I was reminded the other day just how forgiving youth is. I remember being able to eat food that wasn’t the best for me and lots of it at that. As long as you were the typical active child, nothing bad came of it. In fact, the only weight I gained was from growing and building muscles.
And so it was for many years. But then came the day when it all changed. Suddenly the slightest amount of over-eating adds pounds. Deviations from the typical food pyramid diet lead to immediate physical symptoms. Eat a big juicy burger – feel a bit bloated for the rest of the day…
We look back and watch the young going about their business with little thought to calories, carbs, moderation etc.
Don’t get me wrong – there is a HUGE obesity epidemic in our country. But remember, I’m talking about happy, active children and teens involved in sports or some sort of regular exercise…
But It Isn’t Just Us
Our websites follow a strangely similar life cycle. Here’s what I mean…
You build out a new website and it looks amazing – still has the new website smell. Your technology is up to date, the CMS is humming along and you’ve tied into the latest and greatest social media outlets. You site is “eating it up.”
But then a few years go by.
Your site no longer has the new website smell. In fact there is a slightly old and dusty smell to it now. The CMS doesn’t seem to have the same metabolism it used to. The site is getting a bit overweight and bloated. And those cool social media outlets are no longer quite as cool.
So what do we do?
Well, in a perfect world we’d get to redesign and rebuild our websites every 2-4 years. But we don’t live in that world. In fact, we’ve been tweaking the same website for over 5 years now.
Here are just a few of the things that have kept us moving forward:
- Look/feel tweaks: 2 years into our design we went from the squared off look to the rounded look. Didn’t take much and yet was just the boost needed for the next few years.
- Standalone elements: We began to use standalone elements like blogs, mini-sites and new platforms for our Online Campus. For a small fee, this puts the issue of “keeping up with technology” on someone else’s shoulders.
- Change directions: Instead of making our site bigger and bigger we’ve actually been downsizing so we’re not a barrier to new people just looking for the facts.
- Add what people need: Soon we will be launching a social networking platform that will allow people to connect virtually, so they can become more relational in real life. Again, software as a service (SaaS) so it will keep up with the times instead of us.
