Why a website is never finished

By Simon Latham, Digital Design Director

A common misconception associated with website design and build is that the process is linear. This belief is usually based on the traditional practice where the client sets a fixed set of requirements and a budget to replace their existing website. The agency then designs and builds a new site to meet all the requirements that can be achieved within the budget.

In this traditional scenario, when the new site is launched, it stays pretty much in the same configuration, in other words, “finished”, only to be redesigned and rebuilt in a few years when the marketing department has a new budget for a website rebuild.

Keeping pace

One of the main challenges with this approach is the time span, often 3 years or longer, between each major website revision. During this period, business requirements, user behaviour, tastes, and technology evolve rapidly. While every new design may attempt to address these changes, the pace of evolution will be inconsistent and unpredictable. Additionally, such an uneven investment cycle is hard to plan and budget for.

Embracing Endless Performance

The idea of Endless Performance is born from a desire to improve this situation. Based on agile development principles, the approach embraces the idea “a website is never finished”, this mantra that should be seen as a positive, where small improvements can be rapidly tested and rolled out, with constant, gradual improvement over weeks and months, rather than those 3-year cycles we touched on earlier.

The key to this approach is the focus on shorter repeating cycles; within each cycle, we focus on 3 stages called Insight, Optimise and Drive. Each cycle should bring additional insight and learnings and tangible, measurable improvements.

Insight

Firstly, performance should be continuously monitored, generating as much insight as possible about how the site is being used and benchmarked against clearly defined goals.

Optimise

In this phase, we design potential solutions to problems identified in the insight. These might be small frictional points within your website experience that are causing frustration or users to give up on their goals and abandon your website. Solutions to these issues are revised and evaluated, with successful updates being permanently rolled into the site.

Drive

In order to drive the success of the website, we must constantly focus on attracting the right audience. The drive phase is about making sure these drivers are in place and effective, be it paid ads, offline adverts, social media among other channels.

The “never finished” mindset

To achieve success with your website, it is essential to make a continuous investment and focus on every detail of your audience’s website experience. By doing so, you can attain a steady stream of marginal gains, which can be measured and assessed through data and insight. This approach is much faster and more efficient compared to the traditional redesign and rebuild cycle. Therefore, having a mindset that your website is never truly finished can be extremely productive.