I was recently speaking with a business owner who understood the concept that his website needed to be an asset. In fact, you could say he was a dream client because he soaked up all our advice and made several decisions based on our findings and subsequent reports about the web-based portion of his business.

Part of our advice was to update the design of his site. Since neither the design, nor the methods used in the development of the site had not been altered since the 1990’s, this seemed like a good time do it for several reasons. First, that the site was not attracting the search traffic the business deserved, and second, we needed to give the site a look and feel which spoke to people’s expectations of professionalism in 2008.

The client felt reluctant to do this, however, because he believed he was enjoying some success with the consistent design. Of course, I would naturally concur with his reluctance if we were talking about a site which had been deployed within the last 12 months, but we’re talking about a site which had been around for more than 10 years.

I can see some of you nodding in agreement with our client.

While you think about whether to re-design your website, or to just spruce it up a bit, consider your audience (this is a common theme to all our discussions about website development), and ask yourself this question:

"If I was looking to spend money with a business after researching its services online, how much faith would I have in a business which did not appear to invest in its website?"

Although existing customers are always the best source for advice on how we should present our business, or in areas we could be doing better, an honest appraisal of the above question should not require a customer survey.

Areas which typically require investment are in the look and feel of the site, user interaction with the navigation and input, and of course "search engine friendliness."

This is a truth in almost any area of business. For example, I don’t know about you, but I’m not walking into a restaurant which looks like the owners don’t hire enough staff to keep it clean.

The same can be said with our web presence.

If you were researching your own business online, how would you judge the investment in your web presence?