10 Things to consider before
having your website re-designed
1. What is the goal of the redesign?
What do you hope to accomplish? It’s always
important to have a clear understanding of your
reasons and motivations as they should impact
the decisions that you make along the way.
Without knowing these goals the project will lack
direction and you will likely wind up with a
website that still doesn’t meet your needs.
2. Is this going to be just a minor upgrade or a
complete overhaul?
A redesign could be anything from a minor facelift
to an entirely new site. Obviously the time, effort,
and cost involved will vary, but first you should
determine what types of changes are required for
you to meet your goals with the design. If a
complete redesign is done you will also want to
consider to what extent the new design should
resemble the old design. If visitors are coming
back to the site, chances are you will want them
to notice the new design without feeling like
they’ve never been to your site before.
3. What aspects of the current design are most
effective?
Most likely there are some things about the
current design that work very well, and these may
be aspects that you would like to keep or
incorporate into the new design. It’s a good idea
to make a simple list of your likes and dislikes to
help with decisions on the new design.
4. What aspects of the current design are not
effective?
Building on point #3, if you are redesigning the
site you are bound to want to get rid of some
specific aspects of the website or the design. Are
there some characteristics of the design that do
not accurately portray your business to new
visitors?
5. Who are your target users?
During any design process you never want to
lose focus on the visitors. By knowing who you
are targeting and how you can meet their needs,
you will be on your way to building an effective
website. What style of design are your users
going to like?
6. How can the website be more user-friendly?
Improving the functionality and usability of a
website is always a good thing. It’s pointless to
spend time and money on a redesign that looks
great but simply isn’t user-friendly.
7. Does the logo/branding need to be changed
or updated?
Most likely the website will include some form of
a logo or branding. Are these items still up-todate
and will they function effectively with a new
design? If your logo is out-of-date and not
attractive, a new design may not do much good if
it is still using the same old logo.
8. Should the color scheme change or remain
the same?
In point #2 I mentioned that most of the time you
will want to keep the website at least looking
familiar to repeat visitors. Using a similar color
scheme is one of the best ways to accomplish
this. A lot of times it can be a good idea to make
some minor changes to the color scheme, such
as changing shades of colors or adding a few
new colors, just to give the site a fresh look.
9. What screen resolutions are visitors using?
It’s important to know how your visitors are going
to be viewing the site. A program such as Google
Analytics can easily give you this information.
Obviously, a fixed-width design should take into
consideration the typical screen resolutions of
visitors.
10. What connection speed are visitors using?
Knowing the connection speed will help you to
know what types of elements you can include in
the design without causing hardships for the
average visitor.
Great post! I'm an internet consultant, i work with businesses who are about to spend on web work to get them the right quote, understand what they ACTUALLY need and to get specifications that are right for their requirements. Typically the companies i work with are about to spend over £5k, i always say that my costs will be covered by the savings on getting the right quotes and that's typically 10% of the project budget as it turns out.
There are too many companies that don't get what they really need which is why they use me.
The Ops thread was a dump and run despite it being sort of partly helpful by churning out information that is already out there from so many sources its not funny.
Interested in being contacted about actual needs though, I design for purpose rather than the sake of it. So in tune with what they really need.
Redesigning a website can be a very involved process, and it is important to properly plan and consider the necessary factors that will make or break the redesign. Here is a quick look at 21 factors that you should be contemplated.
I've looked over it. I think it completely pointless set of 10 things to consider. Can you get ten things that are less relevant than what is posted?
First and most obvious question, should be, "What is wrong with the current design?". Naturally someone somewhere wants a new design. Why? Make no assumptions. Then step down from there.
7. Does the logo/branding need to be changed
or updated?
Most likely the website will include some form of
a logo or branding. Are these items still up-todate
and will they function effectively with a new
design? If your logo is out-of-date and not
attractive, a new design may not do much good if
it is still using the same old logo.
Re-branding by changing the logo is a very expensive process for most companies - business cards, compliments slips, letter headers, office/shop signage, vehicles etc are all going to cost money to have redone with the new logo. Not to mention that there may also be costs in getting people to recognise your re-branding. (At least if people arrive to a new site and it has your old logo, they might still recognise it).
The website is probably the most simple marketing item to change the logo on should it be required in the future and can be done for next to nothing.
So if you were to consider re-branding the company, the website would more likely become a part of the re-branding (rather than the website dictating a new logo)
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David Shaw - Affordable Point of Sale Material for retail. Follow me on twitter?
Which re-iterates my point of the OP just doing a dump and run, he only has 3 posts since April, and this post of his is hardly convincing imo.
When does a logo become out of date? Some of the big classics have been going for well over 50-100 years, people have been brought up with them, are they out of date?.
I've looked over it. I think it completely pointless set of 10 things to consider. Can you get ten things that are less relevant than what is posted?
First and most obvious question, should be, \"What is wrong with the current design?\". Naturally someone somewhere wants a new design. Why? Make no assumptions. Then step down from there.
Often its the business proposition that sucks not the website. Get the proposition right first, then spend your money on design.
Great list of items to consider. We are about a month away from totally ripping down one of our major sites and building it from the ground up, the right way. This will be a good list of questions to send to the different departments so we will have better understanding of what they want the first time around.
Yea I was probably being a bit negative there, oops was in a bad state lol
Having said that though, I'm not far wrong on numerous things and I still stand by what I said in a positive mood this time
Before you do anything - check your stats (Google Analytics). There's a wealth of knowledge you can use to determine content which converts, keywords and phrases which bring traffic and content which makes the visitor bounce.
Until you've got a gameplan for monetization and have done your due diligence regarding your market, what it wants and how it wants it I recommend not spending a penny on design.
- Unless you've got traffic which you can convert into sales methodically - you lose.
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10 Things to consider before a website re-design
