Tech Lifespan Planning for Your Website

Nikkita Walker
03/16/2019

If you’re approaching web development with an eye toward cultivating a growth strategy, you need to keep the lifespan of your tech in mind. Nothing can shore you up forever, or even last just a handful of years, without being updated.

Failure to update tech has led to businesses accruing “technical debt.” The longer you neglect updating your tech, the more difficult it will be to address the issues caused by out-of-date software a few years down the road.

This is why so much care should be taken at the beginning of your web development project, during the scoping phase. As you put each piece together, laying plans for the platform you’ll use to build your website, the tools you’ll integrate with it, the user experience (UX) created by your web design, part of your planning should also include the steps you’ll need to take to support your strategy long-term.

A common mistake is to assume that once your strategy is built, it’s set for the next few years. But in 2017, neglecting necessary, ongoing development can quickly result in security risks, an outdated UX, and a performance decline.

Why Does Ongoing Web Development Need To Be A Part Of My Project Scoping?

As you’re deciding what tools to implement, and how you’re going to build your website and overall strategy, the necessity of how often those tools would need to be updated should be a part of this decision-making process, and might even end up being the determining factor behind some of your decisions. For example:

How often will that particular MarTech service’s API need to be updated? How often does an open-source website need to be patched? What type of eCommerce payment gateway are you planning on implementing? What does your content management strategy look like?

These are just a few factors whose long-term care may determine whether you include them in your strategy or not.

Why Is It Important That I Plan This Out From The Beginning?

Planning this from the beginning also ensures that these updates are expected, and scheduled ahead of time. Instead of patching things when a problem occurs, you can take steps to ensure your team and your users never have to endure those problems.

Here are just a few common reasons why ongoing development needs to be considered when initially scoping out your project.

Integrations: Updates to APIs

Achieving a fully integrated MarTech stack is a common goal for many web strategies, and is often achieved by using APIs typically provided by the MarTech services themselves. When those services update their APIs, the API you’re using is no longer supported, and over time you may start to notice some functionality issues with your integration. Regularly updating your integrations should be a part of your ongoing web development strategy.

Website Security Patches

Most websites are built on platforms–such as WordPress, Drupal, or Shopify. Hopefully, the platform you choose to build your website on has a dedicated security team constantly searching out and fixing vulnerabilities in your system. Once those vulnerabilities are exposed and repaired, the platform releases an update called a “patch” that will improve your system. Ensuring that your website is fully patched, and your platform is fully supported, are perpetual tasks.

User Experience

The most visually obvious way to date your web strategy is user experience (UX). Having a website that doesn’t screen responsive, is slow loading, or is characterized by older browsing styles can affect how your brand is perceived by users. We’re not saying that you have to redesign your entire website annually, but scheduling a recurring time to revisit and update your UX to ensure that it’s offering at least the standard browsing experience should be a part of your project scoping.

If you’re curious about what the project scoping process looks like, or how you can factor ongoing web development into your strategy, please feel free to download our white paper, How to Create a Strategic Plan or “Blueprint” for Your Web Development.