Web design isn't "done" once you go live...

Something I always remind my clients, is that no matter how complete or ready we feel about a web site launch...it's never "done". There are always things to add, be tested, and any number of other issues that may come up.

Whether it's a five page mini-site, or an ecommerce site with thousands of products, there's always something to be done. I am there to help users - both internal and external - through any little hiccups or questions they may have!

A project I am currently working on has taken over a month of design for graphics, a new logo, business cards...basically a whole new public face. Then we decided to go with a content management system(CMS) to do much of the heavy lifting for the backend of the site. The CMS allows for blogs, forums, ecommerce, and has a terrific community for support.

Before we started anything though, we all sat down together and discussed what they dis-liked about the current site, and what they would like to see in a new brand identity.

To Summarize the company:

A metaphysical store that had a brand identity inherited from the first owners. It no longer reflected what the current owners desired for it, and the online store was difficult on a good day to update and maintain. The technology for the store hadn't been updated in several years, and the software company had stopped providing support for it.

This created difficulties in adding products, fixing problems with the store and a general sense of frustration that an entire segment of the potential customers(the online base), was unable to make any real purchases.

Visually, they wanted a more soothing color scheme(purple was mentioned as a favorite), a logo update, and a more user-friendly web experience that could be more easily tied to in-store events.

I made the suggestion of connecting their facebook page to a new blog and twitter page to more fully capitalize on the social media trend.

The new site launched about 2 weeks ago, and in those two weeks, the facebook fan page has increased by almost 5%, the twitter account has helped guide people to the new site, the blog's readers forward posts to their friends and recent events nearly doubled in attendance from the month previous. Many of the new visitors have said they found out about the store or event via the web -- this was a direct and impressive result in such a short time.

People may say that it takes time to bring a struggling business back from the brink, and it does! But when even a small reward can be seen in such a short time, the ROI over a six month period should be interesting to see, and I look forward to seeing a continual increase for the company.

As we go forward together in our partnership, I continue to make improvements in the website, helping them through learning to use the interface and providing the support that they need to keep going, keep blogging, keep growing and learning about the new social media, and how it will help them.