Extending the life of your website with a re-theme

There comes a time when you look at your organisation’s website, and it looks tired.  The navigation and functionality work as you want them to, but it just doesn’t feel like ‘you’ anymore.  However, a new website isn’t in your plan or your budget…

Don’t settle!  If your website feels tired and doesn’t now reflect who you are as an organisation, then chances are that your customers are feeling that too!  This is where a re-theme could be just what you are looking for.

It’s a redesign of your website. Design is the keyword here; it isn’t a rebuild.  There may be a light re-order of pages or content, but functionality and flow stay pretty much as they are, with a new design applied to the site.

It’s completely up to you and your objectives. A re-theme can be as simple as a tweak to the current design – a re-think of colours, a change in fonts or a new look for a certain area of the site. Or, it can be a radical new design with or without a rebrand.

In our experience, a re-theme usually occurs when a website is around 5 years old.  If the site is serviced properly and regular upgrades are made, a re-theme can easily extend a website for a further 5 years if the functionality still meets the needs of the business.

The first thing to think about is whether the website really does work as you need it to.  If the answer is ‘yes’ and it is the design which isn’t working hard enough, then take some time to gain some clarity as to what needs to change, who your customer is and why the current design no longer meets the needs of your organisation.

It very much depends on the extent of the change and how many people are involved in the sign-off. With a clear brief and a tight sign-off process, a re-theme can be completed in as little as 6 weeks. 

It’s worth noting that it’s important that you communicate to stakeholders that you are pursuing a re-theme and not a rebuild. The two often get confused, and it’s important to manage expectations early on before you receive requests for new functionality from around the organisation!

Give us a call. We are Olamalu, technical experts and website developers. We’re a friendly and down-to-earth team based in West Oxfordshire who work together to achieve brilliant outcomes. We’ve been developing websites and designing tailor-made tech solutions for nearly 16 years.

We work with many of our clients as an ongoing technical partner, but we also offer a consultancy service to solve a specific strategic challenge.