How do you know when it’s time to build a new website? Most people wait until their current site stops working, but to me it’s like waiting for the engine on your car to seize before getting an oil change, or waiting to get really sick before going to a doctor. Because we understand the need for a car and for our own health and wellness, it’s not usually a problem to perform the necessary maintenance to keep things running smoothly.
Most custom websites range in the multi-thousand dollar range, whether that cost is in outsourced labour or time, a successful website will cost as much, or more than the average used car over it’s lifecycle. Understanding how a website can break and what may cause long term problems has given all of us at Hosting Nation an appreciation for using standard methods and practices. So we’ve compiled this checklist to help you give your site a much needed checkup.
Ten Tell Tale Signs your Site is Sick
Your site was originally designed for 800 x 600 resolution or smaller.
Since the proliferation of affordable widescreen monitors has hit the market, most sites have dropped 800 x 600 in favour of a minimum resolution of 1024 x 768. Sites built in 800 x 600 look too small on a widescreen monitor, and you’re just not taking advantage of the many areas you have for content.
Your current design is more than five years old.
Web standards have changed a lot over the last five years, so what worked once might not work any longer. Browsers render content differently (IE 7 vs. IE 8), old methods are deprecated and could even hurt your site. I think three years between redesigns is normal, but you should not go longer than five years.
You’re unable to edit your site on your own, or you’re using a ‘free’ website solution.
I recently encountered a family member wanting to revamp and improve their website. It turns out that they had a “website in a box” solution. When I dug deeper, I found out some disturbing things. The site could not be optimized in the ways that mattered. The domain was owned by the company they got the site from, as were the graphics and the templates. They were limited to five pages, and could not edit the look of the site in any way. Worst of all, the “Free” website they had was costing them over $7.00 per month. For one website. With five pages.
On the other end of the scale is the client that wants to make their own edits, but has to send them to a webmaster. There are some really great content management systems out there with thousands of extensions, looks and purposes (WordPress isn’t just a blog). There’s no need for someone to spend thousands on a site they can’t edit themselves, when they could get something much more affordable, editable and contemporary, for under $500.
Your site uses dated methods for playing multimedia.
Using Quicktime or Windows Media for your site is akin to using leeches to cure the common cold. With so many services like YouTube and Vimeo available, or flash players by the thousands, you would be remiss to have your media content displayed in any other way.
Your site uses tables instead of CSS.
Used to be if you wanted anything too complex with your layout, you would have to use tables to achieve it. Now, there are frameworks like Blueprint and the 960 Grid system that allow for all sorts of layout choices, from complex grids to simple three column designs. Using CSS over tables will make your site work better in multiple browsers, run faster and be more conducive to making global changes and edits.
Your site does not work well in Firefox.
w3C reports that Firefox has approximately 47% of the market share, over IE’s approximate 40%. Five years ago, you probably wouldn’t have built for Firefox. Now, most developers and designers build for Firefox and tweak for Internet Explorer.
Your site has a lack of standard navigation practices.
Maybe you used image navigation because you wanted more than simple text links, or some complex JavaScript method. There’s nothing wrong with using JavaScript for your navigation, but there are better ways to do it now than there were five years ago. Plus, if your old JavaScript breaks – it can render your site inoperable.
Your site has multiple fonts, sizes and colours.
One font to rule them all. It’s said you can use two if you really must, but no more than that. Links should all be the same colour everywhere and your font sizes should be consistent. Back in the day, the overuse of inline styles would cause all manner of problems with sizing. It still can, but with many of the content management systems being used today it’s not as much of a concern.
Your site is built primarily in Flash.
Google still can not crawl and index flash sites properly and contextually (they can’t read the contents of a flash document). Now, many things that used to require flash for a dynamic effect can be achieved with JavaScript or AJAX.
Your site has broken or missing links.
I see this quite a lot. Links break, or are missing. A page changes and the links don’t get updated, or a form submission stops working. If people use a site with broken links, they go elsewhere. When’s the last time you checked the links on your site?
If you need help diagnosing your website’s health, contact Hosting Nation today for a free assessment.
