When Is the Right Time to Redesign?

[Diamond Dave]

If you run a website, chances are you often wonder whether it is the right time to do a total redesign of the layout of your website. Here are some points to consider: Are you thinking of a redesign just for the sake of it? If you answered yes to that question, it is not yet the right time to do a redesign. Remember, a design serves a specific purpose. If you are not sure whether to do an overhaul of your site, keep in mind that your current design might have a specific purpose that you might not know about. You will lose that function if you do a redesign.

On the other hand, if your website has had the same website design since 1990, perhaps it is high time to do a redesign. The last thing you would ever want to happen to your site is when visitors leave your site without taking a look at your content just because the design is old fashioned. If this is your case, here are some points to ponder before doing a redesign.

Redesigning your website is like performing plastic surgery on it. Your website loses its current identity (for the better or worse) and your regular visitors might not recognise your new design at first glance. You risk losing them just because they thought they landed on the wrong page. Hence, it is very important that you retain a characteristic feature from your old layout. Perhaps it is the logo of your site; perhaps it is the same text style for the title for your site. To play it safe, put a poll on your site to let your visitors do the talking. If they think it is necessary for the website to have a fresh look, give it to them!

[marigot]

Redesigning a website is a risky proposition for sure. I made the mistake of redesigning a wedding website to bring it up to date in wedding fashion and colors.

This was a huge mistake. When I brought the site over, many things went missing and you are probably asking how that could happen when the html is the same. I thought that it couldn't affect my traffic but it did.

I noticed that when I used a new design, my html did not land in the same places. Subsequently, the search engines were picking up different descriptions. Copyrights were suddenly getting indexed and when I changed some links to newer information, the order was changed on the page.

I learned the hard way that updating the site just for looks is not always the smartest thing to do.