Nathan Barry discusses the benefits of simple “realignments” in website design versus (potentially) unnecessary full redesigns.
That’s something I’ve heard a lot: if something isn’t good enough, it’s time to redo it. Sometimes that’s necessary, but more often you should use the foundation you already have to get closer to perfect.
James didn’t need a site redesign. He just needed to spend a little time to add the final level of polish to make his design truly stellar.
So that’s what we did. After dinner that night James opened up the styles on his site and started making changes. I’d point out little things like: “Let’s find a new font for that title” or “let’s change the navigation color.” But for the most part the next two hours were spent with James making small tweaks and asking the group, “What do you think?”
Instead of starting from scratch and having to spend days designing and building a new design James was able to take his site design from “good enough” to “great!” in a couple hours.
This is a great point and good to remember. I often see people delay some thing because they want to redesign it all, when really it may just need some tweaking before you can focus on what’s more important.
Similarly, once we do go all in and redesign, it’s also important to not let it stagnate and never change. Post-launch changes should be consistent and we should adjust our site and design as the site matures and we learn more about what’s working, what not, and also generally follow up on parts we know we didn’t give enough effort during the redesign.
See also: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/radical-incremental-redesign/