Website Redesign

Does your website make you cringe? Have you hesitated to send people to it because it’s so old and outdated? Stop postponing your website redesign. Also … what about those blog articles you have written but not published? They deserve to be posted in a shiny new website.

Rolling Past Inertia

You’re not alone. Beginning a website redesign project is daunting. We put it off and put it off … and the longer we wait, the worse it seems to get. The simple principle that stopped me from starting: inertia. Call it a rut if you want. Regardless, I spent a long time “not starting.”

The good news is there’s always tomorrow. {*grin*}

Baby Steps

I got some good advice from a colleague. He said to just rebuild it, not try to rewrite everything. This plan was hard to embrace at first. It’s contrary to how I work with my clients – content comes first. But he had a point. I already had content I could  use. So my goal was to work on the design and rebuild it with the content as is.

Accountability

So I made myself accountable. YES, I said, I can do that. I will have something for you by Friday morning, I said. What?? It was Wednesday! What was I thinking?? A commitment turned out to be exactly what I needed. I HAD TO build a new site with the old content, because I didn’t have time to rewrite it.

Getting Started

My first attempt ended with me eating my own words. Words, words, words. All I saw was words, my words. Old words. Boring words. Words I had seen for too long and didn’t want to see anymore. I started rewriting portions of my site. My momentum stalled, my ideas got stuck, and I got mired in the minutia I had sworn to ignore.

The next day, I stepped back and looked at my progress. There was none. I had let the bossy inner editor get the best of me.

Stepping Back

I took a giant step back, removed my [virtual] glasses, and got back to work. The lights dimmed, the text blurred … I ignored my tired old content and started designing. I would rewrite later. It was so liberating! I faked myself out and got it done.

Manageable Chunks

Like any project, splitting the end goal into smaller tasks helped me get started.The process was freeing. For so long I hadn’t passed GO, didn’t collect $200. All I did was stare and snarl. Now in short order, I had built the structure for my new site, and got serious about my website redesign. My self-imposed deadline and accountability, as well as my virtual blinders, helped me kick it into high gear.

There’s always more to do, but then again … there’s always tomorrow.