Summary: If you’re tired of your website’s design and you think you NEED a redesign remember that users spend 5 hours a year looking at a website at best. Successful user interfaces are designed to improve functionality of the familar design and evolve the user experience. Taking a cue from Amazon, incremental changes to the website’s design just might be the best approach.

Lately, we have had people requesting information on eye-tracking for their latest website redesign. At first glance I thought it was great that companies were getting customers involved.  Then I started thinking about what brought on the redesign project, and as analyst I wondered if these companies have set strategic goals that will not only measure the cost of doing the redesign but successful measure user’s satisfaction (example KPI: decrease cost per new customer by 5%).

I have seen and heard of many website redesigns that unfortunately were trying to “Keep up with the Joneses”, embarking on a website redesign only to keep up with the competitors. I think this happens more often than not. If five out of your six competitors have made their website look better, fresher, and more au courant then I am pretty sure a request for a redesign will be coming soon. This “me too” syndrome can simply  come from being over exposed to the website and feel like the website design is dated and tired. I recently read Jakob Nielsen’s post on Fresh vs. Familiar Redesign (a must read in my opinion), he mentions that the number of “exposure hours” usually starts the redesign off on the wrong foot.

When embarking a redesign project  people often forgot about the two most important things:

1). How will this help the user’s key usability attributes (learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction)
Users usually spend no more than 2-3 minutes on a website and at best spend five hours a year looking at a website. When visiting websites or using applications, they don’t spend their time analyzing or admiring the design. They focus their attention on the task.  Changing the design purely to “stay fresh” vs design that enhances usability results in expensive changes that, after all is said and done, don’t really help the business.

2). How will the company’s KPI’s (key performance indicators) be redefined for success
The analytics team and the design team may still  work in silos, but to justify a redesign these teams should open their doors to discuss the purpose of a redesign and clearly define how it will help increase business goals. Understanding the current state of your website’s web traffic data and feedback from users will help you monitor the success of a new site architecture, navigation, and/or design.

When it comes to redesign, being au courant isn’t always better. Major overhauls often generate a lot of resistance and can even upset your most fervent users. That’s why some major brands on the web, such as Amazon, don’t redesign their websites anymore. In contrast, they make incremental improvements that create designs that really pay off for the organization (most changes can be implemented quickly by your team and cost less). In the short-term the design gets done, but the team ends up doing it all over again months down the road.

Where Experiences Come First

Sure, people make a snap judgment about a website based on its look and feel, but keep your KPI’s in mind. If your user satisfaction ratio is up then establishing a new site design might not be worth the cost. However, if a major redesign is on the horizon suggest usability or eye-tracking testing on wireframes or prototypes. These tests can help reduce the need for  risky major re-launches. Simply focus on the areas that need improvement.
User First loves hearing about your experiences. Please let us know if you are planning a website redesign or have gone through one recently!

Other insightful posts that I found on website redesign:
Seth Godin Blog: Things to ask before you redo your website
Grokdotcom Blog: Website Redesign Roundup
User Interface Engineering Blog: Thinking in the Right Terms- 7 Components for a Successful Website Redesign

Tags: usability, website analytics, website redesign

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.