There's only one thing worse than having an out-of-date website, and that's paying for a new site that looks like last century.

If you are planning a new site, here are five things you MUST DO:

If it Just Lies There, it's Dead. Your site must attract and hold attention, and fast. You have between 5-10 seconds to interest browsing prospective customers. So make your site DYNAMIC with fresh content, streaming videos, informative and appealing graphics, and purposeful design. How? It's never been easier. Just read on.

Your Site is Social. It's not enough to build a site with a shopping cart and wait for orders to pour in. Customers want to be involved. They want to leave feedback, they want to share what they find with their friends and family, and they want to ask you questions. Interactivity with sites like Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, and other major SOCIAL MEDIA sites lets your customers reward you.

News Travels Fast. The days of waiting for some external company to update your site are over. Your new site must be SELF-CONTROLLED. A database-driven site with a back-end editor lets you edit and update copy, and upload video or photos--on the fly. Introduce special, limited-time offers, track conversions, serve up custom pages. Make sure you get trained on how to update your site as it's being built.

A Scalable Moment. How does your site look on a three-inch smartphone? Or a nine-inch tablet? You need MOBILE application for your site from the moment you launch. It has to be platform-agnostic, scalable to all sizes, and navigable purely by touch. Your customers are on the move; don't let them leave you behind.

Lock-down Security. Every single day, someone is developing new ways to hack sites and steal data. You work hard to earn the trust of your customers-- they are providing you with vital personal and professional information. Don't betray their trust, or you will lose them forever. Your SECURITY protocols must be bleeding edge.

At Blue Sky Projects, we build for the future as much as possible. We avoid design fads, and look for genuine trends in usage. These five tips are guidelines you can follow so that you own a dynamic, social, self-controlled, mobile-friendly, and secure site. Any good developer should provide that. For our clients, we go even further--building a site useful to you and your staff, one that suits your existing customers while introducing you to new customers.

Give us a call at (206) 721-2550 or drop us an email and see what we can do for you.