The Right and Wrong Approaches to Website Re-Design

26 September 2007 - By Sean Fishlock

I couldn't count the number of times I have I heard new customers who ask us to redesign their website to ignore their existing site, to not waste time looking and that they want to start completely fresh. Sure, your site may be terrible and you naturally don't want to get the same thing, but there are real reasons why this the wrong approach.

The point of re-designing a website is to learn from mistakes and find the things that are worth keeping. Afterall, no website would have been created without some basic approach to your needs, whether formal or informal. It can be a subtle process or an overhaul, but should never be a clean slate. Here are some useful tips before you start.

When is the right time ?

Understanding the timing of a web redesign is crucial. If you're reading this, then you won't need me to tell you how much it may be costing you to hang on to your ageing site and you are probably ready for redesign. But many don't and hang on to their site way too long. If you don't know where your website stands, perhaps it is worth reading our article "Fight the signs of website ageing".

How Frequently Should you redesign a website ?

How often a website requires design differs from organisation to organisation, but 2 years without any change would be a long time in anybody's book. Some companies with lots of money think the more often the better. But in overzealously and overfrequently redesigning they can sometimes lose track of why along the way. It is important to keep a redesign in context of its history so you don't forget the bigger picture. Timing of a website redesign is best left to the triggers of business change. A changed company name, visual identity and logo is a clear indicator, changed target market is another. You should anticipate these changes as best as possible, and start the redesign process well early of them, as there is much work to be done in between.

Why is my current/old site still relevant ?

History is also important to give your website users a sense of continuance and familiarity. Your website is key to your brand. It should evolve and adapt to your business gradually. I sometimes wonder why some supermarket products radically change their packaging. Maybe they think it will generate new sales, but I can't tell you how many times I have stopped buying a product, not because I no longer want to buy it, but simply because they changed their package and I can no longer find it in the aisles. Unless your website is 100% new business, you need to be very careful with your redesign, especially if what is inside the box hasn't really changed all that much. People get used to the things they like about your site. They will even familiarise themselves with some of its faults and quirks, adapt to them and get used to doing things a certain way, especially when it has been around a while.

What about Content and Functionality ?

Because many sites strongly tie content to graphics, there can be a blurry line between website re-design and re-development.

An important long term decision in the future of your website is investing in a content management system. A proper content management system enables you to separate design from content. A key benefit to this is that you can apply a new design without drastically rewriting the content. If you change content management systems during a redesign (to a decent CMS like Freestyler), some allow you to export your content for use in other systems. In some cases this can be a process of copy and paste, in others, you can readily exchange information in formats like XML. Some people like to take the opportunity to take stock and rewrite content during a redesign. You do need to form a strategy for this, as wholesale changes can cause links with search engines such as Google to become broken.

Also, you need to consider that content can still be relevant long after it is current. Archived content builds up over time and is important for search engines and to users looking for historical information. This information has a place on your new site.

You also need to consider carefully new content functions you will be adding to the website and how they will effect the user experience.

How should you approach a website re-design project ?

Read on ....

We are big fans of something called heuristic evaluation, which is a technique for crique of websites agains a set of design guidelines and strategies. Over the years, we have developed our own guidelines and strategies for this, and as a result, we regularly hit the nail on the head in redesign projects. Our success with website redesigns is one of the biggest reasons why many of our customers return for more.

In fact, we even sometimes do this type of evaluation for clients who we've never designed their website or don't even end up using us for their projects. Believe it or not, this can be one of the best approaches and some companies spend more on this process than on the redesign project itself. Other than the points raised above, one of the key reasons being that it helps to have someone outside of your organisation to provide a fresh prespective. Many things including internal politics can effect the way you present your website and many of these can adversely effect the site and your customer experience often without you even knowing it. Even a web designer's previous experience with your website can give them assumptions and preconceptions about what the site should do, causing them to may overlook relevent changes to your organisation. And you'd be suprised how many customers specifically in the past would tell us to ignore their website then down the track say "but what about this feature which was on our old site ?". Fortunately, we have developed methods to catch these things as well as adapt changes to our customer's businesses so that we know the right time and approach to redesign a website. Have a look at our online portfolio. 90% of these websites are 2nd or 3rd generation, and our proven methodology in redesigning them keeps them current.

An important and often overlooked step in this process, from a user-centred point of view, involves finding out what your users think of your current site and how they see it can be improved. What we typically do is create a website user survey. We are such strong believers of this technique that for larger sites, we offer this as a free service using a temporarily host Freestyler Forms module which is great at obtaining this kind of data. This way, we can provide a basic pro forma questionnaire, as we have formulated some of the best questions to ask to extract key resonses. Furthermore, the survey can be customised for your particular circumstances. You'll need to compile your responses and make sense out of them, something we also sometimes assist customers to do, then input these findings back into your redesign strategy.

I hope this has helped you think about some of the issues to consider when redesigning, and before you begin your next website redesign project, make sure you talk to us.

Comments

By Scott Davey on 25 September 2007 at 10:26 PM

I'd like to add a few extra points about site redesigns at Datalink.

A website is at-once a communications medium and a software application, hence designing for the web requires a multi-skilled approach: creative skills are needed for visual appeal, message delivery and brand positioning; analytical skills need to effectively structure content, enhance usability and integrate with business plans and goals; and technical skills need to deliver the solution to strict web standards and browser compatibility. Plus, the design process needs to balance all this with the desires and expectation of the project stakeholders.

As a director of Datalink I have recently been looking for additional web designers to grow our company, and this has given me a feel for the current approaches used by other web developers. It is clear to me that most web developers are still using old-school approaches with the goal of simply making the stakeholders happy, rather than considering the multiple facets of a modern website. As a result, no matter how visually impressive these sites, they often fail to achieve any return for the business.

As a clear point of difference, Datalink involve our senior consulting team in every design to ensure we formally capture the correct requirements, we understand the user, and we consider the multiple facets of a modern website.

Quite simply, this approach delivers websites that work.