[thelist] How often to redesign

[Ross Lynch]

Jennifer,

> My boss thinks our corporate web site
> should be redesigned on a regular basis
> (like every quarter or 4 months) to "keep
> it interesting".  I think this is
> excessive.

This seems wildly excessive! "Keep it interesting"?
Surely your content is supposed to do this?

By all means, keep the content fluid, add new bits
and pieces constantly. Redesigning a corporate
website every quarter would seem like a sin in
branding to me.

How does your boss justify the time it would take to
redesign the site on such a frequent basis? I'd want
to see convincing results of studies on whether
constant redesigning actually makes visitors
interested, without effecting them adversely, before
making a call like that. In addition, it would
surely have to show some kind of return that would
merit paying designers and developers for the time
invloved.

> For one thing, we do have
> people hit the site on a regular basis
> for online tracking
> features, and I think they would like to
> have more consistency than that.

This is a very important point. If your visitors are
largely composed of people hitting the site on a
frequent basis for a particular purpose (checking
figures, etc. for example) then they're going to be
doing this practically in auto-pilot mode. You may
just annoy them if you make them re-learn navigation
and element positioning every few months.

> And I
> just don't think changing that often is
> necessary.  What are your opinions?

I'd say not.

 -Ross

____________________________________________________
ross lynch  | me at rosslynch.com  | +353 (0)87 9683368
____________________________________________________
Nicht auf dem Teppich, Mann!