Innovating and updating a website doesn’t always have to be an epic redesign effort. Periodic aesthetic changes can keep your site looking fresh and your visitors coming back. Here are seven sizzling suggestions to kindle your creativity.

Think small
Sometimes small changes make big differences. Updating the background color or image can freshen things up in a matter of minutes. The same can be said for header images, icon sets, navigation and even table and button styles.

Put some mega in your dropdowns
Usability experts rightly pointed out the ills of traditional dropdown navigation for ages. Gone are the painful mouse acrobatics required to follow a fly out menu three levels deep. Now we have user-friendly “mega” dropdowns that go easy on users and make finding content buried in a site as easy as a mouse click.

Add interactivity to home page billboards and image rotators
Trade in your stale home page slideshow for an element that gives some control back to the user. Today’s home pages feature “sliders” that let users pick which feature to browse. These features aren’t limited to images anymore – you can embed form fields, search boxes and text too. And because they run on javascript, they’re mobile device friendly. If you have a content management system (CMS), we can even make it easy to update this feature and add freshness to your home page in minutes!

Build a bigger foot(er)
Single line footers with company name, address, phone and copyright are so 2009. Use the bottom portion of your page to include helpful links, a mini sitemap, links to social media profiles and more. Repeat your email newsletter subscription form here too – redundancy can improve conversion rates. Footer updates can make a big splash because they affect every page on your site. Luckily, though, most sites have a universal footer, so webmasters need only implement a site-wide “find and replace” to rid a site of less fashionable footers.

Add Search functionality
Incorporating a quality search feature on a website has become much more affordable and easy to implement in recent years. For $100 per year, most companies can display Google-powered search results for their site.

Widen the layout
How can we tell the age of a website? Often the pixel width reveals the prevailing web design (and monitor resolution) at the time of development. If your site is skinny, widening the overall layout will provide instant real estate for additional content and larger images and bring you back from the age of jive.

Take up the accordion
Some content comes in a format that’s just begging to be compressed and stretched. As with home page sliders, “accordions” allow users to expand and collapse items, adding a degree of interactivity. From a practical perspective, they preserve context and keep an entire process on a single page rather than disconnecting individual elements.

Take a mobile audit.
Open Google Analytics and head over to Visitors > Mobile > Mobile Devices. Change the timeframe to January 1 to the present and Graph by month. Are mobile visits significant and growing? Are mobile visits contributing their share of goal conversions or revenues? If not, grab a mobile device and experience your website as a mobile user. Turn off wifi. Try to complete basic tasks. Find a phone number. Complete a form. Does your site require the Flash plug-in that isn’t supported by the device? Do images take a while to load?

Check your email newsletter.
Your email service provider may provide an “Email Client Usage” report. Check the prevalence of the iPhone OS to get a sense of your audience’s mobile email habits. Open your most recent email newsletter on your device. Is it too wide for your screen? Are the links difficult to click? Yesterday’s text versions of newsletters are evolving into today’s mobile versions, which are light on graphics, but still include clickable links.

Consider a bare-bones mobile website.
Don’t get paralyzed by the idea of building and maintaining a full mobile copy of your 100-page website. Pick out the top pieces of content and link to the browser version for the details.

Mobile style sheets can be a lifesaver.
For database-driven sites and blogs, a mobile style sheet may allow you to serve up a mobile friendly version without duplicate content. While they may not be as flexible as a custom mobile site, they can lead to a quick win.

Consider a basic mobile advertising campaign.
For some industries and services, mobile advertising makes perfect sense. The medium is so new that it’s still a novelty for mobile users. Need to reach people when they’re out and about? Give mobile a shot. Google AdWords offers a mobile ad format and Apple recently launched its iAd platform.

Even though Kinetic is now “old enough to drive,” our 10th Anniversary Mosaic holds intrinsic value for us. In much the same way you look back to a photo album of 80’s hairstyles and loud, neon, 90’s track clothes, we look back with nostalgia on our own history. The web world is a lot like the fashion industry; what’s hot today, will be “so last week” tomorrow. But we welcome this “Red Queen” game, and remember the innocence and laughter of a bygone era. We look back and realize how far we’ve come, and look forward to the places we will go.

View the hi-resolution version.

Kinetic’s passion for accessibility and our love for video games have joined forces to allow more gamers to play one of today’s most popular interactive video games, Rock Band.

Rock Band is a video game that is available for multiple game systems. It combines drums, guitars, and microphone to allow multiple users to experience a glimpse of what it’s like to play in a rock band.

One of our clients with Lakeshore Foundation is an aspiring Rock Star who happens to be in a wheelchair. She was disappointed because the kickpedal feature on the drums cannot be disabled within the game. A team member heard of her wish and set to work on finding a more access-friendly solution.

To our knowledge, this mod hasn’t been done before, so we would like to share the process with you. Materials only cost about $20 and can be found just about anywhere. Here’s how we did it:

What you need:

• A set of cheap drumsticks (about $6 from your local music store)
• A doorbell ($4 available at Lowes or any hardware store)
• An audio Y-cable (3.5mm to 2 RCA – $5 from Target, RadioShack etc.)
• A screwdriver, set of wire stripping pliers (or anything to strip the insulation from wire)
• Electrical tape (optional)

What you do:

• Cut the two RCA connectors off the “Y” end of the cable and strip away about 1/2″ of the insulation to reveal the copper wiring (be sure to leave the 3.5mm input connected, you will plug this in the foot pedal input).
• Loosen the two screws on the inside of the doorbell and wrap one copper wire around each screw. Tighten the screws.
• The doorbell should come with two screws with which you will mount the doorbell to the bottom of one stick. You will want to play around with the positioning of the button before you screw it in. You don’t want a bunch of holes in your drumsticks!
• If you prefer, you can conceal the wire that is coming from the doorbell to the sticks by securing it with electrical tape, while you’re at it you can wrap the entire stick (except for the tip) in electrical tape for added grip…plus, it just looks cool.

Now you’re ready to rock hard. Simply unplug the foot pedal and plug in your sticks!

See it in action:

Update!
We’re humbled and flattered by the overwhelming response to this post. Check out what folks are saying at Engadget, Kotaku, Gizmodo, Joystiq, CrunchGear, Nintendo Wii Fanboy, GeekSugar, Slashgear, AbleGamers, Boxxet, Play Gadgets, The Birmingham News, and more. We’ve gone global, too! Read our article in Japanese.

If you go platinum, don’t forget us.