Is Your Web Strategy Proactive or Reactive?

In today’s ever-changing technological landscape, people often find themselves scrambling to keep up with changes in the digital space. Events like Google’s “Mobilegeddon” algorithm change or the merger between EPiServer and Ektron cause major shakeups in the way companies and organizations approach their web strategy, forcing them to scramble to catch up.

Since the only constant in our fast-moving world is change, this struggle to stay up to date can affect nearly everyone. However, it’s an issue that especially affects people who only plan for a major website redesign every few years. Since these companies often have an “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality, they can delay badly-needed updates to their site for multiple years, leading to an eventual costly project that requires a great deal of time and money just to get their website up to date.

This is a dated strategy, but it actually comes from a deeper problem in which companies treat their digital partner agency as a vendor rather than a partner. As an agency who strongly believes in the importance of partnership, we wanted to look at why we believe this is an outdated strategy.

Vendors vs. Partners

When companies who hire a web design/development firm to redesign their site, they often treat them like support technicians. They ask for a certain functionality or technology upgrade, and the vendor delivers it. This ends up being a very reactive strategy, addressing issues after they become a problem rather than being ready for them beforehand.

The problem with a reactive strategy is that you don’t know what you don’t know. You’re an expert in your products or services, but you can’t be expected to keep up with the latest trends and expectations involving web design, platform interconnectivity, online security, or anything else that you need to be aware of to stay up to date in the digital space. If your digital agency is a true partner, they will help you take a proactive approach to your online strategy, making you aware of anything that will impact your website or its interconnected systems and letting you know what you need to do to address it before it becomes problematic.

Budgeting: Knowns and Unknowns

It’s hard to plan for the unknown, especially when money is involved. If you have a vendor relationship with your digital agency, you most likely don’t have a plan in place to execute on either expected or unexpected developments. This can lead to costly, last-minute work that needs to be done to address issues like security flaws, regulations that need to be met, or functionality that will be broken if a site isn’t upgraded.

A partner relationship with your digital agency can provide you with a website and online strategy that consistently evolves for a flat monthly fee. This will allow for the prioritization of tasks that are streamlined and backed up with facts and data, ensuring that you won’t be left trying to guess what you need to do next.

The Last Redesign

At WSOL, we like to say that the next time you budget for a website redesign, you should think of it as the last redesign you will ever do. By partnering with us, you can shift to strategic iterative improvements, making smaller changes and updates on a month to month basis and addressing any issues, concerns, or trends as they become relevant. Regular design enhancements, updates to site functionality, and implementation of analytic reporting, marketing automation, landing pages, etc. will ensure that your site remains on the leading edge of your industry and provides the best possible experience for the audience that you want to engage.

Do you want to know more about the benefits of partnering with WSOL? Do you want to discuss how we can help you make the most of the available online opportunities that can enhance your digital strategy? Please contact us to speak with a Solutions Engineer. We look forward to working with you!