I recently stumbled upon a site I used to frequent back in college. It hadn’t changed a bit! It sure did bring back a lot of memories, but then I started thinking. Is that really good?

The feeling of nostalgia was good, but other than that, I wouldn’t want to visit it again, there was nothing “new” about it. This is a trap that many people fall into. Once they find a formula that works, they stick too it! But if you take a look at some of the big names out there, you’ll see that they didn’t stick to it..they decided to change!

Ok, you may be think thats all fine for website developers, but how can a webhost “change”? Well there are plenty of ways you can change, lets talk about a few here:

Your Website

To many, your website will be the face of your company. Though we’d all like our faces to stay the same all our lives, we wouldn’t want to be stuck with just one expression.

One of the easiest plan to follow is to come up with a new theme for each season. And don’t forget the holidays, depending on the type of customers you are trying to attract, this may be one of the best ways to grab their attention.

Along with the changes in your theme, you should come up with new packages or offers that will help seal the deal.

Your Servers

Though you won’t be able to change servers every season, you’d still want to make sure you upgrade your servers. As your business grows, you’ll either have to go for new servers or upgrade your current servers.

You’ll see that in 2-3 years you’ll be able to get a server with better specifications for the same rate as your current server. If you’ve not been satisfied with the support of your DC, now would be a good time to change. (Worried about a server move? Check out these posts 1, 2 )

Your Software

Make sure you constantly upgrade the software on your server. Not only will this help keep your servers secure, it will let your current customers know that you want to offer them the latest and best services out there.

New customers are going to have their sites developed on the latest software, so unless your servers can support them, you wont be able to offer them your business. Still offering your customers PHP4? There haven’t been any security fixes for PHP4 since 08-08-2008…time to change.

Hope this will help get you started with the winds of change. If you’d like to see how some of the big sites have changed since their launch, check out this article.