If you use the Internet Wayback Machine to view some of the more popular sites on the Internet, like perhaps Google or Amazon, you’ll notice an interesting phenomenon. They don’t look all that different in 1998 or 1999 than they do at present. But that seems somewhat odd, when you consider that most Web designers spend most of their time redesigning Web sites for people. But the fact of the matter is, when it comes to retaining customers, redesigns don’t work.

Redesigns rely on the principle that whatever is on the site at present is so absolutely horrible that no customer is finding anything on it. In fact, if a Web site is getting any page views at all, chances are good that a major redesign will at best generate a lot of complaint email from customers or at worst drop those page views significantly.

People don’t like change. When a Web site they are comfortable with changes, it means that the reader has to go and re-read the entire site to find what they were used to finding easily and without trouble. In fact, if you watch someone going to a Web site she visits regularly, they will actually do things like move their mouse in preparation of the page loading. For example, if the main page has links to comics in the upper right, and that’s what she reads first, the reader will load the main page, and then move her mouse up to the upper right, even before the page has started loading. If you redesign the page and move the comics link to the middle or the lower left or (heaven forbid!) remove it completely from the page, you’ll both annoy and alienate those readers who are comfortable where it is.
You may also feel the need for changing the way you have been organizing your certain files in a specific directory or you may also want to alter the filenames of your web pages so that they represent their contents in a better manner. But you may lose out on popularity of your web pages by changing your URLs and site structure as search engines will remove your old web pages from their database. You will have to start from scratch to occupy a higher search engine ranking. There is a solution for this problem. All you need to do is to redirect all requests from the old pages to the new ones. Apart from adding a link on the old page redirecting to the new, you also need to inform search engines and visitors that there is a new location for your old page.

There is a relatively easier task at hand as far as altering the overall appearance of your site. If you are using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), then you only require modifying the CSS file and it is implemented throughout the site. So you get rid of the cumbersome task of modifying each page on your site.

It is always recommended to keep a latest backup copy of your existing website. You never know, it may be required in the future. If your site redesigning simply backfires, you can quickly return to your old design. So watch out for all those facts before embarking on your website redesign.

Tags: Change - the Sole Stable Stuff for Sites