What to change and what to keep during the website redesign process

Categories: Digital Production

Posted by: Alex Demeshkin

Website redesign is a thrill for some, a nightmare for others, and a challenge for most. Some decide to redesign too often as they bask in the busy and optimistic nature of this typically exciting project. Others try to hold on to their beloved old site version of which they are so proud of. As it usually goes, both are wrong. Website redesign is a necessary procedure ordered by the technology and online user behavioral evolution. Ideally the mission for each redesign is to create a beautiful, simple and usable site that would attract, retain and convert visitors into users and users into customers. So, if you succeeded in creating an attractive site that’s easy to use and that delivers desired results on par or better than your competition – you should be set for good. That would be true if the aesthetic taste, fashion, new trends, and behaviors didn’t evolve cyclically like they do.

Keep the core, change the flare

You have to remain consistent in your brand and your mission, but you can always remain hip and edgy. Bunch of empty words, you would think. It would be if we didn’t explain what we mean by hip and edgy. Your design, content, variety, and online tools need to meet the expectation of the sophisticated online user representing your target audience.

Do's and Don'ts

• Do not ever cut down your content. Update and expand instead. Remember, content is king.
• Do change your navigation for the best possible architecture to assure easy access to most important content.
• If you are not updating (overhauling your whole brand) do not change your logo, fonts, and colors. Brand overhaul is a completely different subject and is a much bigger picture than website redesign. Note, if you do a brand overhaul, start with your website as it would be the easiest to measure the results on.
• Do introduce new ways to engage your users. Widgets, ratings, comments, games, RSS and video are things that are often missing on the older websites and can help you gain the market share.
• Do not redesign too often or too seldom. 2 years would be an average productive website lifespan. At this pace you don’t confuse your visitors with too many drastic changes at the time and you still keep up with the rest of the world.
• Do introduce flexibility and scalability into your website. More about this in the future posts.

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