Wrong Reasons to Have a Website Redesign

I wrote an article about reasons when a website redesign may be feasible. You may read it about it here.

This post will cover reasons when a website redesign is NOT such a good idea.

When I consult with my clients about having a website, I like to always use the analogy of building a house. You have a vision of how you want your house to look like, that’s the overall website, then you create the rooms you want in that house, these are the tabs/pages on your website. Then you decorate and furnish it, that’s the content of your website. There’s a lot of details that go in between, but pretty much, that’s the whole gist of it. We can talk more about website creation on another post.

For now, I made a list below of when having a website redesign is not a good idea.

1) You have a new corporate look and feel.

Really, just because you want to change the company culture doesn’t mean you need to change your website too. Concentrate your efforts on the people. They’re the ones that make the website work.

2) You’re tired of the old website.

Seriously. You need to ask yourself, WHY. That feeling of blah-ness about your website may be an underlying feeling for something else. Could it be that you’re not attracting new visitors? Sales are not as good as you’re hoping? No one is subscribing to your newsletter or downloading your latest whitepaper? Focus on those. Pick one issue and work on it. It may be as simple as adding social media share buttons. Or creating off-page links to your site to bring people in. Those are simple things to do. Don’t do a major overhaul of redesigning a website hoping that will solve problems. Many times, I have found that advising my clients of putting their energy and doing a little work of socializing online have changed traffic to their sites.

3) It’s been 12 months since the last redesign.

OK, another good point. Spend your time in doing #2 above, then you won’t have to get busy with this one. 😉

4) The design department wants to redesign the website.

Don’t get me wrong. I love design myself, but let’s work on a new marketing piece that the design department can take part in. How about that email blast? Can they design a piece of something catchy and add more visual content on there? People tend to read more if there’s something visually attractive about it.

5) The CEO wants a website redesign.

Look at #2 above. Maybe that will make him/ her happy!

6) You want your website to look like ABC Company’s website.

I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but do you really want to give your competition that much of an upper hand? If you go back and think about #2 above, they may be the ones going green with envy.

Hope I’ve given you enough thoughts for today about some not so good reasons to do a website redesign. What do you think of them? Can you add more to this list? Would love to hear your thoughts. Or if you’ve done some of the above and have had success stories with them, please share below. Would love to hear those too!

Have a good one!

‘Til next time….
Jocelyn Wilhelm, JW Social Media CEO