When Doing Your Own Redesign Takes A Long Time

When Doing Your Own Redesign Takes A Long Time

We’ve all been there. Some of us more than others – yet still the idea of a redesign initially starts out with great aspirations, then leads to feverish or lackluster enthusiasm weeks later. Let me back up and explain my story.

It’s been probably three or four years since our last redesign of the Design Theory Website. Years ago I can remember when I first tried WordPress and had a blog in a sub-domain while having our main website in HTML on the root. It worked out better than I could have expected and within about nine months I was ready to convert everything into one site on WordPress.

Fast forward to present day, and I can honestly say that I’ve been working on this redesign for about two months. Not consistently, more on-and-off. Reason being is that, well, we’ve been busy. Being busy is a good thing when you’re a creative but only to a certain point. Some of our best ideas get filtered into our client websites and strategy efforts, meanwhile our own website gets the cold shoulder.

Why Are We Taking So Long

To be honest and short, we want a really good and clean experience for you. We want all of our services laid out in a way that is easier to navigate, lead/sales funnels created with purpose, and products easier to identify and purchase. What we’ve learned over the years is that the customer experience is what matters the most in any website. It kind of needs to be catered to them more so than what I think the website should be designed like.

Another reason for the redesign is to make the new website load much faster than the current one does. Realizing that more web traffic is done via mobile browsers than desktops, we have to make sure that our website loads smooth and fast on hand-held devices. Make sure that it’s also Google Mobile Friendly is key too. It’s important to make sure that the almighty Google deems our website acceptable.

Lastly, we believe it’s time for a refresh. There are a lot of ideas that we want to do that include a rebrand, but we’re going to have to hold off on some of those bigger and more time intensive initiatives to be able to focus on tangible goals and a timeline. Good ideas are great but they’re truly a dime a dozen. It’s really about executing and to be able to launch some of our more necessary ideas we have to stay focused. When it comes to our customer redesigns we treat them the same. We come up with a lot of great ideas from improved functionality, new software, and new graphics, but we also stage things out in milestones so that there is always something to look forward to over the next several weeks and months.

As you can see we’ve got a lot to consider with our redesign. It’s more important to us that it’s done right than just putting together a new design and layout without constructive though behind it for usability. Have you been thinking about a redesign of your website? What is holding you back from getting started? Let us know in the comments below or contact us directly if we can help.

New Podcasts Coming Soon!

New Podcasts Coming Soon!

We’re really excited to be working on another media project. This one being audio podcasts. In these podcasts we’ll be talking briefly on business strategy tactic, social media, and web design on a weekly basis. Because there’s so much information out there, we found it to be easier to let our clients and audience digest the things that will matter to them most and in a quick 15min podcast that gives you the points and then ways to take action.

Some of our podcasts will actually be Q&A’s submitted by you. You can ask us questions for things that you’re facing in your business and we’ll talk about them in the show. Chances are you’re not alone in the challenges you’re dealing.

While we’re working to launch you can visit our YouTube page and see some of the How-To videos and other videos we’ve posted.

How To: Create a New Blog Post

How To: Create a New User Profile in WordPress

Creating a new user profile is essential when you’re going to have multiple people accessing your website. Below are the available roles for user profiles and what access and rights they have.

  • Administrator – The main account(s) with access to everything. Usually reserved for your web designer, and site owner.
  • Author – Can create pages and posts and publish them without the need to have them reviewed.
  • Editor – These user profiles are mainly used for people who will be reviewing posts written by Contributors.
  • Contributor – May create new posts and submit them for review by Editors or Authors and above.
  • Subscriber – Mainly to view new content that is published to your website. May also receive email notifications for new posts.

How To: Create a New Blog Post

How to: Install a New WordPress Plugin

Installing a new plugin for your WordPress site can be done in just a few minutes. You can either upload one from your computer that you’ve downloaded or search the WordPress repository for the plugin you’re looking to install directly to your website.

Follow the instructions in this video to install and activate your new plugin. If you have more questions or need help, be sure to add a comment below or visit our Contact page for support and we’d be happy to help.