My 6-year-old son and I love to play with Legos. Well, actually, he loves for me to build something, and for him to “augment” that something.
One idle Sunday, I completed my (his) magnum opus: A 3-story tower, complete with doors, windows, and other accouterments befitting a 3-story Lego tower. He beamed with pride at what he (I) had accomplished.
The following evening, I returned home to find that my tower had sprouted wings, wheels and a nasty infestation of rubber snakes and plastic cheetahs.
“Are you mad? ” he asked me.
“Mad? ” I said, bewildered. “You went and made this even cooler!”
The moral? Just because you’ve built something great, that doesn’t mean you stop building.
Creativity – and success – is about finding new ways to improve and adapt.
Recently, App Partner, an Altitude client and mobile app development company based in Brooklyn, kicked off the third iteration of navigation and design changes to its site.
Bear in mind, that site launched a mere nine months ago, but here we are, finding new ways to engage potential clients, new design challenges to solve. With a new design refresh comes new content, new graphics and a deeper focus on their core intended audience.
Why is the company set on the constant change?
Because App Partner leadership is treating their site as they treat their business: a constantly evolving and growing entity. The company’s leadership looks regularly at analytics, they study trends, score their incoming leads and balance new business acquisition efforts with staff capacity in a very strategic manner.
All of that info plus an incredible all-hustle, all-the-time mentality has led to incredible growth. They know that by being flexible and adaptable is good for business, as well as for a business’ website.
It’s a brilliant plan – and one far too few businesses implement.
There is a very antiquated mindset that has been attached to websites for far too long: once it’s launched, the work is done.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Once a site is launched, that’s when the work begins. A website launch is merely the beginning of a new phase of development. It informs the marketing efforts, which in turn, informs the business model, core strategy and primary brand messaging. And this new perspective should feed back into the website. Your web presence should be as agile as you and your business are, pure and simple.
There are even unintended benefits to evolving your site.
For instance, Google sees fresh content as a major plus – a sign of constant life, let’s say. Google likes this, and may favor the site in searches as a direct result.
It’s also a great tactic to stay current with responsive trends. How is the site looking on that new phone of yours? Can you improve the responsive elements to make it really pop on that new iPhone? Any web developer worth his or her salt will gladly make improvements based on that kind of feedback. We love a good challenge.
So, when you are aiming to launch a new site, or refresh an existing one, look at the long-game. What are your short-term goals, and what are your long-term goals? As the speed of life and business increase exponentially, it will become more and more vital to view every aspect of your online presence as a conversation, and not a declarative statement. Through fresh content, improved graphics, and a constant stream of ideas, your website can be an active bridge between you and your customer.
Keep building, keep pushing: it’s the mantra that we strive to hit every day at Altitude, and it’s what we encourage our partners and clients to do as well. App Partner is one of many amazing companies that we work with who are in a state of constant and impressive growth. It’s because they don’t rest on their laurels, and neither do we.
And remember, every Lego tower can always use a good set of wheels.
