How to Improve on What’s Existing
Find an Iterative Team
It is key to call in the experts to review your website and work with you to determine what makes the most sense. In many cases, an inventory of content, an evaluation of the website structure and a solid review of analytics are part of what goes into making the plan. This calls for a development team willing to collaborate with you on the best ways to make improvements as opposed to starting over.

Make Data Driven Decisions
If your website is on a slightly older version of a platform like Drupal but the data shows that certains parts of the website are doing their job, it makes sense to keep that in tact and take a look at what needs improvement.

Analytics will give you a good picture of what’s working and what needs to improve. Maybe a slight redesign of a form or a restructure of a landing page to improve conversions is really all you need. Using existing data to drive your improvement decisions is a solid approach that can be hard to debate among stakeholders.

Use Intelligence to Engage
More and more intelligence technologies are available to create experiences that are tailored to the visitor. Examples include personalizing content that is shown to a visitor based on what they click or touch or adding a chatbot to your website to gather information about where the visitor is in their buying journey.

Iterate Continuously
Reviewing and evaluating changes and iterating continuously keeps your hands on the wheel of your website. Many times, a website is redesigned, redeveloped and launched, and everyone moves on to the next project. By giving your website consistent attention, you are better able to pinpoint weak spots and capitalize on strengths in real time.

Does this give you a different perspective as you consider the future of your organization’s website? If you are wondering if improving and iterating is an option in moving your website forward, contact us today. Our team is happy to review your website and make recommendations.