By: Craig Spooner
The pressure on marketers to keep up with the competition can feel exhausting. One of the ways that many companies try to stay up to date is by undertaking a costly and time-consuming redesign of their website. The good news? According to HubSpot, a complete website overhaul is not necessary. It’s not even ideal.
If Not a Redesign, Then What?
Incremental changes (coupled with consistent testing) are the best way to keep your website fresh and intuitive. HubSpot calls this strategy “growth-driven design.”
An article in Forbes agrees. Marketer Roger Dooley claims that periodic adjustments of your website may work better because your organization has time to test the outcome of each change to ensure its success. He calls it an “evolutionary, testing-based approach.”
His example? E-commerce powerhouse Amazon.com does not do website redesigns, but rather implements small, incremental changes. This allows Amazon to offer consistency and familiarity to their customers, while at the same time improving website functionality and design based on real-time testing and analysis.
The Case for Rethinking Website Redesign
If you have ever taken part in a website redesign, chances are it was a frustrating experience. It’s a long process (often three months or more). It’s expensive, it distorts other company priorities, and one-third of marketers are unhappy with the outcome. Not to mention that you’ll have to start the process again in less than two short years when the website feels outdated.
By regularly testing and analyzing your current website, you will gain feedback from your visitors and learn which pages perform the best. If you are consistently adjusting according to what you learn, your website will continue to evolve and perform better without a complete overhaul.
Dooley notes, “Companies are creating thousands and thousands of changes when they do this ‘flip the switch’ method, and they have no idea what impact each of those individual change is having on their end result, their conversion rate, their revenue, their lead generation, or whatever their goal is for their business. They’re changing their headlines, their imagery, their call to action, their information, all this stuff all at once without any insight into what’s happening.”
Not only do incremental changes allow you to bring your customers forward with you, they lead to a more analytical, data-driven approach to website design.
Thank you for sharing!