Many of us have gone through or heard about a few website redesigns. The cycle of website redesign often happens every five years or so when a marketing expert or web developer encourages you to give your website a fresh look and feel. But, does a website redesign always increase lead generation and sales or reach goals a company may have?
The answer is, more often than not, NO!
Adding a new theme, images and other design elements does make your website look better, but doesn’t continuously attribute to your brand’s success unless the right conversion-driving elements are in all the right places.
How do you know what makes your audience convert?
Listening and testing.
Incremental change based on user experience data is the best practice option to make design improvements to your site continuously. The evolutionary approach achieves both a great look and builds your brand’s conversion success.
Website Redesign vs. Evolutionary Web Design
Why Website Redesign Is Risky
There is a perception that website redesign innate improves conversions and revenue – many businesses opt for this. It is understandable to assume that a slick new design will increase lead generation and sales. Unfortunately, this is not true as redesign does not consider risk migration. Risk migration, when it comes to website redesign, refers to the number of individual changes made to a website. Whether you change the website theme, layout, or navigation bar placement, design changes can boost conversion but can also wreck it.
What makes the difference?
A process in place to test changes made on page templates and landing pages. Without that, a redesign can be pointless. There should be systems in place to monitor and justify all changes made against crucial conversion metrics. Justifying changes is done through a conversion optimization strategy which requires the following:
- Understanding your target audience
- Setting up controlled split tests
- Analyzing insight from data from redesign changes
- Analyzing test hypothesis to solve issues that may block conversions
Granted, there are certain best practices (such as removing the word “Submit” from your buttons and calls-to-action) that many sites can implement confidently without extensive testing. And, websites with very light traffic must forge ahead because testing low-traffic sites can take months or years to determine meaningful results.
If the necessary foundations and traffic are present, evolutionary web design is the most trusted course of action.
Why Evolutionary Web Design Works
Evolutionary web design is a smart way of making design changes throughout a website’s life cycle that includes a process of testing what works and what doesn’t. Unlike a website redesign, evolutionary web design not only updates the look and feel. As we’ve mentioned, it relies on design changes. This reduces the risk for your brand. By just looking at the two fundamental differences between evolutionary web design and website redesign, it is clear that evolutionary web design is far superior and smarter for businesses. Here are how the two processes differ:
- Process – With traditional website design, the cycle of redesign only happens every five years. But with no testing beforehand, businesses are often left scrambling to fix conversion rates that have dropped due to beautifying a website without purpose. With evolutionary web design, companies create a system of continuous improvement, so your website is always evolving to keep up with trends and customers’ needs.
- Success – Unlike website design, with evolutionary web design, every change is measured using split tests that need to meet brand goals. The website gets a new look while reaching a business, sales, and conversion goals.
With ongoing testing and incremental improvements, evolutionary web design is the way forward for all brands. No matter how big or small your business, allow your business website to create a digital experience that will impress customers, generate leads, and convert sales!
