Experience Matters

From Site Refresh To a Refreshing Brand

The ubiquitous site refresh. It’s one of the most common “tactics” in digital marketing. It goes something like this:

1. Site design goes neglected
2. Issues become obvious to both marketing teams and users
3. “Overhaul” is deemed unrealistic due to tech/other considerations
4. “Site refresh” becomes a temporary solution

Most of us are probably likely to think “isn’t that just putting a band-aid on the problem?—why not go to the root of it?”. Well, if you needed brain surgery—you’d still take aspirin to help get you through it. Fact is that your Web site is a primary touch point to your customers. Thanks to search engines and the digital age—it’s likely to be one of the first. So if your site is hopelessly dated and risks irrelevancy—you have to do something about it quickly.

But you can be really smart about it. Instead of focusing on making your visual design more contemporary (not that there is anything wrong with that)—concentrate your efforts on aligning your refresh with what your brand actually stands for. Even if you don’t have all the brand standards in place—a “site refresh” is a great exercise at helping define what your brand is all about. Sounds like putting the cart before the horse? It’s really not.

We recently did a “refresh” for Valvoline.com. Instead of just focusing on updating the “look and feel”, we really thought about Valvoline’s brand and the direction it was moving in. By listening to both the client, the customer as well as playing close attention to current advertisements, it became clear that this was a very relevant brand to auto enthusiasts. It was less about the oil itself and more about the love of the car and the passion for the project.

And so our solution was to make the car—(the “project”), the object of desire. We accomplished this by choreographing “project + product”—dialing up the imagery of the “project” and balancing that with the product. And of course the usual enhancements came with any refresh initiative—updated look and feel, improved layouts, etc.

Bottom line is that going through the “refresh” initiative doesn’t have to be as tactical as it sounds. In fact—it can be a very strategic exercise that acts as a serious stepping stone in helping to move your brand forward. Instead of thinking about your next “refresh”—think about your next opportunity to make your brand more relevant + refreshing to your customers, users and active brand participants.