Most businesses have a website by now, and the majority of these were created a few years back, though often much longer. In many cases the owners of these sites contact me and ask me if I can make a few changes to their site since their current designer is no longer available. This of course begs the questions, should you retain your previous site and simply make changes to it, or should you have a full redevelopment done? The reality is that most sites will look “dated” very quickly since web design practices have experienced an almost exponential growth since the advent of XHTML
Questions to Ask Yourself
If you look at sites created a few years back most will look amateurish by current standards. The important thing to ask yourself is:
Does this site reflect my business as a professional one, and how does it compare to my competition?
As a designer I will evaluate a site based upon a lot of criteria. First and foremost is if the site looks professional by way of graphics and accents, is it SEO friendly and ADA compliant, is it “reasonably” current with the latest coding standards, is it easy to navigate, is the text copy easy to read and written well, is it cross-browser compatible, and does it present the businesses content in a way that is ensures trust? The reality is that most sites will fail in some of this, yet earlier sites will have the biggest hurdles in this regard since most were created without the knowledge that current professional web developers have.
Layout Size Width
Designs of a few years ago were almost exclusively created for the 800×600 browser resolution. This makes for a very narrow website by today’s standards, considering that most desktop monitors smallest resolution is 1024×768 (which most sites are currently designed for), and large resolution monitors will often exceed 1680×1050 and have a “smallest” resolution larger than 1024×768. For example, my suggested desktop monitor resolution is 2560 × 1440. Layout size matters since no one wants to strain to read the content on a page. Note that with the popularity of “responsive” layouts the layout size has become more about adaptability than resolution size so the “default” resolution may soon become a thing of the past.
Website Doc-Type
As you may already know, the coding of a website has evolved from early versions of HTML 3.2 to HTML 4.0, to XHTML, and is steadily moving toward HTML5. Many early websites were created with code prior to XHTML. It is important to note that while the browsers are typically good at providing backwards compatibility so that these pages still render, to ensure that a site looks good, and that it is ADA compliant current coding is a must. With XHTML came CSS2 which allowed for a greater level of control on how text and layout element content is displayed, and it allowed for page styles to be linked to as external files, instead of in-line within a page. This ensures that a page will load quicker (necessary for SEO), and allows for global updates to be made across a website which is quicker with less chance of visual inconsistency across the pages during updates. With HTML5 came CSS3 which provided a lot of additional styling options such as my favorite – rounded corners for images.
Website Structure
The early sites were almost exclusively created with tables. Many new designers still use tables in their layout yet this is considered a bad practice since tables are not ADA compliant, and were not designed for the placement of content. Current designs utilize Div layers and Spans for the placement of content, which is also necessary for responsive designs for mobile and responsive layouts. The need for a compliant layout is one of the primary reasons why older designs need to be redeveloped, not just updated. In addition, with XHTML came about the use of ID tags to differentiate page content sections (Header, Body, Footer, Sub-Footer, and Sidebar) which has led the way to HTML5 which uses a similar layout structure — this provision of structure in the layout allows for better CSS targeting and improved CSS code.
Website Scripting
Most early designs will utilize scripts of some type. These will typically be early JavaScript, Flash and Java. The concern with these scripts is that in many cases they won’t function properly with the latest browser versions, and in many cases they utilize more code than is necessary to perform their function. Most current sites do utilize JavaScript in some form, though it is typically provided as jQuery which is a compressed JavaScript library which ensures that the scripts load as fast as possible. Beyond JavaScript, many of the earlier sites also used Java or Flash to provide animation on the pages. Flash and Java are rarely used anymore since neither are ADA friendly, and both require the plugin version to be installed on the visitor’s computer for the content to be viewed. The current trend is to use jQuery with Ajax for those great effects and animation accents found on the best sites.
Visual Consistency
If you compare earlier websites to the better of the recent websites there really is no comparison. Current websites utilize a grid system so that the content is placed in an orderly way which provides visual structure. The grid system also ensures a consistent amount of margin/padding between page elements which decreases the potential of visual crowding. With current designs you will often see a 3 or 4 columnar layout for text content blocks, columnar content used in the footer, and the effective use of sidebars on interior pages. This is important to note since studies have shown that most sites visitors don’t want to read large blocks of text as many older sites utilized.
Visual and Scripted Accents
Recent design conventions utilize graphics to create eye-catching and subtle visual effects such horizontal rules, drop-shadow and roll-over color on images, visually impressive images and videos utilizing Lightbox or PrettyPhoto, filterable images by type, toggle, tabular, and accordion panels for displaying content upon clicking, uniquely styled slideshows, and other graphical and scripting accents that weren’t available in designs a few years ago.
Social Media
Current designs will typically feature social media on the pages in effective ways. Most older sites will include little if any social media on their site since it wasn’t all that popular back then, though many will have a large “LIKE US ON FACEBOOK” button which may be eye-catching, but it is visually unattractive. Current designs recognize the importance of subtlety in presentation, and having an artistic look/feel and so seek to integrate social media in a less obtrusive way. Current websites often include Twitter tweets within a page/s sidebar, a Facebook “like” box, a newsletter subscribe box, and otherwise display their social media properties as “integrated” small icon inclusions on all pages to ensure that they are found.
Navigation
What worked for navigation a few years back will very possibly not work today. Many sites in the past had graphical roll-over buttons or Flash buttons and menu bars (both of which can’t be read by the search engines), or utilized early DHTML or JavaScript menu systems that are rarely fully compatible with the latest browsers. From drop-down menu systems, and nav bars, the current trend is to use ADA Compliant CSS menus with jQuery when advanced behaviors/effects are needed.
SEO
Finally, one needs to consider SEO with every design. Most early designs didn’t include Metatags, or used them improperly. Most early designers new little about effective SEO practices, and to be fair SEO has changed a lot over the last few years so even those designers who knew their craft could not have predicted the necessary changes in current practices. I’ve written a lot about SEO so I’ll keep this short, but recognize the importance of unique page titles, heading tags, Alt/Title tags, link text, and keyword density relationship.
It is important to remember that the only thing that is constant in life is change, and this concept is all too familiar in the web development world. If your website is no longer effective then you need to update it since this is the front window of your online business presence. I recognize that knowing what’s best and needed is difficult to define, so I encourage you to contact me for an honest and free assessment of your current website.
