Do You Need a New Website – Or a Better Plan?

Every so often, a radio station gets forced into making a website decision much faster than it should. A provider announces it is shutting down, a contract is coming up for renewal, pricing changes significantly, a company gets sold or a service the station depends on is being discontinued. Suddenly, somebody is searching for website companies and comparing features because there is a deadline on the calendar.

Even when there isn’t an emergency, stations sometimes reach the point where somebody simply says, “We need a new website.” Maybe the current one looks dated. Traffic isn’t growing. The staff doesn’t like using it. The app isn’t getting much attention. Whatever the reason, the conversation quickly becomes about finding another solution.

Before doing that, I’d ask a different question: What are we trying to make better for our audience?

That question can completely change what you go looking for.

Start With What You Want People to Do

Put your current website aside for a moment and think about your station’s entire digital presence. What do you want listeners to do with it?

Maybe you want people visiting every morning for local news. You want them checking high school football scores on Friday night, entering contests, finding community events, listening to the station, opening your app when severe weather moves through town or subscribing to a newsletter that brings your best local content directly to them.

Those are goals. “We need a better website” isn’t really a goal.

Once you know what you want the audience to do, you can start looking at whether your current technology makes those things easy. If local news is important, how quickly can someone publish a story? If the mobile app matters, does content published on the website automatically become available there? Can someone send a push notification without going into another system? If newsletters are part of the plan, how much work does it take to create one?

This is where you may discover that your current solution isn’t the problem at all.

A New Website Won’t Fix a Content Problem

If your station publishes three local stories a month, moving those same three stories to a prettier website probably isn’t going to dramatically increase traffic. If nobody promotes the website on the air, changing providers won’t fix that. If your newsletter has barely grown because nobody asks listeners to subscribe, moving to another email platform isn’t likely to change much either.

Sometimes the better move is asking your current provider the right questions.

“We want to publish more local news, but our staff thinks the process takes too long. Is there an easier way?”

“We want to grow newsletter subscriptions. What aren’t we using?”

“We want more people using our app. What can we do with it that we’re not doing now?”

You may discover features you already have, a better workflow or a much simpler solution than rebuilding everything. If your existing system genuinely can’t do what you need, you’ve also learned something important: you now have a specific requirement to take with you when evaluating alternatives.

DIY and Providers Are Both Tools

There’s also no rule saying a station should start with DIY and eventually “graduate” to a provider. Moving in the opposite direction can make sense too.

If you have someone on staff who understands the technology, has the time to maintain it and can build exactly what the station needs, managing things yourself may be the better solution. Just make sure you’re calculating the cost in more than dollars. Somebody has to handle updates, security, backups, broken integrations and whatever decides to stop working on Saturday morning. You also need a plan for what happens if the person who built everything leaves.

The same evaluation applies when choosing a provider. Don’t automatically choose the company with the longest feature list. Look at what you’ve decided is important and find the solution that makes it easiest for your staff and your audience.

Pay particular attention to friction. Every extra login, extra dashboard and extra step sounds minor during a demonstration. It becomes much more significant when you’re asking a busy news director, salesperson or morning show host to repeat those steps every day.

Evaluate Before You’re Forced to Change

The best time to decide whether your digital platform is still right for you is when you don’t have to change it.

Once or twice a year, look at the entire digital operation instead of just the website. Look at website visitors, streaming usage, app activity, newsletter subscribers, email engagement and whatever else matters to your station. More importantly, decide what you want those numbers to look like a year from now.

Then look at the technology. Is it helping you get there? Is it creating unnecessary work? Are there things your audience wants that you can’t provide? Are there capabilities you’re paying for but never using? Is the problem actually technology, or do you need better content, promotion, training or ownership inside the station?

Sometimes that evaluation will tell you it’s time to move from DIY to a provider. Sometimes it will tell you to change providers. Sometimes bringing things in-house makes more sense. And sometimes you’ll discover that changing services isn’t the answer at all.

Before you start shopping for another website, app, newsletter platform or digital provider, figure out what you want your audience to be able to do that they can’t easily do today. That’s the question worth answering first.