A new vs. evolved web site design

Any business which has had a web presence for several years will begin to question whether it is time to rethink the design of their web site. The web moves forward at a blistering pace, as web sites and applications become more user friendly with fresh and simplistic designs. The evolution seems to be taking us towards a state in which web sites feel more like desk top applications, with real time updates, minimal page refreshes, and a greater UI (user interface). So, the management of a web site may phone up their design team and talk about a completely new design for their web site to modernise the look. This may be a flawed approach.

Think like a user/customer

When considering any changes to your web site it is vital you put yourself in the place of your web site users. How would they react to such changes? Would it improve their experience? Would they welcome the changes? Does it make their life easier?

The important point here is the management team will look at and use the web site for many hours per week. When you view the same web site design for countless hours, over the course of a couple of years, you begin to grow bored of it. This is not the same for your users, however. Unless you have an extremely busy web site, a person may come to your web site a couple of times per month, and will not grow tired of the design at anywhere near the rate of the management team.

Take a small business in Salisbury which sells cards as an example. Their busiest time of the year is December, with the run up to Christmas, and during this time their online shop attracts more visitors than at any other part of the year. Many of the people who buy online are repeat customers; local people who like to support their local business. This means the web site is likely visited one or two times during the year by the majority of the customers.

Complete redesign or gradual changes?

Most people who visit a web site like to be able to perform the task they set out to do as easily and as quickly as possible. Repeat visitors to a web site may become angry after a complete redesign, as the usual way in which they do things on your web site is disturbed. People generally do not like change. This is why subtle and gradual changes to improve usability may be the preferred choice. Many large scale web sites have followed such a path, such as Amazon.

It would be recommended to start your web site off with a good design in the first place, and then gradually change the design to improve your user’s experience. Not all web sites start off in this manner however, so sometimes it may be best to just follow through with a complete redesign if the current design is insufficient.

The card shop in Salisbury may therefore think of ways in which to improve their current web site, and gradually introduce these features for the benefit of their customers. For example, instead of being taken to the shopping cart page after clicking the buy button on their e-commerce web site, a user can now click on the buy button and remain on the same page, whilst a small shopping cart is updated and displayed to the right of the screen.

Next, the colour scheme of the web site may be revised and changed. This will not interrupt how people use the web site, but it is a small step towards a new and modern look, allowing for each change to be monitored, gauging the visitors’ reactions.

When a redesign is a better idea

On the other hand, if the shop was in a situation in which it attracted minimal orders, it may be worth considering a full redesign of the shop to improve sales. People may be put off by an unprofessional design and not feel safe using their credit card on a web site which does not look professional. There may also be a point in time when the number of changes and modifications made to the web site calls for a redesign to properly structure all the features of the web site in an easy manner for the visitors.

What’s right for your web site?

If you would like us to look at your web site and recommend how to improve your users experience please contact us. We are a professional team of web site designers in Salisbury, and have produced many professional web sites since we were established in 2001.

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