When should you redesign your website?

At this point of time most of my clients whom I am working with have websites which they developed or got developed for their company few years back. Right now they are really not sure whether they should go for a redesign for the website or not.

There is also an old saying which says "Don't fix it, if it ain't broken". Let's take the example of Google.com - The site has looked pretty much the same since it was launched in late 90's. But, still not getting an impact for the old age design the revenue of Google has grown from $439 Million in 2002 to $ 10 billion in 2007. In January 2007, Google captured 53.7% of all US Searches while Yahoo and Microsoft MSN combined only grabbed 31.6%.

But, most of the sites are not in the same business model as Google. Many sites need redesign and rebranding because they have low business metrics like lead generation and sales.

Therefore, here are few of the indicators I am mentioning which one should consider to decide on the website redesign.

1. Flat or Falling Business Metrics

Web analytics can provide an understanding of how a site adds value to the business bottom line. Metrics to watch typically include number of visitors, home page abandonment rates and, for sitesthat sell or generate leads, conversion rates and average order size. If key performance indicators (KPIs) like these drop while comparable KPIs in other channels — such as retail locations and phone centers — rise, it likely means that there are fundamental problems with the site.

2. New / Changed Brand Identity or Brand Positioning

In case the company has rebranded itself or changed there brand identity/positioning it is important to change the layout, language and imagery to provide consistent support for the new brand attributes.

When IBM sold its PC division to Chinese manufacturer Lenovo, the ThinkPad brand changed hands and the ThinkPad site became a confusing mix of three different brand identities. Though the current site is much improved, Lenovo still hasn’t fully resolved the confusion. In contrast, whenVeriSign repositioned itself from a provider of domain names to a vendor that sells “intelligent infrastructure services,” the company redesigned the VeriSign Web site to make the new brand positioning clear.

3. Product Or Line-Of-Business Expansion

Launching a new product or going into a new line of business can change the way that customers,partners, and internal stakeholders think about a company. Depending on how extreme that change is, it might require a site overhaul, but it doesn’t always.

For example, when computer maker Dell moved into consumer electronics by offering productssuch as MP3 players and televisions, the company made just a few basic design changes to its homepage and menu structure. Dell hasn’t had to redesign its site because the stretch from computers to home electronics isn’t that great. In contrast, when Microsoft decided to challenge Google head on in the search market, it did so by launching Live.com, which features a streamlined design that looksmore like Google.com than MSN.com. That’s because Microsoft needed a look and feel that would help differentiate Live.com from the MSN site, which also offers search capabilities but with a different underlying technology.

4. Merger, Acquisition, Or Restructuring

A merger, acquisition, or major restructuring can bring massive change to a company that calls for a dramatic change to its site. When Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq in 2002, both enterprises had huge sites that sold and serviced multiple, often competing, product lines. Offering a complete view of the combined giants meant, at a minimum, revising the HP site’s information architecture to include many thousands of new pages. The company wisely made the best of the required overhaul and also updated its design across the board to improve usability and introduce a new look for thenew Hewlett-Packard (see Figure). When an acquired company has a superior site design, overhauling the new parent’s site becomesa win-win opportunity.

The overwhelmingly successful September 2003 launch of Macromedia’s redesigned site set the stage for what would happen when Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005. Within about a year, the sites had been merged and the Adobe site took on much of the look and feel of the Macromedia site.

Here is HP's pre-merger figure:

HP's Post-Merger Design Figure:

5. Technology Platform Upgrade

When underlying technology changes, site owners must often modify their designs to accommodatea new enterprise software package or approach to page coding (see Figure). Ironically, this unwelcome gift of extra work can be a blessing in disguise because it creates an opportunity to improve the customer experience. For example, when pages must get recoded to accommodate a switch from static HTML to CSS, there’s no reason to again reconstruct page layouts designed five years ago.

6. Navigation System Breakdown

This generally happens when you are updating the content on your website continously and the navigation items have become too long to accomodate your content. The content becomes difficult to locate and sometimes most of the links get broken due to the content structure not consistent as it was conceptualized while creating the site.