What’s The Shelf Life of a Website?
We are often asked two variations of the question, “How long is my website relevant.” Both have the same answer.
The first variant is, “Our site is x years old, is it time to redesign it?” The other variant is, “How long should we expect our new site to last.” The answer is “it depends.” But let me try to offer a better response.
First, we identify an economic life of a website. This is a balance sheet issue. Few actually record the website as an asset, but it is not unreasonable to assume it to be fully depreciated after 5 years. Some choose 3 years. Whatever you choose for business reasons does not necessarily translate to the useful life of the resource and it certainly doesn’t answer the question as to whether the site is still relevant or if the technology still works just fine. But it is the best way to establish a life of your site while also managing its replacement cost.
We believe the non-economic variables that determine the life of your old website or newly launched one are strategy, message, technology and look & feel.
Strategy is simply the manner in which you satisfy your business objectives online. The brief historic nickel tour of website strategy migration starts with a) establishing an online presence (the brochure-ware model) (1993 - 1999), b) becoming interactive (2000 - 2004), c) Web 2.0, social media and syndicated content (2005 - ?), d) semantic web (200X - ?).
Message is the way you tell your story. In its simplest form, the message is something as simple as “recently merged/acquired/out of business” which tends to shorten a website life considerably :). More commonly, the message is the outcome of an internal business review which re-prioritizes your services, service delivery and restates your unique value proposition. When the website is sufficiently out of line with the message, continual patching of the site may not produce a desirable outcome and re-imagining the site is called for.
Technology is merely an enabler of strategy. So technology is rarely the game ending culprit. Unlike our analog TV’s which the government is forcing us to abandon for new technology, websites built a decade ago will operate just as well (or poorly) as they did when launched. It’s when your strategy puts demands on your website technology that something’s got to give. Although it may look like the technology failed, in truth, look to your migrating strategy to determine the life of your technology.
And finally there’s the look and feel. Sometimes merely updating the accessories can do as much for a website as it does for the look of an old suit. While it is often the excuse for a new website, it is rarely the real driver.
