An attractive website isn’t always an easy one to manage. Discover why intuitive design should extend beyond the public experience to include the people updating your website every day.
When most people think about a confusing website, they picture visitors struggling to find information, navigate menus, or complete a task.
But there's another kind of confusion that's often overlooked: the experience of the people responsible for managing the website.
We recently helped an organization with what should have been a series straightforward website updates. The employee who had previously managed the site was no longer with the organization, and the original development company was no longer involved.
What should have taken a few minutes quickly became an exercise in detective work.
As we worked through the updates, we encountered issues such as:
None of these issues were major on their own. Together, however, they made routine website updates far more difficult than necessary.
A website shouldn't only be intuitive for visitors. It should also be intuitive for the people responsible for keeping it current.
When updating content becomes frustrating, organizations naturally begin avoiding it. Small improvements are delayed, outdated information lingers, and confidence in the website gradually declines.
Eventually, those internal frustrations can affect the public-facing experience as well.
Strong visual design is important. But websites are interactive communication tools—not printed brochures displayed on a screen.
A successful website requires careful consideration of:
When those pieces aren't considered together, websites often become difficult to use—for visitors and staff alike.
Modern website platforms have lowered the barrier to entry for building websites. That's both a strength and a weakness.
It's easier than ever to assemble a website using themes, plugins, and page builders. Unfortunately, it's also easier than ever to mistake assembly for engineering. You can read the series of articles we have on why WordPress is a poor solution.
A website may look polished on launch day, yet still suffer from confusing navigation, inconsistent editing tools, poor performance, or a maintenance process that only one person understands.
A confusing website often results in:
None of these problems usually appear overnight. They accumulate over time—and eventually become expensive.
At Ingenious, we believe managing your website shouldn't require digging through superfluous menus, weeks of training, or guesswork. We build custom websites and content management systems designed to be intuitive for both visitors and the people maintaining them.
We also offer consultation services to help organizations evaluate existing websites, identify unnecessary complexity, and create a clearer path forward.
Contact Ingenious to learn how a thoughtfully designed website can reduce frustration, improve usability, and help your organization communicate more effectively.