stuff to read, apparently

how long?

what’s the ‘lifespan’ of a typical website?

i suppose it depends on what you think of as ‘typical.’ But on average, most sites I build seem to have a lifespan of four years or so.

How come? Doesn’t sound like very long.

First off, remember my customary mantra about ‘web years’ being like ‘dog years.’ Chances are your use of the web has changed a lot in that time, so why wouldn’t everybody else’s?

Everything changes. Often all at the same time.

In truth there are three main factors involved:

Companies change.

What they do, who their customers are and what they want to communicate to them, evolves.

In effect this will often mean a complete or partial redesign of the site. Sometimes this will mean a new ‘visual’ treatment (which is often a good way of flagging to customers that something different is going on).

Technologies change.

Sometimes this is evolutionary — something was wasn’t technically feasible or cost-effective previously becomes easier to implement.

The appearance of the site may well remain essentially unaltered (or gain a few new elements) but the underlying technology will be changed, normally to incorporate new functionality and features for users.

Sometimes the change is revolutionary. Yes, the iPad.

A lot of web designers were moving away from older technologies such as Flash (typically used for animations and video) in any case, but the fact that the iPad (and iPhone) doesn’t support Flash at all has substantially accelerated the process.

The other major technology factor is that the browser software used to view the web (and the underlying programming languages) are a lot smarter than they were even a couple of years back. Which means I can now frequently incorporate features and effects which previously weren’t possible or required the likes of Flash.

You change.

That's ‘you’ as in web users. All of you. Much as TV advertising from the 1950s now looks hopelessly dated and simplistic to a more ‘ad-literate ’audience, the same is true of the web. A visually (or technically) dated site from a few years back often isn’t difficult to spot and whether you’re always aware of it or not, likely sends out the wrong message. (Don’t believe me? When was the last time you fed your credit card details to a site which looked like it hadn’t been updated since the Titanic ran into a spot of bother?).

The bottom line is that if you’ve become more demanding online, so have your customers. Bear that in mind next time you’re allocating your marketing budget.

I was just typing thinking…

corporate + brand identity | graphic design | website design | dog walking

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