Websites, the never ending story
Having a website is usually something on every creatives list of things to do. Sometimes though, this can be looked at as a project that will be 'finished' and can marked off the to-do list. As someone who works a software developer as my day job, the reality is that web projects are a an ever evolving project.
In software I have never thought of a project as 'finished'. There are milestone states where a release happens or something gets launched, but there is always something else to be worked on, maintained or improved.
The concept of 'Minimum Viable Product' (MVP) is a great way to think about these smaller milestones. For example, when rebuilding this site the first goal was:
- Home page
- About page
- Contact form.
Pressing publish on a site with those things gave me the 1.0 launch of the new site. Having that as a goal was very achievable in the small timeframe I had to launch the new site before an event I was planning to attend where I would be marketing myself and directing people to the site.
Then the progressive enhancement happens from there, small, achievable milestones are the goal. Within the next two weeks after the 1.0 launch the following additions were:
- Projects page (from old site)
- Blog posts (from old site)
- New blog post (Lumix Photo Hike)
- Another new blog post (A Gear heads gear list)
- Yet another new blog post (VGP Comparison)
- Portfolio page
- This blog post
All these updates in a single launch while staying motivated would be difficult. It’s a lot to do, and it’s so easy to feel disheartened (or get bored) by the size of the project. The rolling motivation boost of pressing publish on each piece is infectious, and I did mention in the March retrospective that I have had a lot of progress on the website through that month.
Pages and blog posts being small digestible tasks gives quite a few benefits the more we do it. One from Lucy Lumen's Blog had some great points about websites. The idea that adding to your website adds to your digital surface area is a great way to thinking about it.
Looking at this site and its growing digital footprint since 1.0 there have been double the amount of pages. Adding new content also shows the search engines that it is maintained and updated. This helps with SEO and rankings in search results.
There has been some incredible traffic to the site since it was relaunched in mid January
Websites are, in my opinion, a must have for creative that shouldn't be overlooked. Relying on platforms that you don't have control over for the singular source of access to you I think is a mistake. I use other platforms like Instagram and Threads to push traffic over to my website. The way I think about where the website sits in the hierarchy is that is is the top of the tree. From there you have links out to other social platforms, the newsletter signup, etc.
The traffic is a two way transaction as well, I am sending people form my website to follow me on Instagram. And over on instagram I am sharing links to blog posts on the website. This feeds traffic and introduces new ways to interact with me.
Stories is the main way I attach links back from Instagram to the website.
In the end a website can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it. If you want somewhere to house hundreds of blog posts and where most of your activity happens. Or somewhere you have a couple of images, and introduction to you and what you do and a contact form, you need a website.
