What kind of organization has the most dated looking web sites today?
A good guess would be small manufacturing companies.
We get it. If a small manufacturer is a wholesaler, with a very specific number of market prospects, and business is still not done online, it can be hard to see the reasoning for moving beyond that 2001 web site design.
It doesn’t take long, though, to realize that maybe a couple of thousand dollars every 5 years could help a company whose web site looks like this or this or this to be redesigned to be more effective, more attractive, more useful to the organization. We don’t use these examples for any other reason as to show what anyone can find – quite often – for small manufacturers on the web. There are thousands of them. This took me 3 minutes to find. We don’t know any of these companies. One look tells you how dated their web site is, and it raises more questions than provides answers about the organization. Who needs that?
There are reasons beyond appearance to redesign these sites. Adding a content management system can get more people involved from the company into updating the site – maybe the right people. More involvement by more people in the company can lead to better application of the site for the purposes of the company based on the roles of the people involved. Is online selling, or purchasing, a possibility? Posting employment notices? Trade show calendar?
The simple act of a graphic redesign should open the doors for these organizations into getting more out of their web presence efforts. We’re not in the business in recommending redesign just for the sake of redesign – but if it leads to much greater functionality of the site, then perhaps that is a starting point worth bringing up.