Should you redesign or not?

As a web designer myself, I get asked a lot by clients if they should consider doing a redisgn of their website? I often find myself telling them that it would depend on a lot of factors.

The number one question I have to ask them, is WHY?

If you are redesigning to just redesign, you need to consider a few things first. Your current website might be providing good traffic or selling things, there's no need to redsign if you are currently seeing profits or traffic. If you do redesign you can possibly lose that affect and that would result in you losing sales and traffic.

How long has your website been online?

If your site is over say 4 years old definitely do a redesign. Your website is going to be old looking and unattractive. You need to make sure that your website is uptodate and has all the necessary functions, as the internet changes regularly it is important to keep up on this.

Some tips if you are going to redesign your website, make sure you do this offline and not online. Build your website and save it to your hard drive while you update it this way visitors won't even know that your website is being redesigned.

For your customers send out an email and let them know that you are redesigning the website and get their input on what they think or would like to see on your site. Remember you are in this business for them.

Another tip you can do is to put a "Under Construction" on your site, state that your website is currently being redesigned and to please check back again. If you have a targeted date on when your site will be done, by all means put the date on the site so others will know when to check back. You can also add a bookmark us tag on your site and ask them to book mark you and to check back often.

You can take a look at other websites that are in the same market as yours and see how their websites compare to yours. Do their websites look fresher and newer than yours? What do they have on their website that you do not, but could implement.

These are just some of the ideas to consider before just jumping in and doing a redesign on your website. You might be surprised that your site is fine the way it is and your customers like it. If this is the case ask them why and take that into consideration also. You don't want to make things harder for visitors or customers, keep it plain and simple

Visit Lauras blog at
http://www.laurasbasicstowebdesign.com/webdesignblog
to learn more about website design