Most people think the work is done when the website goes live. The site looks great, everyone’s happy, and it’s time to move on. But launching a website is like buying a car. If you never change the oil, it’ll run for a while, but eventually something breaks and it costs you way more to fix than if you’d just kept up with it.
Your website is no different.
What I do behind the scenes.
After a site launches, I’m checking a lot of things you’ll never see. Page load speeds. Performance benchmarks. Little tweaks and little fixes that may not look like much on the outside, but on the inside could be the difference between you appearing in a search result higher than your competitor or lower.
I’m also looking at ways to automate processes and make your daily workflow better. If there’s something on the site that could save you or your staff time, I want to find it. That’s not something most designers think about after launch because most designers have already moved on to their next project.
Your business changes. Your website should too.
How often your website needs updating depends on what kind of business you run. If you offer a service and have offered the same service for 20 years, maybe you need to update pricing once in a while. If you run a restaurant with daily specials or a menu that changes seasonally, the updates could be weekly or even daily.
It really comes down to your industry. But the point is the same for everyone: if your business changes and your website doesn’t, you have a problem.
Outdated information costs you real money.
I’ve seen this play out firsthand. A family member of mine was looking for a specific product. They went to a company’s website and it was nowhere to be found. So they moved on. A few weeks later we saw someone with that exact product, but by then it didn’t matter. The business lost the sale because their website didn’t reflect what they actually had.
Another example: a customer thinks they’re signing up for a service at one price because that’s what the website says, but the actual price has changed. Now the business owner has to deal with that argument. A simple update could have prevented the whole thing.
We spend just as much time online as we do offline these days, if not more. It is important to always be up to date.
A website that just sits there is a website that’s falling behind.
The internet doesn’t stand still. Search engines update their algorithms. New devices come out. Your competitors are improving their sites. If your website launched two years ago and nobody has touched it since, it’s already starting to slip.
That doesn’t mean you need a redesign every year. It means someone should be keeping an eye on it. Making small improvements. Checking that everything still works. Making sure it’s still doing its job.
What actually changes?
More than you’d think. Google updates how it ranks websites multiple times a year. What got you to the top of search results last year might not keep you there this year. Security threats evolve constantly. The way people browse changes as new phones and tablets come out. Even the rules around accessibility and privacy are shifting.
None of this is your problem to track. That’s what you hire someone for. But if nobody is tracking it, your site slowly falls out of step with the world around it. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens gradually, and by the time you notice, you’ve already lost ground to a competitor who was paying attention.
This is why ongoing support matters.
When I build a site, I don’t disappear after launch. That’s the whole point of working with me on a monthly basis. You get someone who’s always looking at your site, always thinking about how to make it better, and always available when you need something changed.
A website is a living, breathing thing. It launched, but the mission didn’t end there. What happens after launch is what separates a website that works for your business from one that just takes up space on the internet.