Evolution of a Website: 3 Design Stages

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The Evolution of a Website

scalability vs. neglect

"Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources."
-Wikipedia

A website is part of that system. It’s meant to grow with your business, not freeze in the form it launched with. The mistake many people make is treating their website as a one-and-done project. When that happens, the site stops evolving while the business keeps moving. Google notices, clients notice, and momentum becomes harder to recover.

The irony is that the hardest part of a website is usually the beginning. After launch, improving it is often easier and far more cost-effective. Small additions, new features, better structure, and clear messaging are usually what create real impact, whether that means bringing in more clients, keeping current clients engaged, or reducing the time you spend on repetitive tasks.

Here are the three most common stages in a website’s growth. Where do you see yourself?

business card website design

brochure website design

service oriented website design

the business card website

Phase 1) The Basics: Business Card or Placeholder Website Design

A website at its most basic is designed to let your audience, clients, or customers simply know you are operational…or that you are open for business. For the most bare-boned website to have any relevance, it will display your business name, or whatever it is you are promoting, whether that be the name of your blog, event, project, product, or service. Most importantly, your website must let your site visitor know how, when, and where they can contact you for more information.

If this were all that were necessary, most websites would consist of only one page; it would essentially be a contact page. We refer to this type of website as a ‘Business Card Website.’

Business cards are limited in the amount of information they can convey; there is often hardly enough room for your logo, let alone your essential contact details. At this stage of the game, your website is doing the bare minimum to get into the game, but you’re hardly even keeping up with the Joneses…your competition. Though you may indeed have the required business license, without a business card, you’ll be hard-pressed to even say you’re in business. At some point, you need to market yourself further if you want to make any progress in finding and cultivating business.

A business card website, or what many people call a 'placeholder' website (because it is simply holding space for greater intentions), will eventually need more information so that your audience can see what truly sets you apart from your competition, what it is that would drive a customer to choose you from the world wide web of options.

the brochure website

Phase 2) Meet the Joneses: Brochure-oriented Website Design

Many websites designed for small businesses typically fall in the category of a brochure website. Building upon the business card analogy, you can quickly see how much more a brochure website can convey to your audience. It's at this stage that your website becomes a multi-paged website. With more web pages, you can speak in greater detail about your objectives, products, and/or services. You can outline the full scope of everything you do. Whereas a business card may only have enough room to say that you are an attorney, your brochure website can elaborate on your specialties: family law, elder law, and estate administration.

Furthermore, you can emphasize what sets you apart with personal details such as training, education, work experience, and life experiences. A mechanic may be more likely to be called regarding repair on someone’s 30 year old Jaguar when its clear they’ve been doing such repairs for as long as the vehicle has been manufactured, as opposed to a mechanic who just graduated from a trade school; then again, a young person who came up through the ranks of the Jaguar franchise may have superpowers worthy of consideration.

The point is, your brochure website is your opportunity to present yourself in the best possible way to win the respect, trust, and financial investment of a potential client.

The great thing about a website compared to your typical 3-panel brochure is that you can say so much more about what makes you special in the marketplace. There is simply more real estate (space for text and images) for you to tell and show your story. That’s why it's important to post your web address prominently on all of your print materials. All your print materials, business cards, brochures, ads, and signage should simply be a teaser directing people to your website, where you have more resources to close the deal.

the service oriented website

Phase 3) Give the People What They Want: Service Oriented Website Design

Being of service is ultimately what business is all about. With that in mind, it's a worthy question to ask if there is more your website can ‘do' than simply display your logo, background, and contact information? Unfortunately, many business owners don’t realize how their website can dynamically provide services rather than inertly promote them. The fact is, your website can be an employee for you...a tireless employee that will work at all hours with impeccably precise results.

Automation was the revelation of the industrial revolution. The digital revolution took that one step further by not only bringing that automation directly into our living rooms, offices and automobiles, but more specifically, directly into our hands regardless of where we are. The truly profound power of the digital age is remote automation, or remote control. The simple push of a button here can literally make something happen on the other side of the world: the receipt of an email, the deposit of funds into an account, the deployment of a product to be shipped and delivered. If you're not leveraging the mighty power of remote digital automation with your website, you've essentially sent your website back into the analog era, demoting it to little more than piece of parchment written by a scribe (a simple business card or brochure). The point is, your website may be able to talk the talk, but can it walk the walk of the modern era?

Give the people what they want! What works for them will work for you. By adding automated functionality to your website, you're not only better serving your client, but you're helping yourself by adding an inexpensive employee to your staff that will save you time, keep you organized, and ultimately diminish your overhead and increase your profits.