When does your new site start to look old? Does it take a month or two? A year or two? Does it matter? Here are some things to consider around why a good redesign matters.
Continuous development
Well, for better or worse, things on the internet move incredibly fast. Viewers and customers can be hyper sensitive to the presence or absence of features.
Data thieves are aware of seemingly every flaw and weakness in web technology, ready to go after your site and customers.
Programmers are intensely aware of the previous two facts and are continually creating new features, new bugs, and new bug fixes.
For these reasons, massive companies like Google, Amazon, and Netflix are always updating their sites. They define a flexible look, and then set to work making it better, faster, and safer, until a new look is needed.
All of this work carries with it many significant benefits. Every new feature is something to lure in a potential customer. The right features can easily create recurring customers.
Consider what Amazon started as, a basic ecommerce site, they've streamlined the ordering process, added convenient order tracking with notifications, and tied multiple services to one simple account.
It's also essential to maintain a good and current appearance. If your site looks and functions like something from 1995 and it's not simply a style choice with modern features, it's going to be hard to keep customers coming in.
Consider that Google, Apple, and Microsoft have all made massive efforts to redesign their products under a newer, flatter design instead of the old rounded, highlighted, and drop shadowed fake 3D look. This sets the precedent for what consumers want and right now, that's a flat, functional design.
Lastly, your site has to tie together it's features and appearance to deliver an amazing user experience. Your users want everything to make sense and just work. They don't want to go hunting for menus and settings or wait on the site to load. They need a good experience. These benefits make happy customers, happy customers are paying and repeating customers.
A blank canvas
Luckily, it doesn't take a seven figure budget to make good designs, it's just a matter of having a vision and putting it in motion, and crowdsourcing web designers on DesignCrowd can help you get it over the line.
The biggest challenge is going to be figuring out what exactly to make. Your site is a blank canvas. When the designer starts, it's an empty file named Index.HTML (probably). The sky may be the limit, but you need to make a site your customers want to use.
Figure out what your site is missing now that it didn't have before. Figure out how your customers use the site and what would make their lives even easier.
For a number of older ecommerce designs, the absolute feature to add is mobile compatibility. If you try to access a site from 2005 on your five inch smart phone, you're going to be in for a bad time. You'll spend more time pinch, zooming, squinting and mashing the wrong buttons than getting work done.
Major sites today have what is termed a Responsive Design. They respond to the device they're on and format themselves appropriately. They can make good use of the site from their laptop at their desk, their tablet on the train, and their phone under their desk during a boring lecture.
Other features such as better search bars, extensive tech articles, live chats, and customer forums can all contribute to the right business (but not every business). Anything that makes the customer's life easier is going to contribute to a good UX and make customers more likely to return.
Mobile optimized sites make life easier for your customers.
Case Study: Remaking a site
Let's look at what this means in practice. A little over a year ago, I did some work to help Procure Inc update their site. The original site was designed in 2008, and it looked like it.
The old design was a little messy, it had what we'd now consider a dated faux-3D look with drop shadows everywhere, it didn't adjust itself for mobile devices, it wasted a ton of screen space, and it didn't do too much to show off the company or the products.
There wasn't even space to hold special offers or run any other customer outreach. The design got the job done, but it had some pretty large flaws that probably sent a few customers off to other sites.
You can tell, this wasn't made yesterday.
The owner had a vision for how he wanted to redo the site. He wanted it to be clean and modern, have room for call to actions and advertisements about the company, easier access to products via a new categorization system presented on the first page, front page access to all the brands, and retention of key features from the old design.
The final design ultimately achieved all this and managed it on a budget. A website redesign price could've been really expensive, but by having a plan and exact feature set, everything stayed on budget.
This feels like a brand-new car. It’s fresh and current.
The new site went live about a year ago and has received positive feedback from its customers and the owner himself. The new site is just faster with its new layout. The inclusion of responsive design has also made the site easier to use for contractors and maintenance staff who can now conveniently order from wherever they are.
The website redesign was undertaken with a fairly strict budget in mind and with that, it achieved a lot for the cost.
Now, there is one downside to this example and a bit of advice for you when you do your redesign: Collect data for a before and after comparison.
Many traffic-ratings sites only get data for sites with ads or are only useful for fairly large businesses. You should collect data from your Domain Registrar, Web Host, and/or Google's Webmaster Tools directly before and after the update.
I attempted to gather hard data for Procure Inc, only to find no service provider had substantial records and Google only provided search records from December 2015.
The only other way to evaluate the impact of the redesign is with the impact on sales. Unfortunately, there are more factors effecting sales than just the website.
Procure Inc provided me with this statement about their redesign: "Since we rolled out the redesign last April, I've noticed our web traffic has increased greatly (230 visitors/day) and our web related sales are up 35-40% since the same period ended last year."
For a small business, this is a pretty massive increase. Traffic is up, and consequently, sales are up. The redesign met every possible goal it could have.
The process of finding and ordering products has been streamlined. The site has a more credible and professional appearance. Ultimately, this makes the company that much more competitive and able to get orders.
What benefits can you expect in your own redesign?
Well, the sky is the limit. It's your canvas. You could draw in more customers, go for new types of customers, optimize your site for new types of products or new types of sales, and much more.
There's an army of coders and designers out there ready to help you discover what you need and how to get there. If your site feels dated, lacks features, or doesn't work with mobile devices, consider getting started on your new look and design.
Want More?
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Tips On How To Create The Best UI/UX For Your Website
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Website Conversion Tips - 10 Ideas to Increase Conversion Rates
Written by Sam Costa on Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Sam is a freelance 3D generalist and video editor. His work has lead him to experiences with the cutting edge of production technology with tools like Avid, Maya, and Renderman. When he’s not working on a new effect, he’s researching game design or enjoying a good documentary.