A Letter to Our Old Website
Our new site has been live for a little over two weeks now and I’m generally pleased. It’s early days, but enquiries are up so far this month and people have been saying some nice things about it.
I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to share some of the principles and decisions that were made during the development and I think the best place to start is by looking at why we went for a complete overhaul. The decision to fix an old site or start from scratch is an important one and has to be looked at objectively for each site. Maybe this letter to our old site will help you to decide whether your website needs an update or a complete reboot.
Dear Website,
I hope you are well. The last time I saw you you looked…healthy. I know I had to rush off and I hope you don’t think I was just being rude, but I’ve had a lot on my plate recently with one thing and another. Look, the truth is that I was working on another website. One to replace you.
It’s not you, it’s us
I’m sorry, please believe that I never wanted to hurt you. It’s just that in recent months I’ve noticed more and more that you’re not really representing us as a company. I know you’ve tried to change for us, and I think you’re sweet for trying, but really we’re not the company we were when we made you.
farewell old website
No more pretending
Back then we were all a little younger and maybe a little more naive. You were our corporate face to the world. When you talked about us you went into great detail about everything we could do. You really knew how to talk us up to people and make them think we were bigger than we actually were. These days that’s part of the problem. We’re tired of hiding behind your corporate facade, we want people to know who we are and that they can trust us. We want our pictures on the website so that people can see who they’re talking to and we want to invite people round without them saying, “Oh, I thought there’d be more of you.”
we'll add the corporate facade during post-production
(image courtesy of zapthedingbat)
You’re twice the site you used to be
When we first made you we wanted to give people as much information as we could. You were always on the big side, but back then I liked that in a site. As long as I could easily find my way round your pages then pretty much the bigger the better. Trouble is you got bigger and bigger to the point where even I was getting a little lost and confused. Goodness knows what other people thought. Our new website is much leaner and because we have less pages and less information it’s much easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for. I’m sorry, but it just didn’t make sense to me to cut your pages and content down like that…it wouldn’t be fair on any of us.
big, but happy
(image courtesy of hermmermferm)
You’re starting to show your age
I really hate myself for this and it’s more a reflection on me than you. Back in the day you were a real stunner. I loved your look and people used to comment on it. They still comment occasionally, but not in the same way. Looks aren’t the be-all and end-all, but they are important. You just don’t seem that interested in keeping up with the times. Your style is about five years old and frankly it’s not doing either of us any favours. I haven’t got time for you to come back into fashion.
I hope in time you’ll understand the decisions we made and why it wasn’t realistic to update you. Starting from scratch isn’t always the best solution, but in this case it was the right thing to do. I’ll always remember the time we had together.
image courtesy of ericskiff