Your website is never finished
Image: Red Pony Communications website
A website should never be a static thing. Red Pony’s own web presence has gone through a number of minor and major revisions over the years. Changes to the content and the structure reflected changes in the business as well as upgrades to the underlying software platform.
After seven years, however, it was clear our existing WordPress site was no longer fit for purpose and a more wholesale redevelopment was required.
Although planning started back in 2019, it wasn’t until May this year that we were in a position to engage a developer and go live late July. Here are a few of the lessons from the journey.
1. Technology is constantly evolving
Many years ago, I worked as a content writer for a corporate website developer. Back then, I was well across the main development platforms available – a fraction of the number there are today. So, when it came to selecting the right software, I was happy to be guided by the people who work with these technologies every day.
Luckily, I have an existing relationship with the digital agency who would be building our new site, someone I could trust to recommend the most appropriate option for our requirements.
Our new site was built using Squarespace, a popular platform with a wide range of customisable templates. Cost was an important factor, but there were a few others too.
A WordPress integration made the task of moving our 150+ Red Pony Express articles from the existing site much easier than it would have otherwise been, even if some of their formatting was lost and required reinstating.
Importantly, by using an existing template, we could be sure that all the pages would be mobile-friendly (something we didn’t have to worry about in the pre–smart phone era).
2. Make informed compromises as necessary
Any web development project I’ve been involved in has always entailed some degree of compromise – whether due to a constraint of budget, software or imagination.
Often the best outcome requires knowing when to push back and when to pull back. It helps to know what the parameters are, and the full implications of any decision.
For this project, I was determined to avoid the use of custom coding as much as possible. Customisations might give you exactly the functionality you want, but it can lead to cost blowouts and problems when new versions of the software are released that are no longer compatible with the custom code.
That said, some things are worth fighting for. You know your business best, including how your website will fit in with your customer journey. If you feel strongly about how a particular aspect of your site needs to work – even if this requires additional customisation or moving to a different platform – talk to your developer and be sure you understand any cost and compatibility implications so that you can make an informed decision.
3. A website is never finished
Sure, we’ll be updating the website with Red Pony Express articles including this one (now called ‘insights’), but we’ll keep refining the other pages too.
This doesn’t mean we’ll be constantly adding new pages – in fact, as our service offerings and sales channels have evolved, we’ve cut back on the number of pages and level of detail to give users only the information they need depending on where they are in the customer journey.
It does mean we’ll periodically review the content and examine the site statistics to see what is working, what can be improved and better understand how our users are engaging with the content. At some stage we also plan to add video.
Having a ‘soft’ launch allowed us to send a link to a few trusted souls for their feedback to iron out some initial kinks and thoroughly test functionality, such as the newsletter registration process, before going out to a wider audience.
Like previous iterations, our new site will evolve over time. To see what it looks like now, check out redpony.com.au.
