7 Misconceptions About Your Website Redesign
Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 7:10 am
Websites are major investments that require a substantial amount of time and resources. They also require frequent updates and optimization to remain effective.
Since so much time and money goes into building the initial site, people focus on shorter turnaround times for updates and redesign. However, with anything related to website development, it’s important to think about the long-term instead of the short-term. Focusing on how your website project will impact your business over the next 24 months instead of the next three will better guide your website redesign.
Here are some common misconceptions around website redesigns and why they’re wrong.
7 Misconceptions About Your Website Redesign
1. We can update the general design without physician database doing any development
CSS, the language that stylesheets are composed of, is a part of development, so even if you’re just updating visuals, you still need a developer to update the code.
On top of that, even if you’re just refreshing design from a front-end perspective, adding additional code on top of the existing code adds bloat and can come with a cost to your website’s performance (load time) and the ease of updating going forward.
Occasionally, there is merit to just doing a visual design update if your content is working well and your conversion rates are where you want, but your website just looks bad. However, in the long-term, you’ll benefit more from cleaning up and refreshing the code base even if you’re happy with your information architecture and content.
When you just keep adding code on top of existing code, you can end up with a “frankensite” of patchworked updates. They may look okay from the front end, but the messiness of the code in the backend will cost you money over time. By not overhauling the codebase, an update that could take one hour with a clean code might take three hours.
2. While a full redesign will be needed, it’s okay to start with just a few pages
When you just redesign a couple pages of your website, you can harm your overall brand credibility. If your new pages look visually different from the rest of the site, they create a disjointed experience for the visitor. Lack of visual consistency degrades user trust, and introducing three new great-looking pages you’re really proud of can hurt the overall UX due to the visual disparity.
Since so much time and money goes into building the initial site, people focus on shorter turnaround times for updates and redesign. However, with anything related to website development, it’s important to think about the long-term instead of the short-term. Focusing on how your website project will impact your business over the next 24 months instead of the next three will better guide your website redesign.
Here are some common misconceptions around website redesigns and why they’re wrong.
7 Misconceptions About Your Website Redesign
1. We can update the general design without physician database doing any development
CSS, the language that stylesheets are composed of, is a part of development, so even if you’re just updating visuals, you still need a developer to update the code.
On top of that, even if you’re just refreshing design from a front-end perspective, adding additional code on top of the existing code adds bloat and can come with a cost to your website’s performance (load time) and the ease of updating going forward.
Occasionally, there is merit to just doing a visual design update if your content is working well and your conversion rates are where you want, but your website just looks bad. However, in the long-term, you’ll benefit more from cleaning up and refreshing the code base even if you’re happy with your information architecture and content.
When you just keep adding code on top of existing code, you can end up with a “frankensite” of patchworked updates. They may look okay from the front end, but the messiness of the code in the backend will cost you money over time. By not overhauling the codebase, an update that could take one hour with a clean code might take three hours.
2. While a full redesign will be needed, it’s okay to start with just a few pages
When you just redesign a couple pages of your website, you can harm your overall brand credibility. If your new pages look visually different from the rest of the site, they create a disjointed experience for the visitor. Lack of visual consistency degrades user trust, and introducing three new great-looking pages you’re really proud of can hurt the overall UX due to the visual disparity.