Websites are a major undertaking for every organization, big or small. They represent a huge investment in time and resources and yet you HAVE to have one. It's not surprising there's sometimes institutional resistance to and resentment toward the inevitable redesign.

Often the impetus to change or update the company's website comes from the bottom, not the top. After all, it's IT staff, salespeople, and content developers who come into contact with the website most often and who are on the receiving end of customer complaints. So, how do you get buy-in for a redesign or upgrade?

Group A: "We agree the site needs work"

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who think their websites suck and those who don't. Your team may very well think the website needs work, but they're worried about how much it's going to cost to fix it. They remember how expensive the last redesign was and they're not convinced there's been an adequate return on investment.

If your team is in the first camp, you need to convince them that spending money and resources on the site are worthwhile. Here are a few ways you might frame your argument:

Putting our best foot forward

Your website is the public face of your organization. It is the first place people will go when they hear about your group, or want to find out more. Therefore, it has to accurately and clearly represent your goals and mission. Spending money to put your best face forward is just part of being in business, like buying a suit. Failure to put your best foot forward implies you either don't care what people think or you're not savvy enough to know the difference.

Generating trust and goodwill

A website is a PR and marketing tool, maybe the most effective one in your arsenal. A well-designed website that facilitates what users want to do when they get to your site can only enhance your organization's standing with the public and the media. Yes, you have to change with the times to stay effective, but that's true with every kind of marketing. After all, you don't run the same ad campaigns year after year. (If you can get your hands on the advertising budget and compare it to your web budget, you might be able to bolster this argument.)

We can't rest on our laurels

The problem with most redesigns is that they're hit and run. The design firm comes in, changes everything, then leaves with no plan to help you manage the content you're going to be adding for the next three or four years. Inevitably, the structure begins to decay, the home page becomes bloated and disorganized, and the design degrades as it gets further away from the original conception. A website is not a snapshot; it's a living, changing reflection of your company's goals and staff. Instead of a traumatic, expensive redesign every three years, consider an ongoing maintenance and enhancement budget so that your site is always fresh, accurate, and tidy.

Harnessing our audience

Websites today, especially ones that represent membership or advocacy organizations, can be powerful forums to mobilize, organize, and create communities of like-minded people. Compared to the old ways of doing this (town hall meetings, direct mail), the web is cheap, fast, and has a much broader reach. Also, it can become self-sustaining once you set up the appropriate forums and tools and can generate valuable, even income-generating, content.

Let's measure success

Return on investment is tricky to measure unless you're running a retail site. Better metrics are downloads, registrations, and memberships, to name a few. Pick a metric—conference registrations, for example—and pull the last couple of years of data. Can a redesign improve on the number of visitors who "convert" into registrants? How much time and money will this save the organization?

Group B: "There's nothing wrong with our site"

What if your team thinks the website is perfect the way it is? Well, they might be right. More likely, they haven't looked at any of your competitors' sites recently. To get team members to see your site the way customers see it, try the following:

What are the competition up to?

There's nothing like a little healthy competition to motivate folks. Even if you don't have competitors as such, look at the best websites in your industry and make a list of what they are doing right. Pick half a dozen key indicators and create a competitive analysis grid that compares your site to the others. Don't make it all bad news. Chances are your site is ahead of the pack in at least one area because it serves your particular audience best. And the best thing is, you don't have to improve everything at once. This kind of tool is great for showing where you'll get the most bang for your buck and it gives you a plan for future enhancements.

What do our users think?

Go to the source: your users. Get a video camera and record real visitors performing the most common tasks on your site. Pay attention to how long it takes them, where they get stuck, and what they think is going on. User testing results can be one of the most powerful tools for getting your team to step outside their own bias and see the site with new eyes.

Arguments to avoid

Never couch a redesign in terms of technology. Just because everyone else's site is in a content management system doesn't mean yours should be. Always express the problem in terms of poor functionality and lost opportunities. Technology should follow from the design problem to be solved, not the other way around. Besides, most people on your team don't have the faintest clue what a CMS or javascript is, and they have no way to evaluate whether that's the right approach.

Likewise, don't talk about all the features you want to add. Managers hear "features" and they think "dollars." The more you go on about how cool the new site will be, the more they're thinking you're just changing things for the sake of changing them. Just like technology, features should suggest themselves after you've analyzed the problem, not before it.

Build a coalition of the willing

Try to move naysayers away from the view of a website as an annoying, expensive obligation that sucks money and resources away from your organization and toward an understanding of a website as an integral and powerful tool in your outreach and communication goals. When your team's on board, you'll have an easier time gathering content, getting constructive feedback, and—most important—building a site everyone at your organization will feel proud of.

[ Kim Bieler wrote this article and she welcomes your comments. ]