Before You Start Redesigning Your Web Site . . .
Last week a friend of mine began redesign work for his company's web site. It will be the second redesign of his company's web site in the last two years. His reasoning for the redesign is based on an unhappiness with their current design and a lack of user interaction. In the year since their last web site redesign, and to the best of their knowledge, not one person has called or emailed to inquire about their services. Yet, people are spending a significant time on their web site. My friend started to make some critical redesign changes before even considering one of his most important redesign assets, web statistics. There are too many companies that don't take the time to consider their own web statistics before diving into a redesign of their own web site. It is critical for you to consider you web statistics.
Taking Stock of the Situation
A review of web statistics will give you important information that will assist in making decisions in the web site redesign process. Your web statistics are like writing on the wall. Take the time to carefully decipher the message. You can save your company money and time by analyzing what users have done in the past. A few years ago I was involved in a usability and redesign project that decreased the size of a web site from over 150 pages to less than 20. By analyzing our client's web statistics we could analyze critical metrics. Initially, the client expressed concern for a significant reduction in the size of their web site. In the end the smaller and more streamlined web site resulted in a significant increase in traffic.
Getting an Outside Perspective
I've always been a big proponent of companies getting outside advice on their web sites. A big challenge for companies, especially upper management, is separating personal desires from objectivity in the web design process. Many companies insist on spending thousands of dollars and massive amounts of time for unjustified web site desires that bring zero return on investment. If you are consider a redesign of your web site consider hiring an outside web developer as a consultant to review your web site. They don't need to do the actual redesign of your site. But an objective outside opinion and insight can prove to be tremendously helpful for any redesign.
It doesn't make good business sense to start redesigning something before carefully looking at the past. As long as you can look at your web statistics objectively, you can learn a tremendous amount in assist you with planning for the future.
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