Your Website is a Process, Not a Destination

Posted by: Dharma Pachner, Director of User Experience Nov 19, 2008 0 Comments

One of the biggest challenges in graphic design is knowing when to stop designing. It is a surprisingly difficult point to determine, and one that many designers (myself included) struggle with often. After all, what design can’t use some improvement—a tweak here, an adjustment there— anything? With print work, there are often concrete deadlines that force a designer to relinquish control. That distinct boundary is far fuzzier on the web. Because in addition to refining the look and feel, there is an unlimited number of other ways to improve the usability, functionality, and performance of your website. And while constantly tweaking a design is not necessarily productive, the ability to periodically evaluate and improve your website is a central component of keeping it useful, relevant, and effective. The key is knowing how to go about doing it.

There is a growing trend on the web to launch sites with fewer features and instead build and enhance them over time. There are several advantages to this approach. It takes a tremendous burden off the launch, but more importantly it allows you to observe how real users interact with your site. The wealth of information your site traffic generates can give you tremendous insight into how well you are serving the needs of your users and can identify the strongest opportunities for improvement. This helps you make informed decisions based on usage trends and patterns, rather than relying exclusively on the instincts of your designers, strategists, and IA team.

An additional—and often overlooked—advantage to this iterative approach is that it can also increase the ‘shelf-life’ of your existing website. A website is a huge marketing expenditure, and this approach maximizes how long it remains useful to your users and your organization. Several of the world’s leading web brands such as eBay and Amazon.com faithfully adhere to this principle. Instead of periodically overhauling the entire look and feel of their sites, these organizations constantly test, evaluate, and refine every aspect of their site. The changes are often transparent to end users—minor revisions to forms, improvements in search functionality—but the subtlety keep users oriented within the interface, while constantly improving the effectiveness and intuitiveness of the existing site.

Does this approach mean that an initial site launch does not matter? Absolutely not. A site launch is an important milestone, and is usually the culmination of a considerable level of time and energy. But it is not a stopping point. Take the Rock Creek site for example. We had planned a much more robust site both in terms of content and functionality when we relaunched back in April. But real world client deadlines forced us to do one of two things—postpone our launch, or scale back considerably from our original vision. We chose the latter. Although we are constantly integrating new improvements—some big, some small—the site metrics now help us to prioritize and focus our efforts. The truth is, had we waited until the site was perfect before we decided to launch, we would likely still be waiting.

So how do you determine which elements of your site must be completed prior to launch, and which can be integrated over time? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question. There are many factors that go into this decision, and every situation is different. A good rule of thumb to remember is that the needs of your users have to drive your entire web strategy, and all subsequent decisions must be filtered through their perspective. User expectations have grown exponentially and will continue to do so. If the features in question will make your site more useful, informative, or engaging to your users, every effort should be made to incorporate them as early as possible. The bells and whistles can always be added in later stages, but there is no tool—Flash or otherwise—that will restore the lost confidence of your users.