Spring is our favorite season of the year. Spring is a time when temperatures rise and it is a time for natural renewal. Spring is also a time when our homes get focus and are cleaned, especially closets, and it should be a time to take a renewed look at your online business. Is your website design proudly taking your business to the web or have you removed your website address from your business cards because you don't want anyone to see your web design? The internet is far too valuable to have your website design tell your customers, or potential customers, that you aren't serious about your business and we are here to help with some advice.



We see a couple of primary reasons why people need to ?spring clean? their website design. The most common issue we see is your website design has looked exactly the same since the internet was invented, or at least since the day your company realized the internet was a place to do business. I have an MBA in marketing and over 10 years of brand management experience for both large and small companies so I have seen how numerous companies manage their brands. As a rule of thumb, if the brand hasn't been refreshed in the past 2 years, it probably needs it. In this short term timeline, brands make ?tweak? improvements to their packaging and key brand equity images to better connect with their target consumers. If brands haven't been updated in the past 3-5 years, it normally means it is time for a major branding project to evaluate how the brand has been changed and how consumer perceptions of the brand have changed. The outcome of this evaluation is typically a major makeover with key brand elements having design updates to meet the revised brand positioning and to keep the images/brand relevant to consumers. Website design should be no different, unless you consider that the attention span of consumers on the internet can be even shorter than in the brick and mortar world ? making it even more critical to regularly update your website design. At www.nvhost.com, we recently updated our website design and we would love to hear your comments and feedback.

The other main reason to ?spring clean? your website design is because we see many sites that try to do way too much and are so busy that it is impossible for a consumer to actually find what they want on your website. Ironically, some of the worst web designs can be found on web designer websites themselves because they want to have all of the coolest flash design elements that take forever to load. Wild background designs and having too many images on your website will also slow down the loading speed of your site. If your site takes longer than a few seconds to come up, it will annoy your customers and your website design will probably cause your company to lose customers. We believe in the tried and true method, K.I.S.S, and we aren't talking the long tongued guy. We believe in keeping your website professional and simple to navigate to help your company/brand drive sales; we will prevent your company from looking bad to customers and killing brand equity as we work through the web design process.

If your website design isn't making your customers say ?WOW? about your business, it is time for spring cleaning. Every day lost is additional revenue that your company cannot make up - don't put this decision off any further. While our company, www.nvhost.com which was launched in 2000, would love to be the one to help. However, the important thing to do is to interview potential web developers to make sure they have the experience to be able to deliver your project on time, on budget, and exceed your expectations. Additionally, the web developer must understand your needs and goals because all the experience in the world is useless if the web designer isn't on the same page with your vision. Hopefully this information has been useful but please use the contact us or free quote buttons on our website if any there are any unanswered questions ? the only dumb question is the one not asked.

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