Timing of change, in a world without seasons

Unlike other industries, web design and web development do not need to be tied to a traditional calendar. There are no coding trees you have to shake, no sticky-note fields to till or ink wells from which to draw.

Instead, a website has its own seasons of change – though it is easier to see the dividing lines after the changes occur. More like eras of a civilization, rather than the forecasts of an almanac.

As fellow inhabitants of the internet, you too may be wondering, “When should I make big changes to my website?” 

The standard, rather vague answer is usually, “When the time feels right.” 

Thankfully, we at Cosmic Designs had known a big design change would be necessary eventually. From the earliest days of the website’s development we began to map out this timeless-yet-time-consuming process. 

Milestones and benchmarks

In the case of Cosmic Designs and its website, we had certain milestones to guide us, as well as certain external factors to guide the planning process. Since we would be the ones to plan, create, and enact all these changes, the biggest deciding factors were the following:

• Structure: Could our current structure support what we wanted to do?
• Countdown: If staying within the current structure, how soon would growth become difficult to manage?
• Navigation: Could the existing navigation be modified to suit our plans for expansion?

Ultimately, when our answers became “no”, “too soon”, and “no” (respectively), it would be time to make changes.

Where do you pull over in space?

The final consideration was time itself. When you’re a web-based business, making a big improvement to your website is a bit like making improvements to the hull of your spaceship in the midst of a 5-year mission. You can’t exactly “pull over” in space, and you can’t exactly stop all other projects just to work on your own repairs.

The Canadarm, hard at work.

Self-improvement would prove to be a delicate process– taking the natural pauses that exist between rounds of approvals of client work, finding any spare moments to collate notes, strategize, find photos, edit photos, write and write (and write and write some more)… not a simple matter, to say the least.

Into the exciting future we boldly go

As with many small businesses before us, we launched our brand (and our website) with a mind for growth. Though we could have continued to add pages to the previous design, we recognized that now was the right time for change. With new projects and clients to showcase, and new opportunities on the horizon, we wanted to have a broader space to expand. 

Thankfully, web space is just as infinite as the stellar sort. We felt it would be well worth the time and effort to do a fully-fledged overhaul.

A (brief) history of our Cosmic Designs

The earliest version of the Cosmic Designs website was a simple landing page. As the nascent brand took form, we included a pair of extra pages that would dig into a few of our key industries. In time, we decided to add a blog to the experience – the very blog you’re reading now – which meant doing something out of the ordinary. 

You may not have realized this, but the early Cosmic Design site had been built from the ground up as a static HTML site. Fun and flexible, it had all the wow of a bouncy CMS (Like WordPress). After all, sometimes you just need a little something to get started. Bells and whistles could come later.

When we opted to add a blog, it was time to make some decisions. We weighed the pros and cons of converting the whole site into WordPress, but I was curious – could we stick with our static HTML site for the home page, and simply have a pocket-Wordpress for the blog portion?

The answer was yes – and the process deserves its own post. Ultimately, it was possible, and as Cpt. Picard would say, we would “make it so.” With that, our website expanded a little further… 

What about those bells and whistles?

At last, the time had come for big changes! In the years since launch, we had learned even more about how we could serve the aviation & aerospace industries, as well as the organizations that surround and support them. Now that we had more to say and more to show for our experiences, we needed a beautiful new place to put it all. 

Some of the new features of our snazzy new website include:

• Fun, bouncy hero imagery on the homepage
• Filterable portfolio hub 
• Interconnected, image-filled case studies, complete with interactive photo galleries 
• Interactive rotating testimonial sliders
• Robust industry hub (with future plans for growth)
• Deeper-diving industry pages, featuring custom hero images  
• Bright new blog space
• Fancy footer form

Knowing when to launch

I heard a wonderful expression that has stuck with me. 

“Movies are never finished – they are simply produced.” 

… or was it books? 

Of course, now that I try to dig up the origins of this phrase, I see it has a messy pedigree. Here’s what I took it to mean: You can keep messing with something forever and never show it to anyone, OR you can send it out into the world, and then make corrections and updates over time. 

With something as flexible and dynamic as a website, we are afforded this luxury. Brands change with time, websites change, and the world keeps turning. 

Still, knowing when you’re ready to commit to a change, to display your cool new thing for the world to see… that, I find, is a whole other topic. 

For now, I can safely say that the time to launch was today! Take a look around, and drop us a line.

— Kimberley Hosty

Fleet Admiral, Cosmic Designs